off-air recordings for week 10-16 November 2012

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
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Saturday 10th November

Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Attenborough's Ark: A Natural World Special
BBC2, 7:30-8:30pm

David Attenborough chooses his ten favourite animals that he would most like to save from extinction. From the weird to the wonderful, he picks fabulous and unusual creatures that he would like to put in his 'ark', including unexpected and little-known animals such as the olm, the solenodon and the quoll. He shows why they are so important and shares the ingenious work of biologists across the world who are helping to keep them alive.


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Sunday 11th November

History; Factual; Documentaries  

  Warhorse: The Real Story More 4, 12:55-2:00am   The truth about the million British horses that served in World War I is even more epic than Steven Spielberg's War Horse feature film.

This documentary tells their extraordinary, moving story, begining with the mass call-up of horses from every farm and country estate in the land. Racing commentator Brough Scott tells the tale of his aristocratic grandfather General Jack Seely and his beloved horse Warrior, who would become the most famous horse of the war.

The British Army hoped its illustrious cavalry regiments would win a swift victory, but it would be years before they enjoyed their moment of glory. Instead, in a new era of mechanised trench warfare, the heavy horses transporting guns, ammunition and food to the front-line troops were most important.

A quarter of a million of these horses died from shrapnel wounds and disease. But the deep bond that developed between man and horse helped both survive the hell of the Somme and Passchendaele.

Behind the lines an army of vets worked miracles to treat injured horses and keep them going. The finest hour of the cavalry came in spring 1918 when - led by the warhorse Warrior - they checked the German advance before going on to help win the war.

But there was further heartache when the war ended. Eighty five thousand of the oldest horses were sold for meat to feed POWs and the half-starved local population.

Half a million horses were sold to French farmers to help rebuild the countryside. Only 60,000 made it back to Britain.

Six of these horses would pull the body of the Unknown Warrior to its last resting place in Westminster Abbey.


Factual; History; Documentaries

The Forgotten Gunners of World War I: A Time Team Special Channel 4, 4:40-5:45pm   Golfers at a popular East Midlands golf club now know that a huge wooded bank beside their fairway is a rather special area of 'rough'. Time Team's experts discovered, that 90 years ago it was a machine gun firing range - and buried in the bank are tens of thousands of spent bullets.

Belton House near Grantham may be one of Britain's finest stately homes but during World War I, the grounds were home to thousands of men training for frontline duties. It was where the Machine Gun Corps was created and its troops were trained.

The Corps was set up as a response to German superiority in using these deadly weapons and became vital to the war effort. Most of the Machine Gun Corps' records were destroyed, first in a fire and then in the Blitz in World War II.

Today almost nothing is visible above ground. Tony Robinson and the Team have quite a task to locate the hundreds of barrack blocks, kitchen blocks, roads, social centres and shooting ranges.

To the Team's relief, the dig is rich in finds, revealing glimpses of the men's lives in wartime; whether from the site of the YMCA, where a cup of cocoa could be had for a few pence, or from the hastily erected huts where they lived for their six weeks of intensive training.

They uncover stories of young men who went so bravely to their deaths. Of the 170,000 who trained here more than 12,000 were killed and another 50,000 injured. The Corps' nickname was 'the Suicide Club'.

The sound of a Vickers gun reverberating around the park for the first time in 90 years provides a shocking but fitting tribute.


Factual; History; Documentaries

Michael Wood: The Story of India
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 4/6 - The Age of Gold   Reaching the time of the Fall of Rome in the West, Michael Wood seeks out the amazing achievements of India's golden age. We learn how India discovered zero, calculated the circumference of the earth and wrote the world's first sex guide, the Kama Sutra.  In the south he visits the giant temple of Tanjore, meets the present day 'Senior Prince' and sees traditional bronze casters working as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago. After sampling southern vegetarian food with a traditional Tamil family, Michael goes on pilgrimage to a sacred mountain where the annual fire festival was already famous in 700AD.     Factual; History; Documentaries  


Andrew Marr's History of the World BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 8/8 - Age of Extremes   In the final episode of this landmark series charting the history of human civilisation, Andrew Marr brings the story right up to date with the twentieth century. Marr suggests that humanity found itself propelled forward by our technological brilliance but limited by the consequences of our political idiocy. Democracy confronted communism and fascism, and two world wars would underscore our political failures more than ever before. But our achievements were also astonishing, especially in the fields of science and technology. We invented machines of awesome speed and power, and reached beyond the limits of our planet. Now, more of us live longer, healthier and wealthier lives than our ancestors could ever have imagined. But Marr argues that with seven billion of us on the planet, and rising fast, either we manage the earth's natural resources better or we risk global catastrophe. The decisions we make in the next 50 years, he argues, may well decide our fate. For Marr, the most interesting part of human history lies just ahead.


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Monday 12th November   

Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries  

Digital Human BBC Radio 4, 4:40-5:00pm, 7/7

At the Digital Death Day Aleks meets with Vered Shavit from Israel who having dealt with her late brother's digital legacy set up a website called Digital Dust to help others going through the same experience. Hearing Vered's story Alek's asks how are we using the web to adapt the rituals that we have used for centuries to help us transition between the living and the dead?  Aleks discovers that since Vered's brother's death people continue to communicate with him through his Facebook profile. Dr Elaine Kasket a Counselling Psychologist who practices psychotherapy with the bereaved likens Facebook to a modern day medium. She also explains how Facebook is enabling people to continue bonds with the deceased.  The distinction between our physical selves and mental states is a philosophical construction, but it signifies a line in the sand between those who believe our bodies make us human and those who define humanity by our thoughts and social lives. But without a body do we through our presence on the web continue to be human?


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Tuesday 13th November  

Factual; History; Documentaries  

Britain On Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/10 - Brits at Play  

In 1959 Britain's biggest cinema company, the Rank Organisation, decided to replace its newsreels with a series of short, quirky, topical documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. For the next ten years, Look at Life chronicled - on high-grade 35mm colour film - the changing face of British society, industry and culture. Britain on Film draws upon the 500 films in this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into what became a pivotal decade in modern British history. This episode looks at the films that recorded one of the great boom industries of the 1960s. Having left behind the austerity of the immediate post-war period, Britain's increasingly affluent population took full advantage of the new leisure opportunities that made affordable newly-emerging recreational activities at home - as well as exciting holiday adventures abroad.


Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

The Mind Reader: Between Life and Death
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm

Panorama special following doctors and scientists' revolutionary efforts to help a group of severely brain-injured patients communicate with their families and the outside world. Film-makers have spent more than a year with these people, and the programme includes footage of the moment someone regarded as vegetative for more than a decade is able to answer a series of questions while inside a brain scanner. But as reporter Fergus Walsh states, the findings have profound implications for the patients, their families and the medical staff.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries  

Imagine... Theatre of War
BBC2, 11:20-12:50pm

From rehearsal room to triumphant performance, Imagine... follows the extraordinary theatrical production of The Two Worlds of Charlie F. Professional front-line soldiers, all of whom have sustained injury ranging from amputation to post-traumatic stress, join forces with a professional theatre company to help write, rehearse and perform a play based on their experiences of war in the killing fields of Afghanistan. What happened when they swapped the theatre of war for the London stage?


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Thursday 15th November  

Drama  

Everyday
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm

Michael Winterbottom's drama tells the story of four children separated from their father, and a wife separated from her husband.  The father Ian (John Simm) is in prison. The mother Karen (Shirley Henderson) has to bring up a family of four children by herself.  Filmed over a period of five years, Everyday uses the repetitions and rhythms of everyday life to explore how a family can survive a prolonged period apart.

The story unfolds in a series of visits: first the family visiting the father in prison, later the father visiting the family at home.  With each visit the distance between the children and their father becomes harder to bridge.  By avoiding the normal cinematic conventions of time passing, Everyday focuses on the small subtle changes as people grow up and grow old while being apart.  It is a story of survival and love: a celebration of the small pleasures of everyday life.


Factual; Politics; Documentaries

Heath Vs Wilson: The Ten Year Duel
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:30am  

Harold Wilson and Edward Heath are two very different men equally overlooked by history, but they were the political titans of the era in which Britain changed for ever. For ten years they faced each other in the House of Commons, and swapped in and out of Number Ten. They fought four general elections, three of which were amongst the most exciting of the century.    They were deliciously different and scorned one another, yet they were cast from the same mould. Both promised a revolution of meritocracy and dynamism in the British economy and society. Both utterly failed, but together they presided over a decade that redefined the nation: Britain ceased to be a world power and entered Europe; the postwar consensus in which they both believed was destroyed; Thatcherism and New Labour were born. The country they left behind was unrecognisable from the one they had inherited - and the one they had promised.   This documentary tells the story of their highly personal and political duel in the words of those who watched it blow by blow - their colleagues in the cabinet and government, and the journalists at the ringside. Set against a scintillating backdrop of the music and style of the 1960s and 70s (which was of no interest to either man) it brings the era, and its forgotten figureheads, vividly to life.


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Friday 16th November  

Factual

Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild
BBC2, 9:00-10:40pm, 1/3 - Life on Camera

David Attenborough offers a unique perspective on 60 years of wildlife filmmaking.


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