Off-air recordings for week 16-22 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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Saturday 16th

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Swinging into The Blitz: A Culture Show Special
BBC2, 6:00-7:00pm


When a handful of musical immigrants from the Caribbean islands came to Britain in the 1920s and 30s, it was the beginning of both musical and political change. Leslie Thompson, an innovative musician and trumpeter, and Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson, a brilliant dancer and charismatic band leader, pooled their talents to start the first black British swing band.

Clemency Burton-Hill reveals the untold story of the black British swing musicians of the 1930s, whose meteoric rise to fame on London's high society dance floors was cut short by unexpected tragedy at the height of the Blitz.


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Sunday 17th

Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Wonders of Life
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 4/5 - Size Matters


In this episode, Brian travels around Australia to explore the physics of the size of life. Beginning with the largest organisms on our planet, a forest of giant eucalyptus trees, he then takes to the seas to get up-close with an ocean giant - the great white shark. From the safety of a steel cage Brian explains how the distinctive streamlined contours of the great white have been shaped by the physics of water.

Back on land, Brian heads out to the dry dusty outback. Here he tracks the largest living marsupial, the red kangaroo, to see how giants on land adapt to gravity. This all pervasive force influences the way in which living things move and the upper limit on how large they become.

Through the myriad species of insects in Queensland's rainforests, Brian begins his journey into the world of the small. At smaller scales, the effects of gravity are negligible and it is another force - the electrostatic force - that is dominant. This explains how flies and other insects can appear to defy gravity, using the traction of the electrostatic force to scale vertical windows.

But as life gets smaller, the very nature of the world appears to change as Brian explains with the aid of the tiny trichogramma wasp. This is one of the smallest multicellular life forms on Earth. For them, the atmosphere is a highly viscose environment - in a similar way to how we experience liquid - and so the trichogramma has to 'swim' through the air.

Even smaller still, are the thrombolites of Lake Clifton, near Perth. These mysterious growths are made up of colonies of bacteria, the smallest free-living life forms on Earth. Here, Brian finds that the size of life has a lower limit that is governed by the size of atoms and fundamental particles, which in turn are subject to the laws of physics.

The size you are not only dictates which forces of nature affect your life, it also influences your 'speed of life'. The tiny southern bent wing bat of South Australia loses heat so fast that they struggle to find enough food to stay alive. But as life gets larger, the pace of life - or metabolism - slows and this has profound consequences on life expectancy.

Brian explores this idea upon the tropical Christmas Island. This is a land of crabs of all different shapes and sizes. The largest - and most distinctive - are the giant robber crabs whose legs can span a metre. Not only are they the largest land invertebrate, they outlive their smaller cousins, some reaching well over 80 years of age. So the physics of size shapes life in many ways, not least the amount of years you get to enjoy it.


Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Perspectives: Looking for Lowry

ITV1, 11:15pm-12:15am


I can imagine art critics across the land gasping for oxygen throughout Perspectives, the first of ITV1’s new soft-centred arts strand, a sort-of replacement for The South Bank Show.

Why? Because it’s a documentary about LS Lowry, the British painter born in Manchester in 1887 whose huge popularity never translated into critical acclaim; it’s presented by an actor (Ian McKellen) and one of the contributors is Noel Gallagher. Yes, that Noel Gallagher, from Oasis. Can I hear Brian Sewell combusting?  For anyone who loves Lowry, tonight’s Perspectives provides a neat, simple, er, perspective, on his life, illustrated with a lot of his work, including some rather kinky and hitherto largely unseen drawings and sketches of constricted women.

There are contributions from Lowry’s friends and a mealy-mouthed offering from a Tate Gallery boss about why none of the 23 Lowrys held in its collections is currently on display. His work is a bit too “sentimental”, apparently.  Ian McKellen presents an exploration of LS Lowry, whose paintings of northern urban life are particularly loved for his trademark `matchstick men' figures. He discovers works that have never been exhibited and examines them for possible clues to Lowry's personality. The documentary also features Noel Gallagher, who claims the artist does not receive the recognition he deserves, while Jeffrey Archer explains how he came to be a Lowry collector.



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Monday 18th

News, Current Affairs

Dispatches: Britain on Benefits
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm


The Disability Living Allowance helps more than three million people lead useful lives. It pays for transport and carers, meaning that disabled people can work and lead independent lives.  But the benefit bill has to be cut, and the government plans to take more than half a million claimants off DLA. What will that mean for those who depend on it?  Talking to fellow Paralympians, disabled army veterans and disabled people in work, wheelchair basketball ace Ade Adepitan goes in search of answers, and asks if this hugely ambitious and expensive plan to reassess disabled people has been properly thought through.



Law and Order; Crime and Punishment; Documentaries

Her Majesty's Prison - Aylesbury
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2


Aylesbury Prison in Buckinghamshire, home to some of the most dangerous young criminals in Britain, has allowed an exclusive insight into life for prisoners and staff for a new documentary series on ITV- Her Majesty’s Prison: Aylesbury.  Murderers, rapists, gangsters and paedophiles are serving time here. So serious are some of their offences, that one in five is serving life or an indeterminate sentence to protect the public. What’s frightening is that the oldest prisoners are just 21.

Officers engage in a daily battle of wits, to ensure they keep control. They must also try to help rebuild the fractured lives of these young men.  Programme makers, Wild Pictures, who have won acclaim for powerful documentaries on Strangeways, Holloway and Wormwood Scrubs prisons, were given extraordinary access to film over four months, interviewing hundreds of prisoners and officers for the two part documentary.



Storyville: Google and the World Brain
BBC4, 10:00-11:30pm


Storyville: Documentary which tells the story of the most ambitious project ever conceived on the internet and the people who tried to stop it. In 1937 HG Wells predicted the creation of the 'world brain', a giant global library that contained all human knowledge which would lead to a new form of higher intelligence. 70 years later the realisation of that dream was under way, as Google scanned millions of books for its Google Books website. However, over half those books were still in copyright and authors across the world launched a campaign to stop them, climaxing in a New York courtroom in 2011.  This is a film about the dreams, dilemmas and dangers of the internet, set in spectacular locations in China, USA, Europe and Latin America.



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Tuesday 19th

factual; History; Documentaries

Britain on Film
BBC4, 2:30-3:00, End of Empire

This episode focuses on films examining the changing shape of the British Empire. At a time when many of its former colonies were achieving independence, Look at Life sent its film crews as far afield as Aden, Malaysia and Ascension Island to record the efforts made by Britain to manage the transition from imperial rule to the leadership of an emerging Commonwealth.


Factual; Documentaries

Storyville: The Pirate Bay
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

Storyville: Documentary telling the story of The Pirate Bay, the world's largest file sharing site which facilitates downloading of copyrighted material. The film follows the three Swedish founders of The Pirate Bay through their trial after they are taken to court by Hollywood and the entertainment industry, accused of breaking copyright law. Seeing themselves as technicians whose aim is to run the world's largest web platform, in scenes bordering on the absurdly comedic they claim that their actions are about freedom and not money. The closer the film gets to them, it becomes increasingly clear that they are rather unworldly nerds, whose social skills and ability to comprehend the analogue world, and each other, are somewhat limited.


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Wednesday 20th

Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries

Nature's Microworlds
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 5/7 - The Deep Sea

Steve Backshall takes us to a place few have ever visited - the deep sea. 99 per cent of the space on Earth inhabited by life is under the ocean and almost 90 per cent of this is deeper than a kilometre, a place of perpetual darkness and crushing pressure. Far from being lifeless, the vast inner space of our planet contains an extraordinary array of beautiful and bizarre creatures, from 40m-long jellyfish to grotesque angler fish and vampire squid. Our journey from the sunlit surface waters to the deepest reaches of the abyss reveals how life persists in such a hostile world.


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Thursday 21st

Factual; History; Documentaries

Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years War
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm, 2/3 - Breaking the Bonds 1360-1415

England, wracked by plague and revolt, loses the upper hand until Henry V, determined to prove his right to be king, turns the tide at the battle of Agincourt.



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