Off-air recordings for week 27 April - 3 May 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 27th April  

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media >Documentaries

United States of Television: American Prime Time
BBC2, 10:30-11:30pm, 2/4 - The Misfit   Alan Yentob presents the second film in a star-studded series that explores the social history of America through the prism of primetime television. When America sits down to watch primetime television it expects to see more than stereotypes and stock characters going through the motions. Primetime viewers want to see the United States of Television - in all its individuality, diversity, eccentricity and quirkiness.

That's how some of the most high-risk characters in the primetime crowd are born. These are the awkward squad - the ones who can't, or won't, or aren't allowed to fit in: nerds, geeks, freaks, rebels, outsiders and misfits. Characters like Gomez Addams in The Addams Family, Louie DePalma in Taxi, George Costanza in Seinfeld and practically the whole cast of Glee. But though they may march to a different drummer, in primetime they become 'one of us' - and we, whether we like it not, become one of them.

Featuring interviews with stars, creators, writers and producers including Judd Apatow (Freaks and Geeks), Danny DeVito (Taxi), Garry Shandling (The Larry Sanders Show), Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) and the crown-prince of misfits, Larry David.


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Sunday 28th April  

Documentaries  

The Truth About Travellers
Channel 5, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3   In this intimate and revealing new series, Henry McKean visits Traveller communities around Ireland to gain a clearer picture of what true Traveller life involves and explores the unique culture, customs and day-to-day life of Irish Travellers. In this episode Henry McKean looks at relationships and attends 18-year-old Stacy Ward's wedding.    


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Monday 29th April

News  

Panorama: The Russians are Coming BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm   Russian money has poured into London, but is organised crime coming with it? Reporter Darragh Macintyre investigates a death in a Russian prison that has brought the threat of violence to the UK. Could a whistleblower found dead on the streets of Surrey be the latest victim of the Russian crime wars?

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Tuesday 30th April  

History > Documentaries  

The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 2:00-3:00am, 1/4 - Stonehenge - The Missing Link  

Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over Wiltshire to uncover new discoveries in the stoneage landscape. Sites found from the air have led to exciting new evidence about Stonehenge. The discoveries help to explain why the monument is where it is, and reveal how long ago it was occupied by people.



Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 6/8  

This film sets the increasing demands on the NHS against the very real costs of those demands. A mobile X-ray lab tours the streets of London to deal with the rise in TB among the homeless community. As Bristol GP Liz struggles to solve complex problems in the prescribed 10-minute time slot, a Liverpool neurosurgeon prices up her theatre equipment in the hope of reining her colleagues in, and in south London, an Overseas Manager walks the wards seeking out health tourists, those non-UK residents using the NHS for free when they should be footing the bill. And meanwhile yet another baby is born.

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Wednesday 1st May  

Documentaries  

This World: The Mafia's Secret Bunkers
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm  

Mafia historian John Dickie visits the tip of the toe of the Italian boot, otherwise known as Calabria, to tell the story of Italy’s most powerful crime network.

Born out of prison gangs in the 1880s, the Calabrian mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, has always extended its influence beyond its geographic heart. It cemented its power by dealing with South American cocaine-producing cartels in the 1980s, and this murderous criminal brotherhood is now Europe’s biggest cocaine trafficker. This is Dickie’s specialist subject and he has access to the bunkers members use as hide-outs, as well as the hi-tech investigation taken by the Italian authorities. Can ordinary people trust the state to bring down the ’Ndrangheta?

Author and Mafia historian John Dickie investigates the 'Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful crime syndicates in Italy and among Europe's biggest cocaine traffickers. He gains access to the underground bunkers in Calabria the gangsters use as hideouts, and learns about the hi-tech war being fought by the Italian authorities against them, despite a culture of fear and silence in which people simply do not trust the state to defeat the mafiosi. Part of the This World strand.


History > Documentaries  

Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4 - Pagans of Roman Britain  

When British archaeologist Julian Richards ended excavations into Roman Winchester during filming for BBC’s Meet the Ancestors in 1998, he thought he had a pretty good idea of what he had helped discover. Now, though, those assumptions are looking shaky.

Returning to the city, once a melting pot of cultures from across the Roman Empire, he discovers the foreigner buried with valuable jewels is actually a local girl, embracing the riches of the wealthy citizens around her. In this and a site in east London, modern science is turning on its head what we thought we knew about our ancient roots.

Archaeologist Julian Richards revisits some of his most important digs to discover how science, conservation and new finds have changed people's understanding of ancient history. His journey begins at the excavation of two burials from Roman Britain - a wealthy man from Winchester, and the lavishly-appointed grave of a woman from the heart of London.


History > Documentaries

Nelson's Caribbean Hell-Hole: An 18th Century Navy Graveyard Uncovered
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm  

You’ve been offered a job in Antigua, the paradise in the West Indies. Fantastic news, yes? Not if you were an 18th-century British sailor on one of the 20 warships moored in English Harbour. “I detest this country,” Horatio Nelson wrote while on duty there, and judging by the archaeological evidence, he had good reason to. Warfare and tropical diseases were the least of their worries: the naval rum rations were distilled in poisonous lead vessels, and with each man drinking a pint a day, the British forces were tormented by their own poisonous grog.
After the discovery of human bones on a beach in Antigua, historian Sam Willis investigates one of the darkest chapters of Britain's imperial past. As archaeologists excavate a mass grave of British soldiers, he explores the island's ruins and discovers how the sugar islands of the Caribbean were rife with sun, sea, war, tropical diseases and poisoned rum.    


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Thursday 2nd May  

Factual > Arts, Culture and Media > History

Archaeology: A Secret History
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - In the Beginning

Richard Miles explores how archaeology began by trying to prove a biblical truth.


Crime > Documentaries

12 Year Old Lifer
Channel4, 10:00-11:15pm  

In April 2010, in the small town of Enchanted Hills in Indiana, USA, 12-year-old Paul Gingerich helped his friend, 15-year-old Colt Lundy, shoot and kill Colt's stepfather.

The shocking murder of Phillip Danner was carried out by two middle-class boys with no prior criminal records. The story has gripped and baffled America.

With unprecedented access to both boys, their families, and the ongoing court case, this True Stories film offers an extraordinary insight into the crime and its aftermath, as the key players give poignant and candid interviews telling their side of the story.

After plotting the crime in the local playground after school, Paul and Colt shot Phillip multiple times, with his own guns. They then stole his car, fled the scene and were picked up by the police 200 miles away. To date, there is no known motive for the crime.

In spite of their ages, both Paul and Colt were tried and sentenced as adults, and are each serving 30 years. At 12, Paul is one of the youngest children in American history to be waived to adult court.

Colt was sent straight to maximum security adult prison and will be transferred to the adult wing when he turns 18.

Paul's family is waging a controversial and historic appeal for him to be re-tried as a juvenile, meaning he could avoid being sent to adult prison and remain in a juvenile facility.


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Friday 3rd May  

Science & Technology > Documentaries  

The Genius of Marie Curie: The Woman who Lit up the World BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm  

Polish physicist and chemist Marie Curie became a celebrity during her lifetime, attracting media attention for being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. This docu-drama looks at the woman behind the science, revealing a tenacious mother who had to survive the pain of the loss of husband and collaborator Pierre and the public humiliation of a doomed love affair, but who also discovered two elements and coined the term radioactivity. Starring Geraldine James and David Malone.


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