Off-air recordings for week 1-7 June 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 1st June

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries

British Masters
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - A New Jerusalem

Three-part series in which art historian James Fox explores 20th-century British art, a period he considers an extraordinary flowering of genius.

In the decades after the Second World War, at a time when many had lost their faith in humanity, British artists turned to the great figurative painting tradition to address the biggest questions of all: what does it mean to be human and how do we create a more humane world? Such existential angst is captured in Lucien Freud's harrowing early portraits and Graham Sutherland's Pembrokeshire landscapes. Francis Bacon stared deep into his own soul to explore the human capacity for evil, while Richard Hamilton warned against the false hope of consumerism. As national pessimism gave way to a new optimism, David Hockney dared to suggest Paradise might be available to us all. But in the early 1970s, just as the world finally began to recognise the genius of Britain's painterly tradition, young artists at home turned against it. 


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Sunday 2nd june

Factual > History > Pets & Animals > Documentaries

Ice Age Giants
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Land of the Giants


Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the ice age. This was the last time that giants like mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabre-toothed cats ruled our planet. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the ice age giants back to life.

Astonishingly, even after thousands of years of ice crushing the northern hemisphere and temperatures of 20 degrees lower than those of today, many of the great giants of the ice age still walked the earth. It was only when the world had warmed up again that mammoths, woolly rhinos, sabre-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and glyptodonts finally became extinct. Professor Alice Roberts sets off on her last voyage back to the ice age to discover why.

Alice learns the moving story of a mother mastodon, an extinct relative of the elephant. From her tusks, scientists can tell how many calves she had and whether they reached adulthood. This evidence, together with harrowing injuries on other skeletons, tells a perplexing story of a species on the edge of extinction - mastodons were turning on mastodons. By looking at the behaviour of elephants today, scientists have come up with a surprising theory of why this happened.

The woolly rhino tells another story. Believe it or not, the one thing it couldn't stand was snow - which stopped it from getting enough grass. During the ice age in Europe and Siberia, snow was thin on the ground as so much water was locked up in the ice sheets. But when the ice ended, the snows increased, rhinos found themselves stuck and their little legs were unable to get them out of trouble.


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Monday 3rd June

News

Panorama - Cancer: Hope for Sale
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

Reporter Richard Bilton investigates a controversial American doctor who claims he can cure cancer. Celebrities have helped raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to send British patients to his clinic. But Dr Burzynski's treatment has been dismissed by mainstream medicine and the US authorities have tried to close him down. So why has he been allowed to sell an unproven and experimental treatment for 30 years?  



Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology

Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams
BBC4, 11:30-12:30pm

Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life.

The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.

As well as the automata, Simon explains in great detail the world in which they were made - the hardship of the workers who built them, their role in global trade and the industrial revolution and the eccentric designers who dreamt them up. Finally, Simon reveals that to us that these long-forgotten marriages of art and engineering are actually the ancestors of many of our most loved modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world. 

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Tuesday 4th June

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts >  Documentaries

What do Artists do all Day?
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm

With a new exhibition of her work opening in London in June, this film follows artist Cornelia Parker as she prepares for the show, working on several new pieces including her latest project - bronze sculptures of cracks in the pavement.

In the past, Cornelia has blown up a shed, squashed a brass band and famously exhibited a sleeping Tilda Swinton in a glass case. One of Britain's most original and acclaimed contemporary artists, her work encourages us to look differently at the world, transforming familiar objects into extraordinary and surprising art. 


Geography > History > Documentaries

Town with Nicholas Crane
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/4 - Huddersfield

Crane’s decision to don the maroon strip of the Huddersfield Giants rugby league team and jog weedily out onto the pitch behind brawny, broken-nosed players is one he later regrets — but not as much as agreeing to dress up as an emperor and dance (very awkwardly) in a carnival procession.
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, is absent from most tourist guides yet it has, he says, “a handsome face” with a railway station that looks like a stately home, a thriving market, an impressive canal, a reputation for high-quality cloth and brass bands… and the ability to make people do embarrassing things.

The geographer explores Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, where former prime minister Harold Wilson was born and the place where rugby league is regarded as having been founded. He learns how an out-of-the-way village was transformed into a manufacturing centre during the Industrial Revolution, as well as how it might once again be about to prompt radical changes in the textile business. The presenter learns that the town's residents have a strong sense of identity, and actor Patrick Stewart recalls his childhood in the area.


Factual > Crime & Justice > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries

The Unspeakable Crime: Rape
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm

This film explores rape in a way that has never been seen on British television before: from forensic medical to police investigation, court and beyond.

Juliet was attacked by a stranger on New Year's Eve, while Kellie had known and trusted her attacker for over a decade. In 2012 St Mary's, the UK's leading sexual assault referral centre, allowed exclusive access, opening its doors to cameras as they supported Juliet and Kellie as well as over 1,000 other victims of rape seeking justice or attempting to move forward with their lives.

Through the experiences of the victims, the specialists at St Mary's, Greater Manchester Police's Serious Sexual Offences Unit and the Crown Prosecution Service, this film offers a unique and revealing perspective on rape in Britain today.


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Wednesday 5th June

Factual > History > Politics > Documentaries

The Iraq War
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - After the Fall

In After the Fall, part two of this three-part series, key insiders describe the chaotic aftermath of the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Dick Cheney and Colin Powell come to blows over America's role as occupying power. General David Petraeus recalls the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army. The representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani - Iraq's most senior Shia cleric - tells how Sistani forced the Americans into agreeing to elections in Iraq. One of the greatest challenges came from Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army. America and the new Iraqi government were able to defeat Sadr militarily, but it set the stage for sectarian war.

The producers in charge of the series were Norma Percy, Brian Lapping and Paul Mitchell, the team at Brook Lapping Productions who were behind the multi-award-winning documentaries Iran & the West, Putin, Russia and the West, The Death of Yugoslavia etc. 


Disability > Documentaries

Sex on Wheels
Channel 4, 11:00pm-12:05am

A warm, funny and extraordinary film exploring the different ways disabled people deal with the barriers they can face trying to fulfil that most basic human need: sexual intimacy.

Sex is everywhere. But what if something stood in the way of your experiencing a fulfilling sex life? There are over 10 million people living with disabilities in the UK and 85% of them are sexually active.

This sensitive and honest documentary takes a candid look at the sex lives of four disabled individuals, from the recently paralysed Karl, who is coming to terms with life without an erection, to Pete, who has cerebral palsy.

Pete's hoist helps him into every conceivable sexual position and he has ambitions to be the UK's first disabled porn star.

Leah, a 24-year-old woman with brittle bone disease, won't let her body's limitations get in the way of an adventurous sex life.

Twenty-six-year-old John has learning difficulties and he and his mother have taken the momentous decision to hire an escort to help him lose his virginity.

The film also follows Laura Lee, an escort who specialises in working with men with disabilities. She is immensely proud of what she does and sees herself as providing a unique and necessary service to men who might struggle to have an ordinary sexual relationship.


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Thursday 6th June

Super Tornado
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm

A devastating tornado hit Oklahoma on 20 May. Alex Beresford speaks to survivors, rescuers and tornado scientists as he examines the power behind the world's most destructive winds.


Factual > History > Religion & Ethics

The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Melvyn Bragg explores the dramatic story of William Tyndale and his mission to translate the Bible into English. Melvyn reveals the story of a man whose life and legacy have been hidden from history but whose impact on Christianity in Britain and on the English language still endures.

His radical translation of the Bible into English made him a profound threat to the authority of the Church and state – and set him on a collision course with Henry VIII’s heretic hunters and those of the Pope.


Crime > Documentaries

The Alps Murders
Channel 4, 10:00-11:005pm

It's one of the most memorable unsolved crimes from 2012. A British family from a quiet suburban village on a caravanning holiday near Annecy in the French Alps, gunned down in broad daylight. Miraculously, the family's two young daughters survived.

The investigation into the apparently motiveless killings of three members of the Al-Hilli family and French cyclist Sylvan Mollier has involved British, French, Swiss, Swedish and Spanish agencies.
But with no obvious motives behind the killings, conspiracy theories and speculation have run riot, linking the victims with religious extremism, espionage and secret services.
There are rumours of secret Swiss bank accounts, inheritance disputes, French heiresses and bloody family feuds.

Eight months after the killings, there are no suspects, there have been no arrests and the investigation appears to have stalled.

This programme goes behind the headlines and puts the speculation to the test.
It features the only interview with the hiker who saw the crime scene and helped raise the alarm. A French journalist reveals that he has had sight of a confidential police report about the forensics of the crime scene.

The programme features an exclusive interview with a close friend of the Al-Hilli family and his extraordinary email exchange with his friend Saad Al-Hilli. And Dario Zanni, the Swiss prosecutor, is interviewed for the first time about the case.


Factual > History > Documentaries

Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm, 2/3

Professor Catharine Edwards explores the dramatic lives of two women at the heart of power in 1st-century imperial Rome. One is Messalina, whose scandalous reputation lives on 2,000 years after her bloody and dramatic death. The other is Agrippina - sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius and mother of Nero - an extraordinary woman who was not only a skilled and ambitious politician but also a murderer and ultimately a murder victim. 


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Friday 7th June

Terrorism > News > Documentaries

The Secret Lives of the Boston Bombers
Channel 4, 2:30-3:00am

With access to the parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, this documentary plots their lives in the years leading up to the incident and examines what could have led them to become suspected killers. Including interviews with friends and neighbours of the suspects, and survivors of the attack.


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