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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Monday 14th January
Factual; Arts, Culture, and the Media; Documentaries
Art Deco Icons
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
David Heathcote explores the dramatic 1930s London Transport HQ in St James's, London. When it was built in the1930s, it was the highest skyscraper in London. Heathcote goes behind the scenes and uncovers the story of a building so controversial that Frank Pick, who commissioned it, offered to resign from the London Underground Company, because there were so many complaints about its ambitious design.
The HQ became the nerve centre for an Art Deco transformation of the underground which remains today. David Heathcote ventures out on the Piccadilly Line to Southgate to investigate. For many, it is just the scene of a crowded journey to work, but Heathcote discovers a perfect example of a co-ordinated Deco look. The sleek tube station uses streamlined features, soft uplighting and chrome to create a glamorous overall effect. It may be lost on the commuters on their way to work, but for Heathcote it is a moment to stand back and enjoy the marvel that was Art Deco.
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
The Polar Bear Family and Me
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/3 - Spring
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan follows a wild polar bear family over three seasons, something no one has done before. Gordon and arctic survival experts travel by boat to far flung Svalbard. They manage to find a polar bear birth den and meet mother Lyra and her cubs Miki and Luca as they emerge from their den.
Little is known about the family life of polar bears because no one has been able to follow them this closely before. Gordon helps scientists fit Lyra with a tracking collar and takes on the mission of living with this remarkable bear family. To help him observe the polar bears Gordon tests a 'bear proof' filming hide - the 'Ice Cube' and gets closer to polar bears than anyone has ever done before.
Factual; History; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Why The Industrial Revolution Happened Here
BBC2, 9:30-10:30
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary and revolutionary periods in British history: the industrial revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever.
He traces the unprecedented explosion of new ideas and technological inventions that transformed Britain's agricultural society into an increasingly industrial and urbanised one. "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here " explore's two fascinating questions - why did the industrial revolution happen when it did, and why did it happen in Britain?
Professor Black discusses the reasons behind this transformation; from Britain's coal reserves which gave it a seemingly inexhaustible source of power to the ascendency of political liberalism, with engineers and industrialists able to meet and share ideas and inventions. He explains the impact that genius's like Josiah Wedgewood had on the consumer revolution and travels to Antigua to examine the impact Britain's empire had on this extraordinary period of growth.
Factual; Documentaries
Storyville: The House I Live In
BBC4, 10:00-11:45pm
As America remains embroiled in overseas conflict, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. For over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are more available today than ever before.
Filmed in more than twenty states, this film captures a definitive and heart-wrenching portrait of individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America's longest war, revealing its profound human rights implications.
While recognising the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have instead treated it as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast political and economic machine that feeds largely on America's poor, especially minority communities. Yet beyond simple misguided policy, the film investigates how political and economic corruption have fuelled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic and practical failures.
Ultimately, the documentary seeks, through compassionate inquiry, to promote public awareness of the history and contemporary mechanics of this human rights crisis and to begin a national conversation about its reform.
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Tuesday 15th January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Developing the Regency Brand
Lucy Worsley looks at Britain in the wake of Waterloo - and asks how this new, triumphant nation wanted to be seen and how it set about celebrating itself in its architecture and design. Again, the Regent led the way. As he grew fatter, barely able to climb stairs or walk about, architecture became his chief creative outlet - and nowhere more so than in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. At the start of his reign as Regent, this had been an elegant neoclassical villa, but working with the architect John Nash, George transformed it after 1815 into the most outrageous of palaces. In it, Lucy discovers more about the Regent's tastes, and finds out what he and his chef had in common.
But while the Regent was building away, what were his people doing? Lucy finds out why Waterloo Bridge became the official memorial to Britain's victory, and how it became an obsession for the painter John Constable. She also explores the powerful influence of the Elgin Marbles, purchased for the British Museum in 1816. These broken statues caused a revolution in Regency ideas and taste, and helped to spread the Greek revival in architecture across the British Isles - even if some buildings, like Edinburgh's very own Parthenon, didn't quite get finished.
So who was behind the Regency 'look'? Lucy finds out more about one of the most influential architects of the age, exploring Sir John Soane's strange architectural ideas and discovering some of his more unexpected legacies. But even if, to our eyes, Soane's ideas may be more exciting, it was his rival John Nash who really defined Regency style - and worked with the Regent himself.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Travel;
The Riviera: A History in Pictures
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2 - The Golden Era
Richard E Grant explores how modern art and the Riviera grew up together when France's Cote D'Azur became the hedonistic playground and experimental studio for the great masters of 20th century painting. With Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso resident on the coast, other artists from Jean Cocteau to Henri Lartigue, Raoul Dufy to Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia to Sergei Diaghilev were drawn to the area. As transatlantic liners brought America's super-rich to the region, art and celebrity became integrally intertwined as cultural gurus and multi-millionaires all partied on the beach. In an era of sunshine and bathing, of cinema and fast cars, of the Ballet Russes and Monte Carlo casinos, Grant discovers the extraordinary output of what became briefly the world's creative hub.
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Wednesday 16th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries
Africa
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - Congo
The very heart of Africa is covered in dense tropical rainforest. The animals that live here find the most ingenious ways to carve out their space in a claustrophobic landscape. Danger lurks in every shadow, but some animals thrive here, from honey-stealing chimps to birds with a lineage as old as the dinosaurs, thundering elephants and kick-boxing frogs. Here in the Congo, no matter how tough the competition, you must stand up and fight for yourself and your patch.
Documentaries
Saving Face
Channel 4, 10:00-11:10pm
This extended version of the Oscar-winning film Saving Face chronicles the journey of pioneering British plastic surgeon Dr Mohammad Jawad as he goes back to Pakistan to help the recovery of acid-attack victims. Every year in Pakistan, over 100 people - most of them women - are known to be victimised by brutal acid attacks, while numerous other cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery, survivors are physically and emotionally scarred. Many reported assailants, typically a husband or someone else close to the victim, receive minimal punishment from the state.
Dr Jawad is the surgeon responsible for treating British acid-attack victim Katie Piper - as documented in Channel 4's Bafta-nominated Katie: My Beautiful Face - and he regularly returns from his prominent London surgery to Pakistan to help the victims of such attacks. The film follows Dr Jawad as he makes every effort to save and reconstruct the faces of two women. Thirty-nine-year-old Zakia's husband threw acid over her after she filed for divorce. Most of the time she is too afraid to leave the house, while, at school, her daughter struggles to cope with the stigma.
As well as needing to alleviate the pain and restore functioning and features to her face, Zakia is bravely fighting for her husband to be brought to justice. Rukhsana is a 23-year-old mother who was attacked with acid and set alight by her husband and in-laws. Rukhsana has had to reconcile with them and continue living under the same roof. Her life becomes impossible as the family forbid her from seeing her daughter, and she seeks help.
This compelling True Stories documentary follows Zakia and Rukhsana, who are supported by NGOs such as the Acid Survivors Foundation-Pakistan and Islamic Help; sympathetic policymakers; attorney Ms Sarkar Abbass, who fights Zakia's case; and female politician Marvi Memon, who advocates for new legislation - all working to bring their assailants to justice and help these woman move on with their lives.
Saving Face takes an intimate look inside Pakistani society, illuminating two women's personal journey while showing how reformers in Pakistan are tackling this horrific problem.
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Thursday 17th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
Lost Kingdoms of South America
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/4 - People of the Clouds
Archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper embarks on an epic journey into the remote Peruvian Andes in search of the mysterious Chachapoya people. Once numbering half a million, they were known as the 'People of the Clouds'. Dr Cooper reveals how they developed sophisticated methods of recording stories, traded in exotic goods found hundreds of miles from their territory, and had funeral traditions that challenge assumptions about ancient human behaviour. His search for evidence takes him to astonishing cliff tombs untouched for 500 years and one of the most spectacular fortresses in South America, where the fate of the Chachapoya is revealed.
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Friday 18th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Carved with Love: The Genius of British Woodwork
BBC4, 3:00-4:00pm, 2/3 - The Glorious Grinling Brothers
Paul Copley narrates the story of Grinling Gibbons, the 17th-century woodcarver who helped restore London to its former glory in the aftermath of the Great Fire. He reveals how Gibbons' masterpieces - created for the likes of Charles II and William of Orange - were held in such high regard he came to be known as `the Michelangelo of wood'.
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