Off-air recordings for week 2-8 February 2013

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 3rd

Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Wonders of Life
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/5 - Expanding Universe


Amidst the rich natural history of the United States, Professor Brian Cox encounters the astonishing creatures that reveal how the senses evolved.  Every animal on Earth experiences the world in a different way, using a unique suite of senses to detect its physical environment. Tracing the evolution of these mechanisms is a story that takes us through life's journey - from single-celled organisms to more complex, sentient beings. Brian finds that over the course of 3.8 billion years, the senses have driven life in new directions and may, ultimately, have led to our own curiosity and intelligence.

Brian begins deep in the caves of Kentucky, where, devoid of light, he must orientate by sense of touch and sound alone. Yet even in this limited environment he encounters a creature that is perfectly able to find its way around. This is the paramecium, a microscopic single-celled organism.  Despite their apparent simplicity, paramecia display a clear sense of touch, changing direction whenever they bump into something. Brian finds that the electrochemical process through which they 'feel' the world, underlies practically all senses in all living things.

Brian next explores the sense of taste in the muddy waters of the Mississippi Delta. With a metre long catfish in his arms, Brian explains how its entire body is covered in taste buds. These behave like one giant tongue, allowing the catfish to build up a three-dimensional map of its otherwise murky surroundings.  A scuba-dive off the coast of California brings Brian face to face with the strange yet remarkable mantis shrimp. These inhabitants of the ocean floor see the world through eyes made of 10,000 lenses, each with twice as many visual pigments as any other animal on Earth.

But it's in the eyes of the octopus that Brian finds a link between the ability to process sensory data and the emergence of intelligence. This tantalising discovery may be evidence that humans evolved large brains in order to process the vast amounts of information gathered through our sense of vision.  For Brian this raises an extraordinary prospect - that ultimately it was our senses that allowed us to gaze up at the vast expanse of the universe and begin to understand its origins.



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Monday 4th

News

Panorama: The Great Abortion Divide
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

Abortion is more controversial than ever, with pro-life activists challenging pregnant women as they try to enter clinics. Doctors in most of the UK are signing off terminations on questionable mental health grounds, while in Northern Ireland women and doctors risk life in prison over abortion. So is our legislation hopelessly outdated? Victoria Derbyshire investigates the great abortion divide and asks if it is time to change the law.


Factual; History; Documentaries

Richard III: The King in the Car Park
Channel 4, 9:00-10:35pm


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Tuesday 5th

Factual; History; Documentaries

Britain on Film
BBC4, 2:30-3:00am, Animal Magic


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. This episode examines Britain's ambiguous relationships with animals. Look at Life's coverage - which ranges from the fur trade, fox hunting and animal-based entertainments in circuses to our passion for pets - shows just how far attitudes to other species have shifted since the 1960s.


Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment;

Survivor's Indestructible Creatures

BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Fugitives from the Fire


It is estimated that 99 per cent of species have become extinct and there have been times when life's hold on Earth has been so precarious it seems it hangs on by a thread. This series focuses on the survivors - the old-timers - whose biographies stretch back millions of years and who show how it is possible to survive a mass extinction event which wipes out nearly all of its neighbours. The Natural History Museum's Professor Richard Fortey discovers what allows the very few to carry on going - perhaps not for ever, but certainly far beyond the life expectancy of normal species. What makes a survivor when all around drop like flies? Professor Fortey travels across the globe to find the survivors of the most dramatic of these obstacles - the mass extinction events.  In episode two, Fortey focuses on the 'KT boundary'. 65 million years ago, a 10 km diameter asteroid collided with the Earth and saw the end of the long reign of the dinosaurs. He investigates the lucky breaks and evolutionary adaptations that allowed some species to survive the disastrous end of the Cretaceous Age when these giants did not.



Documentaries

Out of Jail and On The Streets
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm

With unprecedented access, this documentary uncovers the hidden world of public protection. Through the personal stories of probation officers, it explores how offenders are monitored, controlled and rehabilitated in everyday life, and how the public are protected from them. This is the story of our protectors, the extraordinary professionals in the probation service who work with some of society's most troubled, damaged and dangerous people. They keep tabs on murderers and paedophiles, robbers and rapists, burglars and domestic abusers. But these offenders are not behind bars; they are out and about, living free among us. So how are they controlled, and how are we kept safe?


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Wednesday 6th

Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment;

Africa
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 6/6 - The Future


Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment;

Nature's Microworlds
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/7 - The Namib Desert

Steve Backshall explores the oldest desert in the world, the Namib, a coastal area in southern Africa where temperatures often reach 60 degrees. He tracks down the animals that live there and shows the tactics they employ to combat the heat, before revealing the secret that allows life to survive in this harsh environment.


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Thursday 7th

News

Tonight: How To Save a Life
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm

Every year in the UK, up to 140,000 people die in situations where basic first aid might have saved them. Fiona Foster meets former Bolton Wanderers midfielder Fabrice Muamba, who suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch last year and is now campaigning for first aid to be taught in schools. The programme also puts the medical skills of three members of the public to the test by reconstructing the aftermath of a car crash.


Documentaries

Nursing the Nation
ITV1, 8:30-9:00pm, 6/7

A new series which looks at the work of the District Nurses who travel around the country caring for their patients in their own homes many of whom are elderly.


Documentaries

Brain Doctors
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:20am, 1/3 - Emergency


High risk, extremely skilled and breathtakingly complex, Brain Doctors features surgeons working at the very frontiers of their medical expertise and knowledge. Landmark Films has had remarkable access over nine months to the neurosurgeons at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital – sharing the daily highs and lows – and to their patients whose lives depend on their skill.

Cameras follow both paediatric and adult surgeons as they carry out high risk operations on the most complex, delicate and important organ, removing brain tumours, correcting brain abnormalities and saving the lives of trauma victims.  Some of the patients are what Paediatric Neurosurgeon Jay Jayamohan calls 'frequent flyers' – children with complex conditions who require a lifetime of surgery. The films highlight the strong bonds of trust and commitment that are forged between families and their surgeons.

Patients often arrive in the Neurosurgery Department shell-shocked: a routine visit to the optician or GP has triggered a process which ends with major brain surgery to remove a life threatening tumour.  Tracey, a midwife and mum to two sons, lies in a coma with massive head injuries suffered in a car crash. Husband John escaped relatively unscathed and sits constantly by her bed, willing her to open her eyes.  Martin was struck down by a mysterious virus which has rendered him unconscious and unable to breathe for himself. Every day, his wife Lisa, checks for signs Martin is coming round. For doctors and patients, the NICU is a physically and mentally gruelling place to be.



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