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 9th February
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Magazines and Reviews
BBC2, 5:30-6:30pm
Andrew Graham-Dixon travels to Northern Spain to visit some of the world's oldest works of art, hundreds of meters beneath the surface of the earth. In limestone caves he is astonished to find a series of vivid paintings, some of which are over 33,000 years old, which appear to link modern man to our ice age ancestors.
Back in London, the British Museum is staging one of its most ambitious exhibitions yet, Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind. Andrew gets a behind-the-scenes preview of the extraordinary highlights and discovers that the world's first commissioned artists were producing highly sophisticated work tens of thousands of years before he previously imagined. The programme includes contributions from the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, and artist Antony Gormley.
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Sunday 10th February
Factual; Science and Nature;
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/5 - Endless Forms Most Beautiful
In this episode Brian Cox visits South East Asia's 'Ring of Fire'. In the world's most volcanic region he explores the thin line that separates the living from the dead and poses that most enduring of questions: what is life? The traditional answer is one that invokes the supernatural, as seen at the annual Day of the Dead celebrations in the Philippine highlands. Brian sets out to offer an alternative answer: one bound up in the flow of energy through the universe.
On the edge of Taal Volcano lake, Brian demonstrates how the first spark of life may have arisen. Here, heat energy from the inner Earth forces its way to the surface and changes its chemistry, just as it did in our planet's infancy. It is now believed that these chemical changes set up a source of energy from which life first emerged.
Today, virtually all derives its energy from the Sun. But there's a paradox to this as according to the laws of physics energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So life doesn't 'use' energy up. It can't remove it from the universe. So how does energy enable living things to live?
Brian reveals life to be a conduit through which energy in the universe passes, just one part in a process that governs the lifecycle of the entire Universe. By diverting energy in the cosmos living things are able to grow and thrive.
But whilst the flow of energy can explain living things, it can't explain how life has endured for more than three billion years. So Brian meets an animal in the Borneo rainforest that holds the key to how life persists - the orangutan. Ninety seven per cent of our DNA is shared with orangutans. That shared heritage reveals a profound conclusion: that DNA is a record of the evolution of life on Earth, one that connects us to everything alive today and that has ever lived.
So life isn't really a thing. It's a chemical process, a way of tapping into the energy flowing through the Universe and transmitting it from generation to generation through the elegant chemistry of DNA. Far from demanding a mystical explanation, the emergence of life might be an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.
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Monday 11th February
News
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
As the government unveils plans to increase the number of children each nursery staff member is allowed to look after, Dispatches investigates whether parents can really trust their child's nursery. The programme goes undercover to expose the shortcoming that means some prospective parents are not able to see a comprehensive history of previous complaints, and hears from parents badly let down by those who are supposed to care for their children.
Factual; Science and Nature
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Penguins as they have never been seen before. From the freezing Antarctic to the scorching tropics, 50 spy cameras capture unique footage of three extraordinary species. Emperor penguins cross a treacherous frozen sea to reach their breeding grounds, and on the way one becomes lost in a blizzard. Once there, the females flipper flight over the males and those that succeed 'waddle walk' with their partners. They must lay their eggs without touching the ice, but it is the males that face the greatest challenge - overwintering alone in the coldest place on earth.
Rockhoppers brave the world's stormiest seas, only to come ashore and face a daunting assault up a 300-foot cliff, hopping most of the way up. Having laid their eggs, these plucky birds face airborne attacks from skuas and vultures. Humboldts are a strange tropical penguin that has rarely been filmed. To reach their desert nests they negotiate 20,000 predatory sea lions, dodge vampire bats and battle half a million sharp-beaked seabirds. The hard work for all the penguins finally pays off when their tiny, vulnerable chicks begin to hatch. Among the spy cameras capturing unique behaviour is a technological first - robotic penguins with cameras for eyes.
Factual; Documentaries
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
Storyville: Documentary which follows the journey of a group of scientists and artists as they venture by ship into one of the last uncharted territories on earth. Now global warming is melting the ice, an unexplored fjord system in north-east Greenland has opened for a few weeks each year. The explorers set sail on an Arctic journey where they encounter a polar bear, Stone Age playgrounds and an entirely new species. Awe, curiosity and humour bond the scientists and artists as they contemplate a landscape untouched by humanity. As the boat slips further away civilisation, the crew have a disturbing encounter which underlines the destructive impact of mankind. Epic, breath-taking and awe-inspiring, this documentary depicts both the wild beauty of the Earth and man's own transitory role in evolution.
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Tuesday 12th February
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and the Environment
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Freeze in Time
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 three, Fortey looks at the Ice Age. 2.8 million years ago - triggered by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun and shifts in its ocean currents - the world began to cool. Within a few thousand years much of the planet was shrouded in a dense cloak of ice that would come and go until only 10,000 years ago. We call this age of ice - the Pleistocene Age - and it transformed the hierarchy of nature. This is the story of how a few specialist species that evolved to live in the biting cold survived into the present day.
Documentaries
BBC1, 10:35-11:25pm
In the past three years more than £13 million worth of metal has been stolen from Britain’s railway network. Cables, wiring and the rails themselves are removed by thieves who take advantage of the relative accessibility of the metal and the high prices it will fetch. (Thanks to Chinese demand, prices have risen 500 per cent in a decade.) Cameras follow British Transport Police in Yorkshire as they try to catch the criminals. We also see the effects of other thefts — from manhole covers to war memorials and churches.
Documentary showing the British Transport Police's fight back against a new crime wave - metal theft - which sees gangs across Britain tearing apart the country's infrastructure, stripping metal from railways, power stations, churches and war memorials. The film reveals the consequences of these actions - from the risk of electrocution to thieves to the emotional distress experienced by victims.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
BBC2, 11:2pm-12:20am
Abraham Lincoln is one of the most iconic figures in American history. Justin Webb, the BBC's former North American editor, explores the enduring myth of the president who helped to shape the American Dream. Featuring interviews with Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and Alastair Campbell, Justin examines the hold Lincoln continues to have and why people still believe America is the Land of the Free.
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Wednesday 13th February
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 4/7 - Yellowstone
In the spectacular Yellowstone where wolves, bears, coyotes, bison and elk roam vast grasslands, wetlands and forests, Steve Backshall looks for the answer to a puzzle. Wolves and beavers have little to do with each other so why, when wolves were returned after an absence of 70 years, did the beaver population increase? The revelation is as magical as it is surprising.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
BBC2, 10:00-10:30pm
Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the work of 17th century Spanish baroque painter Bartholome Esteban Murillo, as an exhibiton focusing on the profound influence of his close friend and patron Justino de Neve opens at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Alan Yentob meets Jonathan Miller as the veteran opera and theatre director returns to British theatre after a six year break to stage Northern Broadsides production of Rutherford and Son - Githa Sowerby's powerful 1912 play about class, capitalism and gender. In a break from rehearsals, Miller reveals what it took to lure him out of retirement.
Internationally renowned architect Peter Zumthor has just been awarded Britain's highest architectural accolade, the Royal Gold Medal. Tom Dyckhoff travels to Switzerland to talk to this master of understatement about his quiet approach to design. Mark Kermode meets Bill Murray to talk about his latest film 'Hyde Park on Hudson'. All this and a performance from electronic music duo and BBC Sound of 2013, shortlisted artists AlunaGeorge recorded at the Hayward Gallery ahead of the opening of 'Light Show' which features the art of James Turrell and Dan Flavin amongst others.
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Thursday 14th February
History; Documentaries
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 1-3
One hundred years is, of course, an approximation, as this war between England and France, longest of the Middle Ages, lasted from 1337 to 1453, by which time the people who’d begun the hostilities were long dead. It gave England such victories as Agincourt, made the reputations of Edward III and Henry V – and would give Shakespeare plenty of material. It also provided France with a national heroine in Joan of Arc.
But even now the jury is out as to its causes and outcome. Unstuffy historian Janina Ramirez (presenter of BBC4’s recent Illuminations) guides us through the saga of kings, knights, bloody battles and cultural triumphs in the first of three ravishingly shot films.
Dr Janina Ramirez explores the lengthy conflict between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries. She begins by examining how Edward III led a crushing English victory at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, focusing on the role played by low-born archers, before moving on to the Black Prince's campaign of terror.
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