Off-air recordings for week 8-14 December 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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Sunday 9th December

Factual; Documentaries

The Trouble with Aid
BBC4, 9:00-11:00pm


45 years ago a group of young men and women set out to make the world a better place. They wanted to bring aid to those in dire need. These idealists would help create a new mass movement - humanitarianism. Its core belief is a simple one - that it is our duty to help those in desperate need, wherever they are. But trying to do good in the world's worst conflict zones is filled with danger and compromise.

The Trouble with Aid tells the story of what really happened during the major humanitarian disasters of the last 50 years: from the Biafran War, through to the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid, to the military intervention in Somalia and to present-day Afghanistan. Despite the best intentions, aid can have some unintended and terrible consequences.

Using the testimony of key players from the world's largest aid agencies, the film looks at what happens when good people try to help in a bad world.

Today, any humanitarian crisis leads to cries that we must 'do something'. The Trouble with Aid challenges this fundamental assumption by asking the question few us are prepared to face: can aid sometimes do more harm than good?


Factual; Discussion and Talk

The Trouble with Aid - The Debate
BBC4, 11:00-11:45pm

Saving lives in dangerous and complex humanitarian crises is fraught with moral dilemmas. Further exploring the emergencies highlighted in Ricardo Pollack's film The Trouble with Aid, aid professionals and critics debate whether there are occasions when humanitarian aid might do more harm than good, and what emergency aid means in the 21st century.


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Monday 10th December

News

Panorama: The Secret Drone War
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm


America's CIA is fighting a secret war in the badlands of Pakistan - targeting al Qaeda and other militants with hellfire missiles in drone strikes that the UN says are illegal. No one knows the true number who have died, but it is estimated that the death toll may be around 3,000 - some of them, it is claimed, innocent women and children.

Panorama goes to Waziristan, one of the most dangerous places in the world, to report on the drone war and to find out from its victims why they are seeking justice in the British courts.



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Tuesday 11th December

Documentaries

Is Our Weather Getting Worse?
Channel 4, 9:00-9:00pm

n Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception. It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse.

The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought. In Aberdeen in March, temperatures soared to 23 degrees Celsius. But within four weeks, everything had changed. April 15 marked the beginning of our wettest summer on record. Towns such as Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were flooded not once, but twice, and by the end of August 4000 homes across Britain had been devastated by floods. But the strange events of 2012 are only part of the story. For the past decade, our weather has been so erratic that government scientists have begun to use words like 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinary'.

This programme gets to the truth of our extraordinary decade of extreme weather. Blending dramatic archive footage, expert insight and cutting-edge graphics, the film investigates the most severe weather events to have struck Britain in recent memory and puts them into the wider context of climate change. Are the strange events of 2012 a one-off or an ominous sign of climate change in action? How does the changing global climate affect the British weather and what can we expect in the future? Is our weather getting worse?



Factual; News

Cuba with Simon Reeve
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale. Simon Reeve meets ordinary Cubans whose lives are being transformed, from the owners of fledgling businesses to the newly rich estate agents selling properties worth up to 750,000 pounds.


In this hour-long documentary for the BBC's award-winning This World strand, Simon gets under the skin of a colourful and vibrant country famous for its hospitality and humour and asks if this new economic openness could lead to political liberalisation in a totalitarian country with a poor human rights record. Will Cuba be able to maintain the positive aspects of its long isolation under socialism - low crime, top-notch education and one of the best health systems in the world - while embracing what certainly looks like capitalism? Is this the last chance to see Cuba before it becomes just like any other country?



Factual; Documentaries

The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/4 - The Wonder of Islam

The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.


Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.

Along with Christianity, the Dark Ages saw the emergence of another vital religion - Islam. After emerging in the near East it spread across North Africa and into Europe, bringing its unique artistic style with it. Waldemar examines the early artistic explorations of the first Muslims, the development of their mosques and their scientific achievements



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Wednesday 12th December

Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries

Miniature Britain
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm

Biologist George McGavin goes on a journey around the British Isles to show us the extraordinary little things that are vital to our land. With a revolutionary new microscope camera seven thousand times more powerful than the human eye, George reveals the surprising beauty of Britain close-up.

Caterpillars' feet have hooks that anchor them to leaves even upside down, the wings of butterflies and moths are a kaleidoscope of colourful scales that keep them safe from predators, bee stings have barbs that make them stick deep in your skin, and feathers have thousands of hooks that zip together keeping birds airborne.

Our cities are full of invisible miniature life too: millions of cute 'water bears' graze pavement mosses, and our homes have legions of dust mites scavenging for food in our carpets. This is Britain as you've never seen it before.



Factual; History; Documentaries

Rome: A History of the Eternal City
9:00-10:00pm, 2/3

Simon Sebag Montefiore charts the rocky course of Rome's rise to become the capital of Western Christendom and its impact on the lives of its citizens, elites and high priests. Rome casts aside its pantheon of pagan gods and a radical new religion takes hold. Christianity was just a persecuted sect until Emperor Constantine took a huge leap of faith, promoting it as the religion of Empire. But would this divine gamble pay off?



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Thursday 13th December

Factual; News; Documentaries

Britain's Hidden Housing Crisis
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm

Britain is in the grip of a housing crisis of a sort not seen before, where even the most unexpected people are finding themselves homeless. Every two and a half minutes someone in Britain is threatened with losing their home. Hard-working people who’ve reliably paid their rent or mortgages for years can be only a few pay packets away from finding themselves without a roof over their heads. And with more people becoming homeless and fewer homes being built, tens of thousands of families are living in temporary accommodation, sometimes in squalid conditions.

In Britain’s New Homeless, Panorama follows the struggles and challenges faced by four people as they face the reality of losing their homes. Filmed over the course of five months, the programme reveals the devastating impact of losing everything:   An investment banker who, following the crash of 2008, lost everything and eventually found himself sleeping rough in a park in Croydon; another businessman whose company went under in the recession and whose family home was repossessed when he was unable to keep up the mortgage repayments; a grandmother who had worked all her life but could no longer pay the mortgage when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was forced to stop work; and a bus driver, whose family of six was evicted from their council house when they couldn't keep up with the rental payments. The family found themselves living in one-bedroom emergency accommodation, while the council decided whether they have made themselves 'intentionally homeless'.


Documentaries

Pensioners Behind Bars
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm

This colourful film includes the stories of men and women who have turned to crime only in later years after a lifetime as law-abiding citizens. It features a septuagenarian heroin dealer, a former driving instructor turned brothel keeper and a retired builder convicted of possession of blackmarket cigarettes and cannabis. They explain what drew them into crime, what it’s like to be locked up for the first time at their age, and how they are dealing with the consequences. It also shows how career criminals such as former Krays associate Freddie Foreman are coping in retirement and asks if they still retain the urge to commit crime.

The number of over-60s in prison has trebled in the last 20 years and the programme begins with Anthony McErlean, 67, serving a five-year sentence at HMP Elmley for an audacious fraud. After faking his own death while abroad, in order to swindle his insurance company out of £500,000, he realised the potential pitfalls of spending his old age overseas. “I thought if I get sick I can’t go back to the UK as a dead person and get healthcare. I’m up s*** creek without a paddle. I thought how do you un-kill yourself?”  Anthony was caught when police found his fingerprints on his own death certificate. He pleaded guilty to fraud and theft. He says: “I regret being in here, but I don’t feel that I shouldn’t be in here. I knew what I was doing and I knew the risks.”

But the programme features others who were shocked at being sent to prison. Grandmother Adele Lubin, 66, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for conspiracy to control prostitution at the age of 62 and began her term in Holloway. She started a legitimate massage therapy business but discovered that it was difficult to make money without offering extra services – and as her business expanded she became a brothel madam.  “The phone used to ring and they would say, ‘What kind of massage is it?’ And I would say, ‘Well it’s very therapeutic, and relaxing and sensual.’ And then some people would say, ‘Well do you do a happy ending?’ And I’d have to say, ‘Yeah, no problem.’   “I never thought if I ever got caught I’d end up in jail… I just didn’t think I was doing anything too terrible.”


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Friday 14th December

News; World Affairs

Unreported World: Russia's Radical Chic
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm

Glamorous young Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak has swapped high-profile TV stardom for a life leading political protests against President Putin, who also happens to be a close family friend.  Unreported World reveals how far Sobchak is risking her livelihood and privileged lifestyle to confront the strongman of the Kremlin, who has dealt ruthlessly with other political opponents.  Sobchak is one of the most famous people in Russia, known by millions as the presenter of Russian Big Brother, and a member of the elite that made fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her father was the mayor of St Petersburg and mentor to Vladimir Putin, a family friend. A quick search of her career highlights on YouTube turns up clips of her dancing lasciviously, fighting with a boyfriend, and being carried home to her apartment in a drunken stupor.

So, when Muscovites took to the streets in December 2011 in a series of unprecedented mass protests against electoral fraud and the Putin regime, they were amazed when she joined them, telling them she had a lot to lose in fighting their cause.  Since then, she's changed her image and started going out with Ilya Yashin, a political organiser. She's still using her celebrity, but now to oppose the regime of a man she's known since she was a child.  And she's suffering the consequences. By opposing the government, Sobchak has swapped a life of privilege for one of uncertainty. She's been banished from mainstream television to a tiny cable station, where she hosts a political discussion programme. In June 2012, armed police raided her apartment.

Reporter Marcel Theroux and director David Fuller follow Sobchak as she records an hour-long interview with Katya Samutsevich, one of the Pussy Riot protestors.  It's Sobchak's idea to film the interview outside with the cathedral the protestors invaded. At Sobchak's suggestion, she and Samutsevich wear prison jackets. It's a well-calculated tease, but the Kremlin is showing signs of losing patience with her.

Sobchak tells Theroux that she's just had word that her mother, a career politician, has lost her job. She attributes this, like her banishment to cable television and the police raid, to a government that is trying to squeeze the life out of the opposition. To a certain extent, it's succeeding. With Putin in office for another six years, and the most recent elections marked by low turn-outs and widespread apathy, it appears that a certain Russian fatalism is returning. As the Unreported World team leaves Moscow, Theroux concludes that high-wattage stars like Sobchak, who can galvanise Russia's younger and least cynical voters, could be an answer to this fatalism.



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