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 20th October
Art and Literature; Fiction
The Gothic Imagination: Bloody Poetry
BBC Radio 4, 2:30-4:00pm
In Switzerland in 1816, the myth of Frankenstein was created by Mary Shelley. Howard Brenton's 1984 play imagines the lives of those present, among them the poets Byron and Shelley.
By the shore of Lake Geneva, the poet Shelley and his future wife Mary, together with her step-sister Claire, meet the infamous Lord Byron. All are in exile, self-imposed on Shelley's part, more serious for Byron, and find they are natural allies in a world which is threatened by their radical politics and unconventional attitudes to sexual freedom. Brenton's play celebrates the artistic radicalism and the fiery, intellectual anger of these young people, whose ideas threatened to kick over the traces of the society from which they were escaping. But their dreams of a utopian future were to be swallowed up in lives of excess, illness and tragic accidents.
With Oliver Ryan as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Clare Corbett as Mary Shelley, Patrick Kennedy as George, the Lord Byron, Sarah Ovens as Claire Clairmont, and Gareth Pierce as Dr William Polidori.
By coincidence, the play was recorded in the same week that a London auctioneer put on view the copy of Frankenstein that Mary Shelley inscribed for Byron ('To Lord Byron from the author'). The book was recently rediscovered in a private library and is expected to fetch something in the region of £400,000.
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Sunday 21st October
Drama; Classic and Period; Horro and Supernatural
Classic Serial: The Gothic Imagination - Dracula
BBC Radio 4, 3:00-4:00pm, 2/2
Bram Stoker's disturbing vampire tale of horror, in a new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Lucy Westenra is dead, but Professor Van Helsing is determined to find out the true cause of her death, track it down, fight it and defeat it forever.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 5/8 - Age of Plunder
In the fifth episode of this landmark series charting the story of human civilisation, Andrew Marr tells the story of Europe's rise from piracy to private enterprise.
The explosion of global capitalism began with Christopher Columbus stumbling across America while searching for China. While Europe tore itself apart in religious wars after the Reformation, the Spanish colonised the New World and brought back 10 trillion dollars' worth of gold and silver.
But it was Dutch and English buccaneer businessmen who invented the real money-maker: limited companies and the stock exchange. They battled hand-to-hand to control the world's sea trade in spices, furs and luxuries like tulips. In the 145 years from 1492 to 1637, European capitalism was born and spread across the globe.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Michael Wood: The Story of India
BBC4, 11:40pm-12:40pm, 1/6
Michael Wood's journey through the history of the subcontinent chronicles the incredible richness and diversity of its peoples, cultures and landscapes, the originality and continuing relevance of its ideas and some of the most momentous and moving events in world history.
Beginning with the first human migrations out of Africa, using DNA and climate science, ancient manuscripts and oral tales, Michael takes us from the tropical backwaters of south India to lost ancient cities in Pakistan and the vibrant landscapes of the Ganges plain. Finally, to Turkmenistan where dramatic archaeological discoveries are casting new light on India's deep past.
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Monday 22nd October
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
The Digital Human
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 4/7
Aleks Krotoski looks at whether we've all become techno-fundamentalists. Do we know what all our technology is for or more intriguingly what it wants?
Aleks hears from Douglas Rushkoff about how the whole of the world around us has always been programmed by architects, religion, and politics. But it's something we seem to have forgotten about technology itself.
Tom Chatfield discusses how the biases of technology (the things it naturally tends towards or is best at) interplay with human nature to turn much of our interaction with technology into some sort of perverse game.
But some of these biases like the end use of technology only emerge once people start to use it. Kevin Kelly is one of the world's most respected commentators on technology he believes that the biases of all our technology put together start to combine so that it behave very much like an organism. His provocative theories are detailed in his book What does Technology want?
We explore these theories by discussing our biggest technologies; the city and whether the latest innovations aiming to make our city's smarter and more sustainable hint at a better future relationship with the world of technology
Documentaries
Dispatches: Do You Know Your Partner's Past?
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
Earlier this year Tina Nash's boyfriend was jailed for life after gouging her eyes out.
In this film, with exclusive access to the police, Tina investigates 'Clare's Law', a new controversial pilot scheme in which men and women are warned by the authorities about their partners' history of violence. Tina wants to know if it will make a difference for other victims of domestic abuse. She meets supporters and opponents to find out whether it is an effective way of pre-empting domestic violence or simply an invasion of privacy.
News
Panorama: Gambling Nation
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
Even in recession-hit Britain, the gambling industry is still making a profit - £5.6 billion last year. With casino-style gambling now available day or night at the touch of a button in our homes and on our phones, Panorama explores its popularity... and reveals a darker side.
Reporter Sophie Raworth hears from those who have found their lives spiralling out of control, and from industry insiders who say that violence and frustration, linked to fast-paced high-stake gambling machines, are increasing in our high street betting shops. Panorama goes undercover in some of Britain's bookies to test those claims
Factual; Documentaries
The Real Rachman - Lord of the Slums
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-9:00pm
History tells us that Peter Rachman was a slum landlord; the evil head of an empire based on vice, violence and extortion. His festering heartland was Notting Hill - long before the rich and famous made it their home.
But can we really trust history?
On the fiftieth anniversary of Rachman's death, Joshua Levine goes in search of the man behind the legend. Looking beyond the tabloid headlines and the scandal of the Profumo affair, he asks whether Rachman deserves such a sordid reputation?
With no films or tapes, and only three photographs of the notorious 50s landlord, rumour and hearsay is all that remains. In an attempt to find the truth, Levine tracks down the key players who can shed light on Rachman's past. Mandy Rice Davis, famous for her role in the Profumo scandal, tells Josh about the generous, intelligent and vulnerable man she fell in love with as a 16 year old fresh to London; controversial modern landlord Nicholas van Hoogstraten shares how landlords like he and Rachman made money out of the slums; and noted psychologist James Thompson analyses the behaviour of Rachman in light of his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.
With access to newly released Home Office documents and old Rachman tenants, Joshua Levine pieces together the puzzle to ask who is the real Peter Rachman?
Factual; Politics; Education
Analysis: School of Hard Facts
BBC Radio 4, 8:30-9:00pm
E.D. Hirsch is a little-known American professor whose radical ideas about what should be taught in schools are set to have a profound effect on English schools. A favoured intellectual of the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, Hirsch advocates a curriculum strongly grounded in facts and knowledge. He also believes that there are certain specific ideas, works of literature and scientific concepts which everyone should know so that they can be active participants in society.
Presenter Fran Abrams interviews Hirsch about his ideas. She considers their likely impact on English schools and speaks to the former English schools minister, Nick Gibb MP, who championed Hirsch's ideas when he was in government. He explains the reasons for bringing Hirsch's ideas across the Atlantic and how they could counteract what he describes as a prevailing left-wing ideology among teachers.
Fran also visits London's Pimlico Academy which is pioneering a "Hirsch-style" curriculum in its new primary school. She talks to the young women leading this experiment: Anneliese Briggs and Daisy Christodoulou.
Daisy was once dubbed "Britain's brightest student" after captaining the successful Warwick University team on "University Challenge". She discusses why she finds Hirsch's ideas so compelling. She also explains why, in her view, he stands in a proud left-wing tradition that champions knowledge as power, a view that contrasts with Nick Gibb's more right-of-centre take on Hirsch's ideas.
Fran also talks to Professor Sir Michael Barber, chief education adviser to Pearson and former policy implementation director to Tony Blair in Downing Street, and to a former leading member of the Government's expert panel on the curriculum, Professor Andrew Pollard.
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Tuesday 23rd October
Factual; Documentaries
Girls Behind Bars: Stacey Dooley in the USA
BBC3, 8:00-9:00pm
Shaved heads, three-minute showers and press-ups at 5.30am. This is what is facing girls entering 'Shock' - the only US prison boot camp for women. Stacey Dooley meets the girls doing 'Shock' and also spends time in a medium-security prison to see what they will be facing if they fail.
Factual; Health and Wellbeing; Life Stories; Documentaries
Golden Oldies
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm
This affectionate insight into being old today sees three Golden Oldies pass on their astute and humorous insights on becoming old and poor, and the stark choices they now face in their twilight years. Full of wisdom, independent spirit and hard-earned perspective, their stories make you ask, 'Could this happen to me?'
Doris is 84, and won't let a living soul (including the film-maker) inside her chaotic Clacton home - for fear that social services will take it away from her.
Feisty Kitty in Exeter is also 84. She shows us her Kate Moss-inspired knicker and bra collection, and dreams of a miracle cure to an illness like most dream of winning the lottery.
And then there's relatively youthful and charismatic Frank from Liverpool, who at 72 has lost his family to emigration. With no-one left, he has lost the will to carry on - but not his intelligence or tragic humour. Self-imprisoned in his own home like a character from a Samuel Beckett play, his neighbours rarely see him. He hasn't had a bath in years - mainly because he doesn't have one. He's reminiscent of an older, helpless Boo Radley from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Wednesday 24th October
Factual; Documentaries
Brazil with Michael Palin
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4
Michael Palin has travelled the world for the past 25 years, earning him a reputation as the man who's been everywhere. But there’s one big gap in his passport: Brazil. The fifth-largest country on earth with an abundance of resources and a melting pot of peoples, it’s a nation that's risen almost out of nowhere to become a 21st-century superpower, and is next in line to host both the World Cup and Olympic Games. In this four-part series, Palin sets off to discover a country whose time has come.
Michael begins in the north east – where Europeans first settled and grew rich on slave labour. Here, the mix of indigenous people, African slaves, and relatively few Europeans created many of the characteristic elements of Brazilian life: food, dance, music and a multiplicity of religions.
In Sao Luis, European and African religious rituals come together in typically Brazilian celebrations, and Michael heads to the city’s backstreets to find out about a ceremony based on a 200-year-old slave tale.
He visits one of the region's massive beaches – the country’s great public playgrounds – before heading to the monster sand-dunes of the Lencois Maranhenses National Park. In Recife, Michael tours the city’s striking street art and sculptures, and in Olinda, he gets roped onto the dance floor in a country where everybody dances. Journeying inland, he gets a glimpse of the fast-disappearing world of old-style ‘vaqueiro’ cowboys.
In Salvador, Michael has his fortune read by a priest who practises the local religion of Candomble. He tries his hand at African drumming, samples the Bahian cuisine of a legendary local chef, and is introduced to capoeira in one of the city’s shanty towns.
Leaving Salvador, Michael passes sugar-cane plantations on route to a cigar factory, before finishing the first leg of his journey off the coast on a traditional saveiro boat.
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Thursday 25th October
The Town That Caught Tourettes
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
In October 2011 in the tiny town of Le Roy, New York, a handful of teenage girls from the same high school suddenly developed symptoms that looked like Tourette's syndrome: facial twitching, violent limb gestures and uncontrollable verbal outbursts.
Some doctors believed they were victims of conversion disorder, where real physical symptoms - in this case tics - are triggered not by a physical cause, but by psychological trauma. But within a few months 18 students were sick and the diagnosis became 'mass hysteria'.
As a cry for help, the girls went on national TV and their story caused a global media frenzy.
This remarkable documentary meets the people at the heart of this outbreak, including the girls who have recovered, as well as those who are still suffering.
Factual; Life Stories; Politics; Documentaries
Storyville - American Idol: Reagan
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:50am
Documentary which examines the enigmatic career of screen star and two-term US president Ronald Reagan.
He has been heralded as one of the architects of the modern world and since his death many Americans have been working to cement his legacy. To some he has come to define contemporary conservatism and has increasingly become a standard-bearer for American statecraft. So phenomenal has his legacy become that both Republican and Democratic politicians today continue to invoke his name to win votes.
But some critics argue that the aftershocks of Reaganomics continue to crumble economies the world over and that the hubris of Reagan's foreign policy continues to propel America into a cycle of overseas ventures. To such critics Reagan is an ominous figure who did more harm than good.
But who was Ronald Reagan, and how did he come to shape world politics in the way he did? Featuring in-depth interviews with those who worked with him and knew him best, this film provides a definitive and penetrating look at Reaganism.
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Friday 26th October
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
A Wolf Called Storm: A Natural World Special
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Foreign Bodies: A History Of Modern Europe Through Literary Detectives
BBC Radio 4, 1:45-2:00pm, parts 1-5/15 - Omnibus Edition 1/3 - Poirot, Maigret, Martin Beck, Van Der Valk, Boruvka and Barlach
Crime fiction reflects society's tensions. Helped by famous literary detectives including Maigret, Montalbano, Dalgliesh and Wallander, Mark Lawson shows how crimes reflect Europe's times from the world wars of the 20th century to the Eurozone crisis and nationalist tensions of the 21st.
Beginning with the template set by Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Georges Simenon's Jules Maigret. Mark Lawson hears from Val McDermid, Lord Grey Gowrie, Andrea Camilleri, PD James and David Suchet.
We move to a Swiss view of Germany in the novels of Friedrich Dürrenmatt which explore guilt, responsibility and justice after World War II. Contributions come from Ferdinand von Schirach, Simon McBurney, Josie Rourke, Hollywood scriptwriters Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski; and Professor Katharina Hall (aka Mrs Peabody Investigates)
Josef Skvorecký's depiction of Czech history is discussed by translator (and former member of the Plastic People of the Universe) Paul Wilson. After his novel The Cowards was banned by the Communist authorities, Skvorecký began the Lieutenant Boruvka series.
Inspector Van Der Valk brought an image of Holland to '70s viewers of the TV dramatisations starring Barry Foster. Mark Lawson finds out the Dutch view of Nicholas Freeling's cop from best seller Saskia Voort
The Martin Beck crime novels written by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö deliberately traced changes in Swedish society between 1965 and 1975. Their influence is discussed by Jo Nesbø, Henning Mankell, Åsa Larsson, Camilla Lackberg, Jens Lapidus and Gunnar Staalesen.
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Thursday, 18 October 2012
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Off-air recordings for week 13-19 October 2012
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 13th October
Arts, Culture and the Media; Children's Fiction; Films
The Golden Compass
Channel 4, 5:55-8:00pm
Young Lyra Belacqua is thrown into an adventure that takes her to the Arctic, and the company of witches and talking bears in this star-studded adaptation of the first of Philip Pullman's acclaimed trilogy
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:30-10:30pm, 4/8 - Into the Light
The golden age of Islam and powerful new trading states helped to define the Middle Ages.
Drama; Biographical; Films
Howl
BBC2, 11:30pm-12:50am
Drama. When the beat poet Allen Ginsberg published his poem Howl in 1957 America, he was put on trial for obscenity. This tells his story and illustrates the poem in animation.
Drama; Classic and Period; Horror and Supernatural
Classic Serial: The Gothic Imagination: Dracula
BBC Radio 4, 3:00-4:00pm, 1/2
The original vampire horror story by Bram Stoker, in a new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
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Monday 14th October
Arts, Culture and the Media
Scream Queens
BBC Radio 4, 4:00-4:30pm
'It is women who love horror,' said the screen's first Dracula, Bela Lugosi. Since the horror genre began eighty years ago, the female role has changed; the passive victims of the classic monsters of the past have become resourceful heroines competing on equal terms with their male co-stars, both human and inhuman.
In this revealing documentary, part of BBC Radio 4's gothic season, Reece Shearsmith meets a coven of female horror stars and charts the development and changing roles in the genre; from the femmes fatales of Dracula's Daughter, through Hitchcock's leading ladies, to Hammer's lesbian vampires of the 1970s and the present-day action heroines such as Buffy the Vampire-Slayer.
Shearsmith reflects on the history and roles of women in horror films such as Psycho, The Innocents and Rosemary's Baby, with archive of Deborah Kerr, Ingrid Pitt and Barbara Steele.
Shearsmith believes that women are making a greater impact in the horror genre but is it still a man's world?
Contributors include screen legends Barbara Shelley and Madeline Smith, along with television's 'Woman in Black' Pauline Moran. Shearsmith also meets Linda Hayden who stars in one of his favourite horror films 'Blood on Satan's Claw'; and we also hear from Jane Merrow who went from appearing in horror movies to producing them.
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
The Digital Human
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 3/7
Aleks speaks to Grandmaster of memory, Ed Cooke who thinks memory is going out of fashion because of our reliance on digital devices.
Mastermind champion and London cabbie Fred Housego explains how he relies on 'The Knowledge' to navigate London but relies on his wife's short term memory to remember dates for engagements, shopping lists, phone numbers. Psychologist Betsy Sparrow explains that this is known as transactive memory and it's exactly what we are doing with our digital devices. Cyborg Anthropologist, Amber Chase explains that in the past we had physical extensions of ourselves, for example with tools, but we now have mental extensions of ourselves, with our digital devices acting as externalised brains, changing our sense of self.
Aleks discovers that the way we remember is not only changing our perceptions of self but challenging the very concept of intelligence. Aleks hears that the smart kid of the past memorized lots of data but the smart kid of the future will know how to navigate the system and how to understand concepts. This is exactly what 15 year old US high school pupil, Jack Andraka did when he discovered a new test for pancreatic cancer using the internet. With little background knowledge and armed only with what he knew from biology classes he scoured the web for papers that helped him make connections that will potentially save thousands of lives.
The way we use our memory is changing but as Psychologist Betsy Sparrow explains we are only responding to our surroundings and evolving as we always have.
News
Panorama: Kill at Will? America On Trial
BBC1, 8|:30-9:00pm
Ahead of America's costliest-ever elections, Raphael Rowe investigates how powerful lobby groups helped create laws blamed for one of the most controversial killings in recent US history. The shooting dead of a 17-year-old teenager by a neighbourhood watchman polarised America, provoked presidential intervention and shone a light on an extreme American law, called 'Stand Your Ground'. It provides immunity from prosecution or, as some say, a 'License to Kill'. But does gun politics also show how America really works? Panorama asks: is American democracy for sale?
Documentaries
Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life
More4, 10:00-11:10pm
Ideas about the soul and the afterlife, of sin and God's purpose have shaped human thinking for thousands of years. Religious rituals remain embedded in the major events of our lives.
In this thought-provoking series, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins asks what happens if we leave religion behind. He explores what reason and science might offer to inspire and guide our lives in religion's place.
Can science bring understanding in the face of death, help us tell right from wrong, or reveal the point of life in the first place?
In a journey that takes him through visually stunning locations across the world, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful argument for facing up to the scientific truth about life and death - however hard that might be.
If there is no God watching us, why be good? Richard Dawkins is taking on the big questions of life and, in this opening programme, he examines sin.
He asks whether the old religious rules about what is right and wrong are helpful and explores what reason science can tell us about how to be good.
Dawkins journeys from riot-torn inner city London to America's Bible Belt, building a powerful argument that religion's absolutist moral codes fuel lies and guilt.
He finds the most extreme example in a Paris plastic surgery clinic which specialises in making Muslim brides appear to be virgins once again.
But what can science and reason tell us about morality? Through encounters with lemurs, tango dancers, the gay rights campaigner Matthew Parris and the scientist Steven Pinker, Dawkins investigates the deeper roots of moral behaviour in our evolutionary past.
He explores the rituals that surround mating and the science of disgust and taboo. Drawing on crime data and insights from neuroscience, he argues that our evolved senses of reason and empathy appear to be making us more and more moral, even as religious observance declines.
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Tuesday 15th October
Crime; Documentaries
Born to Kill? Serial Killing Saviour
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm
At school, Herbert William Mullin's classmates voted him 'most likely to succeed'. By the time he was 25, he had taken the lives of 13 men, women and children and spread panic throughout the coastal community of Santa Cruz. Mullin would claim to be on an extraordinary mission to save lives through murder. Was this heinous serial killer driven by nature or nurture? We follow in the footsteps of the investigators and experts that had to unravel the mystery and ask them – and, in a unique interview, the murderer himself – was Herbert William Mullin born to kill?
Science and Nature; Documentaries
Order and Disorder with Jim Al-Khalili
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 - Energy
What is energy? The excellent Jim Al-Khalili tackles one of those questions – children tend to hit upon them – that sound banal on the surface but actually took us a few centuries to answer. Scientists the layman may not have heard of, namely Leibniz, Carnot, Clausius and Boltzmann, are celebrated as we learn how they collectively gave us the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Prof Al-Khalili’s clear explanations and juicy biographical details are bolstered by winning contributors and some nice visual touches — stark white backdrops cleansing the palate before each new segment, for instance. An entertaining hour later, you’ll finally know what entropy is…
The theoretical physicist tells the story of how the rules of the universe were discovered. In the first programme he explores energy, assessing its importance to daily existence, how it links everything together, and how it helps people make sense of the world.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Goddess of Art: Marina Abramovic
BBC4, 10:45-11:45pm
During her 40-year career the grandmother of performance art has, among other things, stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razorblades. This meditative film pays homage to an artist as controversial as she is celebrated while charting the months leading up to a 2010 exhibition in New York. It was her most physically and psychologically challenging performance to date: Abramovic sat absolutely still for seven and a half hours a day, six days a week for three months.
An insight into the work of the artist as she prepares for a major new retrospective of her work, taking place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For nearly 40 years she has endeavoured to create innovative and challenging pieces, sometimes putting her life in danger, but now hopes the upcoming show will encourage a more open-minded approach to art.
Factual; Documentaries
Time Shift: Klezmer
BBC4, 11:45pm-12:45am
Michael Grade narrates the story of klezmer, the 'original party music'. From its origins in Jewish folk music performed at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, klezmer has now gone global, played from Amsterdam to Australia to audiences who find its spirit and energy hard to resist. Timeshift explores the sounds, influences and shifting fortunes of this infectious music and shows that beneath its joyful strains lies an emotional appeal that you don't need to be Jewish to respond to.
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Wednesday 16th October
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 3/3
With India destined to become the most populous nation on earth by 2026, you've got to be highly tactical in your search for a better life. It's not just about you and your dreams today - it's about the family over generations to come.
Prakash and Mangesh are brothers in their early twenties from an illegal settlement surrounded by the buzz of downtown Mumbai. Prakash is deckhand on a yacht while striving to realise his dream and launch a Bollywood career. But his family are playing the long game, and make it clear his sole purpose is to earn enough to fund in their joint future: his brother Mangesh's course in software engineering. Apparently doomed to be the underdog, an audition does finally come Prakash's way.
Swapan, a merchant in a hectic fish market, works so hard for his family's future that his wife knows he is ruining his health. When preparations for the huge Durga Puja festival - celebrating the cycle of life - adds yet more stress, it is clear that he is simply fulfilling his role in this cycle.
Sujit, who crafts disposable clay tea cups for slim margins in Kolkata, hardly dares dream of seeing his family and newly born daughter hundreds of miles away in his home village. But not prepared to give up, he conjures a business idea that allows them to come to the city - proving that with enough ingenuity, thinking long term can make dreams come true.
Factual; Documentaries
Hallucination: Through the Doors of Perception
BBC Radio 4, 9:00-10:00pm
Hallucinations aren't what they used to be. Time was when reporting a divine vision would bring fame or fortune, and have a queue of people wanting to touch your robe, receive a blessing, or recommend you for sainthood.
The Enlightenment changed all that and nowadays you'd be more at risk of being handed a prescription for a major tranquilliser or even sectioned under the Mental Health Act for reporting what you saw or heard. Hallucinating, in essence, the experience of seeing or hearing (and sometimes smelling or touching) something that by any objective measure, isn't there, has been linked to a wide variety of causes. From the use of mind-altering substances such as LSD, to the complex collection of often distressing symptoms labelled schizophrenia. Neurological damage, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, stress, narcolepsy - all these and more have been linked to hallucination. But there are also examples of otherwise 'healthy' individuals who have experienced vivid and sometimes distressing hallucinations which for most of the last century, science has largely overlooked. But with the advent of fMRI scanning, where researchers can observe the hallucinating brain in action, it is these "healthy" individuals who are beginning to open the doors of perception and which may provide new insights and treatments for psychosis and schizophrenia.
In this programme, Geoff Watts meets researchers attempting to unlock the mysteries of hallucination as well as some of those who experience the phenomenon. Geoff visits Dr Dominic Ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and undergoes a stroboscopic experiment designed to induce hallucinations in subjects whilst their brains are being scanned. We hear some of the vivid accounts from hallucinators, including Doris, who has macular degeneration. Over the last year, her failing eyesight has resulted in an array of objects and images appearing before her with startling clarity, from relatively benign baskets of flowers to the rather more distressing sight of dark, haunting figures sitting by her bed. Her condition is known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Dr Ffytche estimates that over 2 million people suffer from this in the UK alone, mostly in silence, due to the fear of being labelled as 'mad'. Geoff also visits Kelly Diederen's lab at Oxford University, which is investigating the origin of auditory hallucinations - hearing voices. Common in people with schizophrenia, Dr Diederen is instead, scanning the brains of so-called "healthy hallucinators", individuals who otherwise lead perfectly functional lives save for the fact that they hear voices on a daily basis. Could they hold the key to understanding and treating a key symptom of psychosis? And Geoff talks to internationally renowned neurologist and author, Dr Oliver Sacks, about his own experience of hallucination as well as his new book on the subject.
Factual
Exposure: Driven from Home
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
The information contained herein is strictly embargoed from all press use, non-commercial publication, or syndication until Tuesday October 9, 2012.
This new documentary in the Exposure strand explores life on a housing estate, documenting the story of those who feel driven out by anti-social behaviour.
The programme goes undercover in the Nunsthorpe Estate in Grimsby to reveal the extent of crime and drug dealing, and exposes how a culture of fear governs some streets.
Money is tight, jobs are in short supply, crime and disorder are genuine concerns for residents. This programme shows how some are too frightened to call the police so they pack their bags, while others are determined to stay and improve life for all - including a reformed armed robber who is determined to turn his estate around.
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Thursday 17th October
Science and Technology; Documentaries
Tonight: Is Technology Taking Over Our Lives?
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
Forty per cent of adults in the UK now own a smartphone, and the average household has three internet-enabled devices. Such gadgets may have made many activities easier, but some argue that too much dependence on them can be harmful. Jonathan Maitland asks whether technology is changing people's lives for better or worse.
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
Tails You Win: The Science of Chance
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Smart and witty, jam-packed with augmented-reality graphics and fascinating history, this film, presented by Professor David Spiegelhalter, tries to pin down what chance is and how it works in the real world. For once this really is 'risky' television.
The film follows in the footsteps of The Joy of Stats, which won the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Science/Natural History programme of 2011. Now the same blend of wit and wisdom, animation, graphics and gleeful nerdery is applied to the joys of chance and the mysteries of probability, the vital branch of mathematics that gives us a handle on what might happen in the future. Professor Spiegelhalter is ideally suited to that task, being Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University, as well as being a recent Winter Wipeout contestant on BBC TV.
How can you maximise your chances of living till you're 100? Why do many of us experience so many spooky coincidences? Should I take an umbrella? These are just some of the everyday questions the film tackles as it moves between Cambridge, Las Vegas, San Francisco and... Reading.
Yet the film isn't shy of some rather loftier questions. After all, our lives are pulled about and pushed around by the mysterious workings of chance, fate, luck, call it what you will. But what actually is chance? Is it something fundamental to the fabric of the universe? Or rather, as the French 18th century scientist Pierre Laplace put it, 'merely a measure of our ignorance'.
Along the way Spiegelhalter is thrilled to discover One Million Random Digits, probably the most boring book in the world, but one full of hidden patterns and shapes. He introduces us to the cheery little unit called the micromort (a one-in-a-million chance of dying), taking the rational decision to go sky-diving because doing so only increases his risk of dying this year from 7000 to 7007 micromorts. And in one sequence he uses the latest infographics to demonstrate how life expectancy has increased in his lifetime and how it is affected by our lifestyle choices - drinking, obesity, smoking and exercise.
Did you know that by running regularly for half an hour a day you can expect to extend your life by half an hour a day? So all very well... if you like running.
Ultimately, Tails You Win: The Science of Chance tells the story of how we discovered how chance works, and even to work out the odds for the future; how we tried - but so often failed - to conquer it; and how we may finally be learning to love it, increasingly setting uncertainty itself to work to help crack some of science's more intractable problems.
Other contributors include former England cricketer Ed Smith, whose career was cut down in its prime through a freak, unlucky accident; Las Vegas gambling legend Mike Shackleford, the self-styled 'Wizard of Odds'; and chief economist of the Bank of England, Spencer Dale.
Documentaries
My Tattoo Addiction
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm
This film explores the world of tattoos; the artists, the reasons why people have them and what happens when they regret them.
From a drunken dare to tattoo obsessions, My Tattoo Addiction seeks to discover what people's tattoos say about their lives and tells some of the compelling stories that lie beneath the surface of body art.
There are over an estimated 20 million tattoos in Britain and full arm, leg, chest, back and even head tattoos are now more popular than ever.
Reflecting the changing nature of tattoos and the industry, the film follows contributors who have all developed a unique relationship with their tattoos: the ex-holiday rep with 14 tattoos, including several expletives and one of a booze cruise's website emblazoned on his chest; the tattoo addict with facial tattoos; the obsessive Miley Cyrus fan; the 67-year-old seeking to cover up the racist tattoos of his youth, and his tattooist daughter, who has her five dead cats on her back.
The film also hears about the tattoos that people have lived to regret and many tattooists explain that a substantial amount of their business - one estimates as much as 40% - is fixing badly inked or self-administered tattoos.
This uplifting, warm, and often eye-watering documentary discovers, through candid interviews, what leads people to go under the needle, and how fixing a bad tattoo can mean facing more than just the physical reminder of your past.
_____________________________________________
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Off-air recordings for week 6-12 October 2012
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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 6th October
Arts, Culture and the Media
Arena: The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
BBC2, 9:45-10:45pm
Arena presents the greatest Beatles story never told, a blockbuster double bill: a documentary full of fabulous Beatles archive material never shown before anywhere in the world. And the first screening for over 30 years of a lost and forgotten treasure, the only film conceived and directed by The Beatles themselves - Magical Mystery Tour.
Part One - Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
Songs you’ll never forget, the film you’ve never seen, and a story that’s never been heard. In 1967, in the wake of the extraordinary impact of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles made a film – a dreamlike story of a coach daytrip, a magical mystery tour. It was seen by a third of the nation, at 8.35pm on BBC One on Boxing Day - an expectant public, hoping for some light entertainment for a family audience.
Magical Mystery Tour was greeted with outrage and derision by middle England and the establishment media. “How dare they?”, they cried – “They’re not film directors, who do they think they are?” they howled. Where were the four lovable moptops of Help! and A Hard Day’s Night?
What propelled The Beatles to make this surreal, startling and – at the time – utterly misunderstood film? Contributors include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Paul Merton and Neil Innes.
Arts, Culture and the Media
The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour
BBC2, 10:45-11:40pm
Part Two – The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour
Fully restored to the highest technical standard with a remixed soundtrack, Magical Mystery Tour comes out of the shadows and onto the screen.
By the end of 1967, The Beatles had achieved a creativity unprecedented in popular music.
Their triumphant summer release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was both avant garde and an instant hit. It went straight to No.1 in June and remained there for the rest of the year. They immersed themselves in the fiercely radical art of the new counterculture, and decided to make a film on their own terms, not as pop stars but as artists. However, was their adoring public ready for the move?
Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour! Made in England by The Beatles
____________________________________________
Sunday 7th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/8- The Word and the Sword
In the third episode of this landmark series charting the story of human civilisation, Andrew Marr plunges into the spiritual revolutions that shook the world between 300 BC and 700 AD.
This was an age that saw the bloody prince Ashoka turn to Buddhism in India; the ill-fated union of Julius Caesar and Egypt's Cleopatra; the unstoppable rise of Christianity across the Roman Empire and the dramatic spread of Islam from Spain to Central Asia.
Each dramatic story pits the might of kings and rulers against the power of faith. But Andrew Marr discovers that the most potent human force on the planet came from the combination of faith and military power. Both Christianity and Islam created new empires of 'the word and the sword'.
____________________________________________
Monday 8th October
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
The Digital Human
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 2/8
Alex Krotoski explores what the digital world tells us about ourselves. This week: Influence. How has the digital world changed the way opinions are voiced and shaped?
News
Panorama: Return of the Supergrass
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
The recent shootings of two Manchester policewomen have highlighted Britain's problem with violent crime. Now a previously-discredited weapon is being used to try to fight the most serious and organised crime - the supergrass, criminals prepared to turn on their own and give evidence in court.
Panorama investigates the remarkable deals that these often violent gangsters are being offered to become the next generation of supergrasses. The agreements have led to gunmen getting off life sentences. A teenage gang member has also escaped prosecution, despite helping to cover up a fatal shooting. And Panorama reveals cases where the credibility of the supergrass is already in question.
Factual; Documentaries
Creationism: Conspiracy Road Trip
BBC3, 9:00-10:00pm
Comedian Andrew Maxwell takes five British creationists to the west coast of America to try to convince them that evolution is true and their ideas are, well, crackers. Stuck on a bus across 2,000 miles of dustbowl roads with these religious fundamentalists, Maxwell tackles some mind-boggling ideas. Could the Earth be only 6,000 years old, and did humans and T-Rex live side by side?
It's a bumpy ride as he's confronted with some very un-Christian behaviour along the way, but by the end could he possibly win over any of the Bible-bashers with hard scientific fact... and keep a straight face?
Crime; Documentaries
The Great Train Robbery
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
"If it was going to be your brother on the train or your husband, or a friend of yours, and they were brutally attacked like that and terrified. Would you think these guys were cool, that they were heroes? I don’t think you would." - Nick Russell-Pavier, author
It was the crime of the century – and nearly 50 years on, this brand new 60-minute documentary for ITV1 examines the Great Train Robbery. This documentary looks at the heist from the moment it was carried out at a desolate railway bridge, the way it captured the public imagination and elevated Ronnie Biggs and his partners in crime from small-time crooks to folklore figures. Yet is the real truth dark and disturbing? Some glaring questions remain unanswered. Was it really a victimless crime? What is the significance of the men who got away? And with only £400,000 of the £2.6 million they stole recovered, what happened to the rest of the money? The documentary features brand new interviews with key figures including Ronnie Biggs's wife Charmian, relatives of the robbers, and the policeman who discovered the gang's hideout at Leatherslade Farm, alongside rare ITV archive interviews with the robbers, as well as iconic archive film of the crime’s aftermath. The Great Train Robbery also challenges romantic folklore surrounding the robbers and provides an insight into a landmark moment in time as Britain stood on the cusp of major social and political upheaval and the robbers' generation - too young to have served in the war - were the first to be seduced by the promise of a better lifestyle as consumerism began to take hold of society.
Charmian Biggs, talking about her husband Ronnie, said it hadn't been his intention to continue his previous criminal ways. "I had extracted a promise from him when he married me that he wouldn’t go into anything criminal and I believed him. And I think he meant it at the time." Historian Dominic Sandbrook explains the context in which the robbery took place at the start of the 1960s. “People have this kind of Robin Hood fantasy if you like, of the Great Train robbers as actually some sort of Ealing comedy enterprise. Which of course it isn’t. These people are career criminals, who are out to get what they can for themselves.”
Train robber Bruce Reynolds explains the way he felt at the time: "The way I looked at it I was an outlaw, that society didn’t care for me and I didn’t particularly care for society."
The documentary looks at how some media reports of the gang's robbery of a Royal Mail money train in Buckinghamshire, led to a popular perception of them as folk heroes, despite the seriousness of the crime. By the time the world woke up to the news of the caper, the robbers had scarpered to Leatherslade Farm to lay low. Yet they abandoned the farm without covering their tracks. Local police officer John Woolley tells the documentary how he uncovered evidence of the robbery under a trapdoor. “Even in the half light I could see that that cellar was absolutely choc-a-block with bulging sacks. And as the top flopped open I could see parcel wrappers, bank note wrappers, consignment notes, all bearing the names of the famous high-street banks.”
In London, times had changed for the robbers' families. Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of Tommy, says: “I mean, one minute we would buy clothes from a catalogue and the next minute we’d be in a black taxi down to Knightsbridge and Harrods.” But Charmian Biggs recounts the police raids and arrests that swiftly ensued.
She says: “A whole group of policemen, eight perhaps, arrived at the house. I answered the door. They barged in, in September after the robbery, about two o’clock in the afternoon. They asked for him, he was at work, I offered to ring him but was told I couldn’t use the phone. I was made to sit down and say nothing till Ron came home.”
At trial, all but one pleaded not guilty, and suggested that the evidence at Leatherslade Farm was planted. The identity of three men who took part in the raid but never stood trial has never been revealed by police or the robbers, says Nick Russell-Pavier, an author and expert on the Great Train Robbery.
“The guys who were prosecuted successfully claimed they were fitted up. So if they were fitted up why couldn’t the police fit up the three guys who got away. The answer is they weren’t fitted up.” The robbers were given a total of 307 years in prison - up to 30 years each. Later, after Charlie Wilson escaped from Winson Green prison in Birmingham, Ronnie Biggs went over the wall at HMP Wandsworth and famously went on the run. But years later, most of the families had little to show for the robbery, says Nick Reynolds, son of train robber Bruce, who also went on the run before his arrest. “The money went on just being on the run, its an expensive game laundering, false passports, keeping one step ahead of the law.”
Former ITN reporter Gerald Seymour explains the impact the crime had on the robbers, and their families.
“What a waste of some clever bright guys who at the fork in the road went left when maybe there was a right, and they paid so dearly for it. I can’t say that any of them would say it was worth it.”
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 7/8 - Culture As Nature
Robert Hughes goes Pop when he examines the art that referred to the man-made world that fed off culture itself via works by Rauchenberg, Warhol and Lichtenstein.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 9th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 4/6 - Furnace of Change
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing the country in ways it has never been seen before. It is 1485: a young nobleman sails to the land of his fathers from exile in France. His mission - to capture the English crown. For the first time, a self-proclaimed Welshman will be king of England. Under the dynasty he founds, Wales becomes united with England. For every generation of Welsh people to come, the consequences are huge. But exactly what it means - for the next 250 years, at least - depends on whether you are a landowner or one of the ordinary people.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Life Stories
Edna O'Brien: Life Stories
BBC4, 10:45-11:40pm
Now 81 and due to publish her memoirs in October 2012, renowned Irish novelist Edna O'Brien has opened her home and her heart to documentary filmmakers.
O'Brien's journey from Tuamgraney, County Clare to the centre of literary life in London has involved rebellion, censorship, elopement, motherhood, divorce, custody battles and the rearing of two sons as a single mother, as well as a glittering social life and a growing profile as a public personality and commentator.
Based on a series of frank, moving and entertaining interviews with O'Brien and her two sons Carlo and Sasha Gebler, the film offers a privileged glimpse of O'Brien's more private life, her writing process and rituals - a fascinating portrait of a woman whose infinite variety and ageless spirit make her an icon at home and abroad.
Edna O'Brien's was, and still is, a life lived in technicolour. She was a key figure in the social and literary whirl of sixties and seventies London and is probably the only Irish novelist who credits the taking of LSD with influencing her prose style in the early seventies.
The documentary touches on tales of the writer's social encounters with many of that period's biggest names, including Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum. But all the while, in her life and in her work O'Brien was dealing with a complex emotional life, including her tangled relationship with her parents and her ambivalence towards Ireland. The resulting film gives unprecedented insight, encompassing the sweep of a long career, into one of the great survivors in Irish literature.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 10th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 5/6 - A New Beginning
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. It's boom time as Wales becomes known, the world over, for one particular product - Welsh steam coal, the best you can get. In the space of 50 years, 'black gold' builds a new Wales. The coalfield pulls in hundreds of thousands of migrants with a different language and culture, becoming a bustling modern world of its own. Yet no sooner has Wales found itself at the centre of global trade, than the Depression causes an industrial crash with a bitter social fallout.
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
This observational series continues to explore what life is really like in some of the densest neighbourhoods on the planet: the backstreets of India's megacities. A popular tactic for people here, so adept at operating in a crowded world, is turning the stuff others would call 'waste' into an opportunity.
Johora started out as a rag-picker, but through building a bottle recycling business on a railway embankment, she has big ambitions for her family of seven kids. When the local gangsters increase their protection payment demands, she boldly takes out a big loan and attempts to push her illegal business to another level.
And it's not just small waste. Kanye uses a handheld blowtorch to cut up ships discarded by the rest of the world, helping satisfy India's thirst for steel. A doting father, his dangerous but relatively well paid job educates his three daughters and provides his ticket to a brighter future. But his hopes are in jeopardy when he is laid off.
Ashik buys up beef fat from the abattoir, and proudly renders it down to make tallow. It looks disgusting, even before he is plagued by a maggot infestation. But this thrifty use of 'waste' may well be destined for your soap or cosmetics.
Crime; Documentaries
Born to Kill? The Hollywoood Hillside Strangler
Channel 5, 11:55pm-12:40am
Hollywood has always had a dark side, but Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were perhaps its darkest.
Serial killers usually work alone but Bianchi and Buono would defy all the rules. In the late seventies, these 'killing cousins' would commit a series of brazen murders that left the women of Los Angeles terrified to walk the streets.
Their murders plumbed the depths of depravity and their cold heartedness and forensic awareness left detectives angry and frustrated.
On his capture, Kenneth Bianchi would make an audacious attempt to convince the world he had multiple personalities and was not responsible for the murders.
Bianchi and Buonowould kidnap, rape, torture and snuff out the lives of 12 innocent young girls, but what had led to this extraordinary collaboration in killing? Were they both born to kill?
_____________________________________________
Thursday 11th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 6/6 - England & Wales
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. In the last seventy years, Wales changes more rapidly than ever. In this final episode, a Welshman battles to set up Britain's most cherished institution, the British parliament votes to drown a Welsh valley, a new generation of sporting heroes sets the flags waving and television itself becomes part of the story of Wales. We're a nation of commuters and consumers, but our sense of history has revived: we are a people with a story - and that story gives us power.
Factual; Talks and Presentations; Documentaries
RTS Huw Wheldon Lecture 2012
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:00am
BBC foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet delivers this year's Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture, talking about how social media is transforming broadcast journalism. She examines the effect that social networking sites and tools had on the reporting of major stories from 2011, including the Arab Spring and the London riots, and considers the lessons news organisations must learn as they seek to harness the power of this evolving resource.
_____________________________________________
Friday
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - No Going Back
As we reach the final part of Dr Pamela Cox’s informative series, we find that Britain’s domestic servants are kicking against the established order. The First World War changed the social landscape for ever, landowners freed their servants to fight while women who would otherwise have been part of the “servant class” played their part. They took over the jobs of absent men, including difficult and dangerous munitions work, and weren’t prepared simply to slide back into their former servile roles once the war was over.
Cox looks at the measures used by Britain’s ladies to find maids, including trying to lure them with a promise to ditch that hated symbol of deference, the servant’s cap.
Pamela Cox explores how the idea of a `servant class' came to an end in the 20th century. She reveals why filling male roles in stately homes and factories during the First World War left many female servants reluctant to return to their old lives, and how the rise of semi-detached suburban homes during the 1930s led to major changes in domestic workers' duties. Finally, she charts how women's employment changed in the years following the Second World War, and examines the roles of domestic employees in 21st-century Britain.
_____________________________________________
*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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 6th October
Arts, Culture and the Media
Arena: The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
BBC2, 9:45-10:45pm
Arena presents the greatest Beatles story never told, a blockbuster double bill: a documentary full of fabulous Beatles archive material never shown before anywhere in the world. And the first screening for over 30 years of a lost and forgotten treasure, the only film conceived and directed by The Beatles themselves - Magical Mystery Tour.
Part One - Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
Songs you’ll never forget, the film you’ve never seen, and a story that’s never been heard. In 1967, in the wake of the extraordinary impact of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles made a film – a dreamlike story of a coach daytrip, a magical mystery tour. It was seen by a third of the nation, at 8.35pm on BBC One on Boxing Day - an expectant public, hoping for some light entertainment for a family audience.
Magical Mystery Tour was greeted with outrage and derision by middle England and the establishment media. “How dare they?”, they cried – “They’re not film directors, who do they think they are?” they howled. Where were the four lovable moptops of Help! and A Hard Day’s Night?
What propelled The Beatles to make this surreal, startling and – at the time – utterly misunderstood film? Contributors include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Paul Merton and Neil Innes.
Arts, Culture and the Media
The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour
BBC2, 10:45-11:40pm
Part Two – The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour
Fully restored to the highest technical standard with a remixed soundtrack, Magical Mystery Tour comes out of the shadows and onto the screen.
By the end of 1967, The Beatles had achieved a creativity unprecedented in popular music.
Their triumphant summer release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was both avant garde and an instant hit. It went straight to No.1 in June and remained there for the rest of the year. They immersed themselves in the fiercely radical art of the new counterculture, and decided to make a film on their own terms, not as pop stars but as artists. However, was their adoring public ready for the move?
Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour! Made in England by The Beatles
____________________________________________
Sunday 7th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/8- The Word and the Sword
In the third episode of this landmark series charting the story of human civilisation, Andrew Marr plunges into the spiritual revolutions that shook the world between 300 BC and 700 AD.
This was an age that saw the bloody prince Ashoka turn to Buddhism in India; the ill-fated union of Julius Caesar and Egypt's Cleopatra; the unstoppable rise of Christianity across the Roman Empire and the dramatic spread of Islam from Spain to Central Asia.
Each dramatic story pits the might of kings and rulers against the power of faith. But Andrew Marr discovers that the most potent human force on the planet came from the combination of faith and military power. Both Christianity and Islam created new empires of 'the word and the sword'.
____________________________________________
Monday 8th October
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
The Digital Human
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 2/8
Alex Krotoski explores what the digital world tells us about ourselves. This week: Influence. How has the digital world changed the way opinions are voiced and shaped?
News
Panorama: Return of the Supergrass
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
The recent shootings of two Manchester policewomen have highlighted Britain's problem with violent crime. Now a previously-discredited weapon is being used to try to fight the most serious and organised crime - the supergrass, criminals prepared to turn on their own and give evidence in court.
Panorama investigates the remarkable deals that these often violent gangsters are being offered to become the next generation of supergrasses. The agreements have led to gunmen getting off life sentences. A teenage gang member has also escaped prosecution, despite helping to cover up a fatal shooting. And Panorama reveals cases where the credibility of the supergrass is already in question.
Factual; Documentaries
Creationism: Conspiracy Road Trip
BBC3, 9:00-10:00pm
Comedian Andrew Maxwell takes five British creationists to the west coast of America to try to convince them that evolution is true and their ideas are, well, crackers. Stuck on a bus across 2,000 miles of dustbowl roads with these religious fundamentalists, Maxwell tackles some mind-boggling ideas. Could the Earth be only 6,000 years old, and did humans and T-Rex live side by side?
It's a bumpy ride as he's confronted with some very un-Christian behaviour along the way, but by the end could he possibly win over any of the Bible-bashers with hard scientific fact... and keep a straight face?
Crime; Documentaries
The Great Train Robbery
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
"If it was going to be your brother on the train or your husband, or a friend of yours, and they were brutally attacked like that and terrified. Would you think these guys were cool, that they were heroes? I don’t think you would." - Nick Russell-Pavier, author
It was the crime of the century – and nearly 50 years on, this brand new 60-minute documentary for ITV1 examines the Great Train Robbery. This documentary looks at the heist from the moment it was carried out at a desolate railway bridge, the way it captured the public imagination and elevated Ronnie Biggs and his partners in crime from small-time crooks to folklore figures. Yet is the real truth dark and disturbing? Some glaring questions remain unanswered. Was it really a victimless crime? What is the significance of the men who got away? And with only £400,000 of the £2.6 million they stole recovered, what happened to the rest of the money? The documentary features brand new interviews with key figures including Ronnie Biggs's wife Charmian, relatives of the robbers, and the policeman who discovered the gang's hideout at Leatherslade Farm, alongside rare ITV archive interviews with the robbers, as well as iconic archive film of the crime’s aftermath. The Great Train Robbery also challenges romantic folklore surrounding the robbers and provides an insight into a landmark moment in time as Britain stood on the cusp of major social and political upheaval and the robbers' generation - too young to have served in the war - were the first to be seduced by the promise of a better lifestyle as consumerism began to take hold of society.
Charmian Biggs, talking about her husband Ronnie, said it hadn't been his intention to continue his previous criminal ways. "I had extracted a promise from him when he married me that he wouldn’t go into anything criminal and I believed him. And I think he meant it at the time." Historian Dominic Sandbrook explains the context in which the robbery took place at the start of the 1960s. “People have this kind of Robin Hood fantasy if you like, of the Great Train robbers as actually some sort of Ealing comedy enterprise. Which of course it isn’t. These people are career criminals, who are out to get what they can for themselves.”
Train robber Bruce Reynolds explains the way he felt at the time: "The way I looked at it I was an outlaw, that society didn’t care for me and I didn’t particularly care for society."
The documentary looks at how some media reports of the gang's robbery of a Royal Mail money train in Buckinghamshire, led to a popular perception of them as folk heroes, despite the seriousness of the crime. By the time the world woke up to the news of the caper, the robbers had scarpered to Leatherslade Farm to lay low. Yet they abandoned the farm without covering their tracks. Local police officer John Woolley tells the documentary how he uncovered evidence of the robbery under a trapdoor. “Even in the half light I could see that that cellar was absolutely choc-a-block with bulging sacks. And as the top flopped open I could see parcel wrappers, bank note wrappers, consignment notes, all bearing the names of the famous high-street banks.”
In London, times had changed for the robbers' families. Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of Tommy, says: “I mean, one minute we would buy clothes from a catalogue and the next minute we’d be in a black taxi down to Knightsbridge and Harrods.” But Charmian Biggs recounts the police raids and arrests that swiftly ensued.
She says: “A whole group of policemen, eight perhaps, arrived at the house. I answered the door. They barged in, in September after the robbery, about two o’clock in the afternoon. They asked for him, he was at work, I offered to ring him but was told I couldn’t use the phone. I was made to sit down and say nothing till Ron came home.”
At trial, all but one pleaded not guilty, and suggested that the evidence at Leatherslade Farm was planted. The identity of three men who took part in the raid but never stood trial has never been revealed by police or the robbers, says Nick Russell-Pavier, an author and expert on the Great Train Robbery.
“The guys who were prosecuted successfully claimed they were fitted up. So if they were fitted up why couldn’t the police fit up the three guys who got away. The answer is they weren’t fitted up.” The robbers were given a total of 307 years in prison - up to 30 years each. Later, after Charlie Wilson escaped from Winson Green prison in Birmingham, Ronnie Biggs went over the wall at HMP Wandsworth and famously went on the run. But years later, most of the families had little to show for the robbery, says Nick Reynolds, son of train robber Bruce, who also went on the run before his arrest. “The money went on just being on the run, its an expensive game laundering, false passports, keeping one step ahead of the law.”
Former ITN reporter Gerald Seymour explains the impact the crime had on the robbers, and their families.
“What a waste of some clever bright guys who at the fork in the road went left when maybe there was a right, and they paid so dearly for it. I can’t say that any of them would say it was worth it.”
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 7/8 - Culture As Nature
Robert Hughes goes Pop when he examines the art that referred to the man-made world that fed off culture itself via works by Rauchenberg, Warhol and Lichtenstein.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 9th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 4/6 - Furnace of Change
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing the country in ways it has never been seen before. It is 1485: a young nobleman sails to the land of his fathers from exile in France. His mission - to capture the English crown. For the first time, a self-proclaimed Welshman will be king of England. Under the dynasty he founds, Wales becomes united with England. For every generation of Welsh people to come, the consequences are huge. But exactly what it means - for the next 250 years, at least - depends on whether you are a landowner or one of the ordinary people.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Life Stories
Edna O'Brien: Life Stories
BBC4, 10:45-11:40pm
Now 81 and due to publish her memoirs in October 2012, renowned Irish novelist Edna O'Brien has opened her home and her heart to documentary filmmakers.
O'Brien's journey from Tuamgraney, County Clare to the centre of literary life in London has involved rebellion, censorship, elopement, motherhood, divorce, custody battles and the rearing of two sons as a single mother, as well as a glittering social life and a growing profile as a public personality and commentator.
Based on a series of frank, moving and entertaining interviews with O'Brien and her two sons Carlo and Sasha Gebler, the film offers a privileged glimpse of O'Brien's more private life, her writing process and rituals - a fascinating portrait of a woman whose infinite variety and ageless spirit make her an icon at home and abroad.
Edna O'Brien's was, and still is, a life lived in technicolour. She was a key figure in the social and literary whirl of sixties and seventies London and is probably the only Irish novelist who credits the taking of LSD with influencing her prose style in the early seventies.
The documentary touches on tales of the writer's social encounters with many of that period's biggest names, including Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum. But all the while, in her life and in her work O'Brien was dealing with a complex emotional life, including her tangled relationship with her parents and her ambivalence towards Ireland. The resulting film gives unprecedented insight, encompassing the sweep of a long career, into one of the great survivors in Irish literature.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 10th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 5/6 - A New Beginning
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. It's boom time as Wales becomes known, the world over, for one particular product - Welsh steam coal, the best you can get. In the space of 50 years, 'black gold' builds a new Wales. The coalfield pulls in hundreds of thousands of migrants with a different language and culture, becoming a bustling modern world of its own. Yet no sooner has Wales found itself at the centre of global trade, than the Depression causes an industrial crash with a bitter social fallout.
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
This observational series continues to explore what life is really like in some of the densest neighbourhoods on the planet: the backstreets of India's megacities. A popular tactic for people here, so adept at operating in a crowded world, is turning the stuff others would call 'waste' into an opportunity.
Johora started out as a rag-picker, but through building a bottle recycling business on a railway embankment, she has big ambitions for her family of seven kids. When the local gangsters increase their protection payment demands, she boldly takes out a big loan and attempts to push her illegal business to another level.
And it's not just small waste. Kanye uses a handheld blowtorch to cut up ships discarded by the rest of the world, helping satisfy India's thirst for steel. A doting father, his dangerous but relatively well paid job educates his three daughters and provides his ticket to a brighter future. But his hopes are in jeopardy when he is laid off.
Ashik buys up beef fat from the abattoir, and proudly renders it down to make tallow. It looks disgusting, even before he is plagued by a maggot infestation. But this thrifty use of 'waste' may well be destined for your soap or cosmetics.
Crime; Documentaries
Born to Kill? The Hollywoood Hillside Strangler
Channel 5, 11:55pm-12:40am
Hollywood has always had a dark side, but Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were perhaps its darkest.
Serial killers usually work alone but Bianchi and Buono would defy all the rules. In the late seventies, these 'killing cousins' would commit a series of brazen murders that left the women of Los Angeles terrified to walk the streets.
Their murders plumbed the depths of depravity and their cold heartedness and forensic awareness left detectives angry and frustrated.
On his capture, Kenneth Bianchi would make an audacious attempt to convince the world he had multiple personalities and was not responsible for the murders.
Bianchi and Buonowould kidnap, rape, torture and snuff out the lives of 12 innocent young girls, but what had led to this extraordinary collaboration in killing? Were they both born to kill?
_____________________________________________
Thursday 11th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 6/6 - England & Wales
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. In the last seventy years, Wales changes more rapidly than ever. In this final episode, a Welshman battles to set up Britain's most cherished institution, the British parliament votes to drown a Welsh valley, a new generation of sporting heroes sets the flags waving and television itself becomes part of the story of Wales. We're a nation of commuters and consumers, but our sense of history has revived: we are a people with a story - and that story gives us power.
Factual; Talks and Presentations; Documentaries
RTS Huw Wheldon Lecture 2012
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:00am
BBC foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet delivers this year's Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture, talking about how social media is transforming broadcast journalism. She examines the effect that social networking sites and tools had on the reporting of major stories from 2011, including the Arab Spring and the London riots, and considers the lessons news organisations must learn as they seek to harness the power of this evolving resource.
_____________________________________________
Friday
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - No Going Back
As we reach the final part of Dr Pamela Cox’s informative series, we find that Britain’s domestic servants are kicking against the established order. The First World War changed the social landscape for ever, landowners freed their servants to fight while women who would otherwise have been part of the “servant class” played their part. They took over the jobs of absent men, including difficult and dangerous munitions work, and weren’t prepared simply to slide back into their former servile roles once the war was over.
Cox looks at the measures used by Britain’s ladies to find maids, including trying to lure them with a promise to ditch that hated symbol of deference, the servant’s cap.
Pamela Cox explores how the idea of a `servant class' came to an end in the 20th century. She reveals why filling male roles in stately homes and factories during the First World War left many female servants reluctant to return to their old lives, and how the rise of semi-detached suburban homes during the 1930s led to major changes in domestic workers' duties. Finally, she charts how women's employment changed in the years following the Second World War, and examines the roles of domestic employees in 21st-century Britain.
_____________________________________________
Friday, 28 September 2012
Off-air recordings for week 29 September - 5 October 2012
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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 29th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Knowing Your Place
Dr Pamela Cox looks at the grand houses of the Victorian ruling elite - large country estates dependent on an army of staff toiling away below stairs.
The Victorians ushered in a new ideal of servitude - where loyal, selfless servants were depersonalised stereotypes with standardised uniforms, hairstyles and even generic names denoting position. In the immaculately preserved rooms of Erddig in North Wales, portraits of servants like loyal housekeeper Mrs Webster hint at an affectionate relationship between family and servants, but the reality for most was quite different.
In other stately homes, hidden passages kept servants separate from the family. Anonymity, invisibility and segregation were a crucial part of their gruelling job - and the strict servant hierarchy even kept them segregated from each other.
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
Winning the 1996 election in a landslide, Clinton pulls off one of the greatest turnarounds in political history and alongside him, Hillary succeeds in passing crucial legislation. Times are good, the economy is booming, and American prestige and power internationally are at an all-time high. The president's dream of repairing the breach with Republicans seems within reach and the Clintons seem stronger than ever. But then Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky - a White House intern - becomes public after she confides in a co-worker named Linda Tripp. The ensuing scandal gives Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr the ammunition he needs to recharge his stalled investigation of the Whitewater affair and Hillary her highest approval rating yet.
____________________________________________
Sunday 30th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/8 - Age of Empire
In this episode, Andrew Marr tells the story of the first empires which laid the foundations for the modern world.
From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, conquerors rampaged across the Middle East and vicious wars were fought all the way from China to the Mediterranean. But this time of chaos and destruction also brought enormous progress and inspired human development. In the Middle East, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and one of the most powerful ideas in world history emerged: the belief in just one God. In India, the Buddha offered a radical alternative to empire building - a way of living that had no place for violence or hierarchy and was open to everyone.
Great thinkers from Socrates to Confucius proposed new ideas about how to rule more wisely and live in a better society. And in Greece, democracy was born - the greatest political experiment of all. But within just a few years, its future would be under threat from invasion by an empire in the east...
____________________________________________
Monday 1st October
Factual; History; Travel; Documentaries
A303: Highway to the Sun
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
The A303 is the road that passes Stonehenge on the way to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. On the way, it whisks drivers through 5,000 years of remarkable moments in English history. And it is the star of this film made for armchair travellers and history lovers.
Writer Tom Fort drives its 92-mile length in a lovingly-restored Morris Traveller. Along the way he has many adventures - he digs up the 1960s master plan for the A303's dreams of superhighway status; meets up with a Neolithic traveller who knew the road like the back of his hand; gets to know a section of the Roman 303; uncovers a medieval murder mystery; and discovers what lies at the end of the Highway to the Sun.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am
Robert Hughes grapples with the artists who made visual art from the crags and vistas of their internal world - the Expressionists, including Van Gogh, De Kooning, Pollock and beyond.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 2nd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/6 - The Making of Wales
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. Thirty thousand years in the making, this story begins with the drama of the earliest-known human burial in Western Europe. Huw delves into the biggest prehistoric copper mine in the world, and visits the mesmerising site of an Iron Age hillfort. He reveals the true scale of the Roman occupation and shows how Welsh saints carried the light of the gospel to the rest of the Celtic world, and left a mark on their homeland that we can all still read today.
Crime; Documentaries
The Manson Family: Born To Kill?
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm
Charles Manson and his so-called 'family' would become the most infamous killers of the 20th century. Over two bloody nights in August 1969, seven people including actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski, were savagely murdered in their homes.
Their orgy of brutal and seemingly senseless slaughter shocked the world andmarked the end of the 1960s hippie dream. But what made Charles Manson the man he was? Why did so many young people fall under his spell and how was he able to convince them so easily to slaughter innocent people without conscience?
Contributors include detectives, attorneys and psychiatrists who tried to unravel the mystery, plus former members of the cult. Were Manson and his 'family' born to kill?
Factual; Histpry; Documentaries
Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History of Britain
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Ian Hislop asks when and why we British have bottled up or let out our feelings and how this has affected our history.
Revealing as much about ourselves today as about our past, this is a narrative history of emotion and identity over the last three hundred years, packed with extraordinary characters, fascinating vignettes and much humour, illuminated through the lens of culture - novels, paintings, magazines, cartoons, film and television - from which Ian gives his personal take on our evolving national character.
Far from being part of our cultural DNA, emotional restraint was a relatively recent national trait. Foreigners in Tudor England couldn't believe how touchy-feely we could be - 'wherever you move there is nothing but kisses' wrote a shocked Erasmus. In this opening episode, Ian Hislop charts how and why the stiff upper lip emerged in the late 18th and early 19th century in a country till then often awash with sentiment.
In 18th century British society, public emoting was a sign of refinement and there was a vogue for all things sentimental. It was very much the done thing for women and men to weep at Samuel Richardson's novels or have Johann Zoffany paint their portraits to highlight their tenderness and sensitivity. But Ian reveals that a new idea - politeness - paved the way for the emergence of the stiff upper lip by prizing consistency of behaviour over emotional honesty. To illustrate this he plunders the candid diary of James Boswell, an aspirational young Scot plagued with anxieties about how far he should show his feelings in fashionable London...
Factual; Families and Relationships; Health and Wellbeing
Is Breast best?: Cherry Healey Investigates
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm
In this fun yet compelling documentary, Cherry Healey explores the topical issue of breastfeeding and asks Is Breast Best? The World Health Organisation advises that all mothers breastfeed their children for at least the first six months after birth, but Cherry herself found the experience painful and traumatic and eventually gave up.
Over a year later she is still plagued by feelings of guilt for not trying harder and is now on a mission to find out how other mums feel - is she the only one? Along the way she meets Jess, a teen mum who never even considered breastfeeding and has formula-fed all the way with no worries at all, and a group of 'lactivists' who strongly believe that breastfeeding is the only option for a new mum.
Join Cherry as she explores the world of boobs, bottles, babies and breast milk with her usual refreshing honesty.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 3rd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/6 - Power Struggles
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. This
Story of Wales spans seven centuries from the building of a great frontier to Owain Glyndwr's epic struggle for independence.
We meet the medieval kings who shape Wales and watch a nation emerge out of their lust for power and land. Amidst battles
with Vikings, Saxons and Normans, Welsh culture flourishes. But the death of our last native Prince is followed by a century of
plague and famine. Then, the charismatic Glyndwr leads a rebellion against the English Crown.
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Learning how to survive on an increasingly crowded planet is probably our ultimate challenge. But there is one place, home to over a sixth of the world's population, which is already making a good shot at adapting: welcome to India. This extraordinary observational series casts aside the usual preconceptions about the sub-continent, and lets a few of India's 1.2 billion show how their world really works.
With astonishing access into the densest districts of Kolkata and Mumbai, it celebrates the impressive resourcefulness, resilience and absolute pragmatism of those living and working there, and reveals the psyche needed to get ahead in the biggest of crowds.
This follows two main characters as they employ all their ingenuity to carve out a home. With more people moving to cities in India than anywhere else on earth, securing that place you can call home is vital for nurturing your family's future.
Kaale has come to Kolkata in search of gold - incredibly, he earns a living by sweeping the streets of the jewellery district for stray gold dust. But to fulfil his business ambitions, he must escape his landlord and rent a room of his own. His plan pushes even his resourcefulness to the limit: dredging for gold in Kolkata's drains.
Rajesh and his wife Sevita have created their home on a Mumbai beach after their controversial love marriage. They support their kids' future with some impressive improvisation, including running their house as a makeshift beach pub selling cane liquor. But then eviction by the Mumbai council threatens their home for good.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 4th October
Factual; Documentaries
Health Before the NHS
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 2/2 - A Medical Revolution
Timeshift: The Robert Winston-narrated mini-series concludes with the story of hospitals. At the beginning of the 20th century these were forbidding places very much to be avoided - a last resort for the destitute rather than places you would go to get better. Using unique archive footage from an era when infectious disease was virtually untreatable and powerful first-hand accounts from patients, doctors and nurses, the programme explores the extraordinary transformation of the hospital from Victorian workhouse to modern centre of medicine.
_____________________________________________
Friday 5th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - Class War
Dr Pamela Cox explores what happened when servants directly challenged their masters and mistresses, causing havoc in the golden age of Edwardian society.
It is the story of wayward laundry maids, butlers selling their stories to the press and even suffragette maids. Above all, it is the story of how the Victorian 'ideal' of service came to be questioned - not by employers, but by the servants themselves.
The middle classes had an insatiable need for servants in their heavily furnished townhouses, but at the same time the number of people in the so-called 'servant class' dropped, as young workers were lured into shops and factories. To plug the gap, a new source of servants was found - shockingly, among the urban poor - mopping up orphans, waifs and strays from slums, workhouses and reforms schools and training them for careers in domestic service. As the clouds of war gathered, the whole notion of service was in crisis.
_____________________________________________
*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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 29th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Knowing Your Place
Dr Pamela Cox looks at the grand houses of the Victorian ruling elite - large country estates dependent on an army of staff toiling away below stairs.
The Victorians ushered in a new ideal of servitude - where loyal, selfless servants were depersonalised stereotypes with standardised uniforms, hairstyles and even generic names denoting position. In the immaculately preserved rooms of Erddig in North Wales, portraits of servants like loyal housekeeper Mrs Webster hint at an affectionate relationship between family and servants, but the reality for most was quite different.
In other stately homes, hidden passages kept servants separate from the family. Anonymity, invisibility and segregation were a crucial part of their gruelling job - and the strict servant hierarchy even kept them segregated from each other.
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
Winning the 1996 election in a landslide, Clinton pulls off one of the greatest turnarounds in political history and alongside him, Hillary succeeds in passing crucial legislation. Times are good, the economy is booming, and American prestige and power internationally are at an all-time high. The president's dream of repairing the breach with Republicans seems within reach and the Clintons seem stronger than ever. But then Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky - a White House intern - becomes public after she confides in a co-worker named Linda Tripp. The ensuing scandal gives Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr the ammunition he needs to recharge his stalled investigation of the Whitewater affair and Hillary her highest approval rating yet.
____________________________________________
Sunday 30th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/8 - Age of Empire
In this episode, Andrew Marr tells the story of the first empires which laid the foundations for the modern world.
From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, conquerors rampaged across the Middle East and vicious wars were fought all the way from China to the Mediterranean. But this time of chaos and destruction also brought enormous progress and inspired human development. In the Middle East, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and one of the most powerful ideas in world history emerged: the belief in just one God. In India, the Buddha offered a radical alternative to empire building - a way of living that had no place for violence or hierarchy and was open to everyone.
Great thinkers from Socrates to Confucius proposed new ideas about how to rule more wisely and live in a better society. And in Greece, democracy was born - the greatest political experiment of all. But within just a few years, its future would be under threat from invasion by an empire in the east...
____________________________________________
Monday 1st October
Factual; History; Travel; Documentaries
A303: Highway to the Sun
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
The A303 is the road that passes Stonehenge on the way to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. On the way, it whisks drivers through 5,000 years of remarkable moments in English history. And it is the star of this film made for armchair travellers and history lovers.
Writer Tom Fort drives its 92-mile length in a lovingly-restored Morris Traveller. Along the way he has many adventures - he digs up the 1960s master plan for the A303's dreams of superhighway status; meets up with a Neolithic traveller who knew the road like the back of his hand; gets to know a section of the Roman 303; uncovers a medieval murder mystery; and discovers what lies at the end of the Highway to the Sun.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am
Robert Hughes grapples with the artists who made visual art from the crags and vistas of their internal world - the Expressionists, including Van Gogh, De Kooning, Pollock and beyond.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 2nd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/6 - The Making of Wales
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. Thirty thousand years in the making, this story begins with the drama of the earliest-known human burial in Western Europe. Huw delves into the biggest prehistoric copper mine in the world, and visits the mesmerising site of an Iron Age hillfort. He reveals the true scale of the Roman occupation and shows how Welsh saints carried the light of the gospel to the rest of the Celtic world, and left a mark on their homeland that we can all still read today.
Crime; Documentaries
The Manson Family: Born To Kill?
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm
Charles Manson and his so-called 'family' would become the most infamous killers of the 20th century. Over two bloody nights in August 1969, seven people including actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski, were savagely murdered in their homes.
Their orgy of brutal and seemingly senseless slaughter shocked the world andmarked the end of the 1960s hippie dream. But what made Charles Manson the man he was? Why did so many young people fall under his spell and how was he able to convince them so easily to slaughter innocent people without conscience?
Contributors include detectives, attorneys and psychiatrists who tried to unravel the mystery, plus former members of the cult. Were Manson and his 'family' born to kill?
Factual; Histpry; Documentaries
Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History of Britain
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Ian Hislop asks when and why we British have bottled up or let out our feelings and how this has affected our history.
Revealing as much about ourselves today as about our past, this is a narrative history of emotion and identity over the last three hundred years, packed with extraordinary characters, fascinating vignettes and much humour, illuminated through the lens of culture - novels, paintings, magazines, cartoons, film and television - from which Ian gives his personal take on our evolving national character.
Far from being part of our cultural DNA, emotional restraint was a relatively recent national trait. Foreigners in Tudor England couldn't believe how touchy-feely we could be - 'wherever you move there is nothing but kisses' wrote a shocked Erasmus. In this opening episode, Ian Hislop charts how and why the stiff upper lip emerged in the late 18th and early 19th century in a country till then often awash with sentiment.
In 18th century British society, public emoting was a sign of refinement and there was a vogue for all things sentimental. It was very much the done thing for women and men to weep at Samuel Richardson's novels or have Johann Zoffany paint their portraits to highlight their tenderness and sensitivity. But Ian reveals that a new idea - politeness - paved the way for the emergence of the stiff upper lip by prizing consistency of behaviour over emotional honesty. To illustrate this he plunders the candid diary of James Boswell, an aspirational young Scot plagued with anxieties about how far he should show his feelings in fashionable London...
Factual; Families and Relationships; Health and Wellbeing
Is Breast best?: Cherry Healey Investigates
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm
In this fun yet compelling documentary, Cherry Healey explores the topical issue of breastfeeding and asks Is Breast Best? The World Health Organisation advises that all mothers breastfeed their children for at least the first six months after birth, but Cherry herself found the experience painful and traumatic and eventually gave up.
Over a year later she is still plagued by feelings of guilt for not trying harder and is now on a mission to find out how other mums feel - is she the only one? Along the way she meets Jess, a teen mum who never even considered breastfeeding and has formula-fed all the way with no worries at all, and a group of 'lactivists' who strongly believe that breastfeeding is the only option for a new mum.
Join Cherry as she explores the world of boobs, bottles, babies and breast milk with her usual refreshing honesty.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 3rd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/6 - Power Struggles
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. This
Story of Wales spans seven centuries from the building of a great frontier to Owain Glyndwr's epic struggle for independence.
We meet the medieval kings who shape Wales and watch a nation emerge out of their lust for power and land. Amidst battles
with Vikings, Saxons and Normans, Welsh culture flourishes. But the death of our last native Prince is followed by a century of
plague and famine. Then, the charismatic Glyndwr leads a rebellion against the English Crown.
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Learning how to survive on an increasingly crowded planet is probably our ultimate challenge. But there is one place, home to over a sixth of the world's population, which is already making a good shot at adapting: welcome to India. This extraordinary observational series casts aside the usual preconceptions about the sub-continent, and lets a few of India's 1.2 billion show how their world really works.
With astonishing access into the densest districts of Kolkata and Mumbai, it celebrates the impressive resourcefulness, resilience and absolute pragmatism of those living and working there, and reveals the psyche needed to get ahead in the biggest of crowds.
This follows two main characters as they employ all their ingenuity to carve out a home. With more people moving to cities in India than anywhere else on earth, securing that place you can call home is vital for nurturing your family's future.
Kaale has come to Kolkata in search of gold - incredibly, he earns a living by sweeping the streets of the jewellery district for stray gold dust. But to fulfil his business ambitions, he must escape his landlord and rent a room of his own. His plan pushes even his resourcefulness to the limit: dredging for gold in Kolkata's drains.
Rajesh and his wife Sevita have created their home on a Mumbai beach after their controversial love marriage. They support their kids' future with some impressive improvisation, including running their house as a makeshift beach pub selling cane liquor. But then eviction by the Mumbai council threatens their home for good.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 4th October
Factual; Documentaries
Health Before the NHS
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 2/2 - A Medical Revolution
Timeshift: The Robert Winston-narrated mini-series concludes with the story of hospitals. At the beginning of the 20th century these were forbidding places very much to be avoided - a last resort for the destitute rather than places you would go to get better. Using unique archive footage from an era when infectious disease was virtually untreatable and powerful first-hand accounts from patients, doctors and nurses, the programme explores the extraordinary transformation of the hospital from Victorian workhouse to modern centre of medicine.
_____________________________________________
Friday 5th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - Class War
Dr Pamela Cox explores what happened when servants directly challenged their masters and mistresses, causing havoc in the golden age of Edwardian society.
It is the story of wayward laundry maids, butlers selling their stories to the press and even suffragette maids. Above all, it is the story of how the Victorian 'ideal' of service came to be questioned - not by employers, but by the servants themselves.
The middle classes had an insatiable need for servants in their heavily furnished townhouses, but at the same time the number of people in the so-called 'servant class' dropped, as young workers were lured into shops and factories. To plug the gap, a new source of servants was found - shockingly, among the urban poor - mopping up orphans, waifs and strays from slums, workhouses and reforms schools and training them for careers in domestic service. As the clouds of war gathered, the whole notion of service was in crisis.
_____________________________________________
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Off-air recordings for week 22-28 September 2012
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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 22nd
Factual; News
This World - Aung San Suu Kyi: The Choice
BBC2, 8:10-9:10pm
Documentary which captures the moment when the Nobel Prize winning dissident Aung San Suu Kyi took the huge, risky step into everyday politics in Burma. This tells Suu Kyi's extraordinary personal and political story, how she turned from Oxford housewife into national leader and then international icon of resistance.
Filmed over a year of tumultuous change in Burma, the film has two long interviews with Suu Kyi, with her colleagues in Burma and with her family and friends outside. Hillary Clinton describes the impact of meeting this woman, who she had long admired, as ''seeing a long lost friend'', yet comparing her to Nelson Mandela.
Suu Kyi talks of sadness but no regrets over the decision she took, while her colleagues outline clearly the ongoing gamble that they are all taking in compromising with the regime. Made over an extended period, the film uses a range of extraordinary unseen archive - not least the moment she meets her husband and son for the first time after five years.
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:25-11:25pm, 2/3 - Enemies
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
The Whitewater scandal threatens to de-rail Clinton's first budget and trouble is brewing in the remote countries of Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia. The Republicans, led by the formidable Newt Gingrich, gain control of Congress in the midterm elections shifting the political landscape to the right. Clinton, seemingly bereft of power, begins to sideline his most trusted advisors in favour of an aggressive political consultant named Dick Morris. The Republican 'Contract with America' is riding high and by spring of 1995, Gingrich and his allies choose the budget as the ground on which to wage their war. The Republican plan leads to a government shutdown and slowly the tide begins to turn in Clinton's favour.
____________________________________________
Sunday 23rd
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/8 - Survival
Andrew Marr sets off on an epic journey through 70,000 years of human history. Using dramatic reconstructions, documentary filming around the world and cutting-edge computer graphics, he reveals the decisive moments that shaped the world we live in today, telling stories we thought we knew and others we were never told.
Starting with our earliest beginnings in Africa, Marr traces the story of our nomadic ancestors as they spread out around the world and settled down to become the first farmers and townspeople. He uncovers extraordinary hand-prints left in European caves nearly 30,000 years ago and shows how human ingenuity led to inventions which are still with us today. He also discovers how the first civilisations were driven to extremes to try to overcome the forces of nature, adapting and surviving against the odds, and reveals how everyday life in ancient Egypt had more in common with today's soap operas than might be imagined.
____________________________________________
Monday 24th
News; Documentaries
Dispatches: Undercover Retirement Home
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm
Dispatches goes undercover to investigate the multi-million pound retirement property industry. As millions of retirees face downsizing their homes, reporter Morland Sanders and Dispatches' undercover pensioner look at some of the pitfalls of buying a retirement flat. Sanders also meets the pensioners who've discovered living in a retirement home isn't what they hoped for as they battle through tribunals and try to reduce their living costs.
News
Panorama: Reading, Writing and Rip-Offs
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
Panorama investigates the computer supply companies whose directors have grown rich signing up hundreds of schools across the country to deals that have taken them to the brink of bankruptcy. Parents are usually unaware that their school can be carrying debts of up to 1.9 million pounds for overpriced or sub-standard equipment.
Reporter Paul Kenyon reveals the mis-selling that has ended the careers of head teachers who say they were duped by dishonest salesmen, forced some schools to make staffing cuts, and raises questions about the government's roll out of greater financial autonomy to schools.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 25th
Factual; History; Documentaries
Vikings
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3
Neil Oliver explores how the Viking Age finally ended, tracing the Norse voyages of discovery, the first Danish kings, and the Christian conversions that opened the door to European high society. He also uncovers the truth about England's King Canute - he was not an arrogant leader who thought he could hold back the waves, but the Viking ruler of an entire empire of the north and an early adopter of European standardisation.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documnetaries
British Passions on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/3 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Throughout the 20th century, archive films and newsreel footage has chronicled Britain's enduring fascination with the nation's most important modes of mass passenger transport. This film shows how Britons responded to advances in transport technologies and the emergence of new automobiles, rail services and aircraft designs - each of which held out the possibility of travel to new, exciting and previously inaccessible destinations.
Featuring contributions from the cultural critic Jonathan Glancey and the transport historian Christian Wolmar, it celebrates the contribution that these different forms of transport made to the collective imagination of the nation, and shows how such developments as jet aircraft and the Channel tunnel opened up new horizons for successive generations of British people.
Documentaries
The Boy Who Can't Forget
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am
Can you remember what you were doing on 15 March 2003? Or what the weather was like on 30 May 2007? Twenty-year-old British student Aurelien can. He is one of just a handful of people in the world who are baffling scientists with their ability to recall an incredible amount of their lives.
Some claim they can remember every day as if it were yesterday. Now Aurelien is the first Briton to go public with this extraordinary talent. Is it an elaborate trick or some sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour, or perhaps the result of physical differences in their brains? Aurelien is put to the test by eight-time world memory champion Dominic O'Brien, and examined by memory expert Professor Giuliana Mazzoni.
This remarkable documentary explores the recently discovered phenomenon known as superior autobiographical memory. It looks into the theories of scientists trying to unravel the mystery in the UK and US, and the lives of the seemingly ordinary people who appear to have an extraordinary power we had no idea humans could possess. For the experts racing to find the answers, the discovery of this new group of people could transform the way we look at the workings of memory.
Perhaps we all have the same infinite memory system and we just need to work out how to unlock it. But if we could have an almost endless memory, would we really want it? American school administrator Jill Price was the first person in the world to be discovered with the condition and gives her first interview in over a year. Jill provides an insight into just how difficult life can be for some people when they can't forget.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 27th
News: Documentaries
Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 1/2
The first programme unravels the mysteries of MDMA, revealing how the drug affects the brain.
Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London will reveal the results of the scientific trial and the programme follows some of the volunteers - who include actor Keith Allen, novelist Lionel Shriver, a vicar, a former MP and an ex-soldier - through the trial.
The programme also looks at the potential side-effects and dangers of taking MDMA and includes a discussion with an expert who disagrees with the study and is sceptical about its purpose.
Documentaries
Exposure: The British Way of Death
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm, 1/6
The first in a new series of Exposure documentaries goes undercover to reveal the dark side of the hugely profitable funeral business, with shocking examples of racism and disrespect of bodies and the bereaved.
Factual; Documentaries
Storyville: My Friend Sam - Living for the Moment
Documentary about an extraordinary man named Sam Frears. Sam, now 39 years old, was born with an extremely rare genetic disorder - Familial Dysautonomia - which left him with only a 50% chance of making it to his fifth birthday.
The film reveals a complex, engaging, exceptional person as he struggles with everyday life while pursuing his joint goals of getting his acting career back on track and finding love.
____________________________________________
Thursday 28th
News
Tonight: In Self Defence
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
Julie Etchingham investigates the issue of a homeowner's right to defend themself and their property, meeting one couple who have been locked in a nightmare since intruders broke into their home with terrible consequences.
News: Documentaries
Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 2/2
The second programme investigates the implications of the scientific study of the effects of MDMA, including potential clinical uses - such as whether it could offer a breakthrough in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The programme discovers what recreational users can learn from the trial before discussing MDMA's classification as a Class A drug and possible long-term effects.
____________________________________________
Friday 29th
Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
JK Rowling - Writing for Grown-Ups: A Culture Show Special
12:50-1:20am
Harry Potter is one of the most successful publishing phenomena of our time, selling 450 million copies. Its success transformed its author, JK Rowling, from impoverished single mother to one of the nation’s richest women and our most successful living author.
Since The Deathly Hallows was published in 2007, Rowling’s fans have been desperate to know what she was going to do next. The answer is The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults with some very grown-up themes.
The novel is set in the idyllic fictional English town of Pagford. Parish councillor Barry Fairbrother dies and the community is left reeling. As tensions gather around the ensuing local election, cracks in the picture-perfect town start to emerge…
One of the most hotly anticipated books of the year, The Casual Vacancy is published on 27 September 2012 and details are shrouded in secrecy. Expectation and pressure are enormous. In this Culture Show Special, broadcast the night before the novel is published, JK Rowling will finally reveal the exact nature of the novel, with exclusive readings and in-depth discussion about its ideas, characters and inspiration.
Interviewer James Runcie will meet the notoriously private writer in her hometown of Edinburgh to find out about the pressure and pitfalls of following up the 20th Century’s biggest literary phenomenon. Rowling will reveal how she finally moved on from Potter and the challenges of making the leap writing fiction for adults.
Runcie believes The Casual Vacancy is an intensely personal and passionate work, reveals unseen facets of the writer and will shock many of her fans. The world has changed since 2007, and Rowling has taken on some huge themes.
____________________________________________
*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.
____________________________________________
Saturday 22nd
Factual; News
This World - Aung San Suu Kyi: The Choice
BBC2, 8:10-9:10pm
Documentary which captures the moment when the Nobel Prize winning dissident Aung San Suu Kyi took the huge, risky step into everyday politics in Burma. This tells Suu Kyi's extraordinary personal and political story, how she turned from Oxford housewife into national leader and then international icon of resistance.
Filmed over a year of tumultuous change in Burma, the film has two long interviews with Suu Kyi, with her colleagues in Burma and with her family and friends outside. Hillary Clinton describes the impact of meeting this woman, who she had long admired, as ''seeing a long lost friend'', yet comparing her to Nelson Mandela.
Suu Kyi talks of sadness but no regrets over the decision she took, while her colleagues outline clearly the ongoing gamble that they are all taking in compromising with the regime. Made over an extended period, the film uses a range of extraordinary unseen archive - not least the moment she meets her husband and son for the first time after five years.
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:25-11:25pm, 2/3 - Enemies
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
The Whitewater scandal threatens to de-rail Clinton's first budget and trouble is brewing in the remote countries of Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia. The Republicans, led by the formidable Newt Gingrich, gain control of Congress in the midterm elections shifting the political landscape to the right. Clinton, seemingly bereft of power, begins to sideline his most trusted advisors in favour of an aggressive political consultant named Dick Morris. The Republican 'Contract with America' is riding high and by spring of 1995, Gingrich and his allies choose the budget as the ground on which to wage their war. The Republican plan leads to a government shutdown and slowly the tide begins to turn in Clinton's favour.
____________________________________________
Sunday 23rd
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/8 - Survival
Andrew Marr sets off on an epic journey through 70,000 years of human history. Using dramatic reconstructions, documentary filming around the world and cutting-edge computer graphics, he reveals the decisive moments that shaped the world we live in today, telling stories we thought we knew and others we were never told.
Starting with our earliest beginnings in Africa, Marr traces the story of our nomadic ancestors as they spread out around the world and settled down to become the first farmers and townspeople. He uncovers extraordinary hand-prints left in European caves nearly 30,000 years ago and shows how human ingenuity led to inventions which are still with us today. He also discovers how the first civilisations were driven to extremes to try to overcome the forces of nature, adapting and surviving against the odds, and reveals how everyday life in ancient Egypt had more in common with today's soap operas than might be imagined.
____________________________________________
Monday 24th
News; Documentaries
Dispatches: Undercover Retirement Home
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm
Dispatches goes undercover to investigate the multi-million pound retirement property industry. As millions of retirees face downsizing their homes, reporter Morland Sanders and Dispatches' undercover pensioner look at some of the pitfalls of buying a retirement flat. Sanders also meets the pensioners who've discovered living in a retirement home isn't what they hoped for as they battle through tribunals and try to reduce their living costs.
News
Panorama: Reading, Writing and Rip-Offs
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
Panorama investigates the computer supply companies whose directors have grown rich signing up hundreds of schools across the country to deals that have taken them to the brink of bankruptcy. Parents are usually unaware that their school can be carrying debts of up to 1.9 million pounds for overpriced or sub-standard equipment.
Reporter Paul Kenyon reveals the mis-selling that has ended the careers of head teachers who say they were duped by dishonest salesmen, forced some schools to make staffing cuts, and raises questions about the government's roll out of greater financial autonomy to schools.
____________________________________________
Tuesday 25th
Factual; History; Documentaries
Vikings
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3
Neil Oliver explores how the Viking Age finally ended, tracing the Norse voyages of discovery, the first Danish kings, and the Christian conversions that opened the door to European high society. He also uncovers the truth about England's King Canute - he was not an arrogant leader who thought he could hold back the waves, but the Viking ruler of an entire empire of the north and an early adopter of European standardisation.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documnetaries
British Passions on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/3 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Throughout the 20th century, archive films and newsreel footage has chronicled Britain's enduring fascination with the nation's most important modes of mass passenger transport. This film shows how Britons responded to advances in transport technologies and the emergence of new automobiles, rail services and aircraft designs - each of which held out the possibility of travel to new, exciting and previously inaccessible destinations.
Featuring contributions from the cultural critic Jonathan Glancey and the transport historian Christian Wolmar, it celebrates the contribution that these different forms of transport made to the collective imagination of the nation, and shows how such developments as jet aircraft and the Channel tunnel opened up new horizons for successive generations of British people.
Documentaries
The Boy Who Can't Forget
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am
Can you remember what you were doing on 15 March 2003? Or what the weather was like on 30 May 2007? Twenty-year-old British student Aurelien can. He is one of just a handful of people in the world who are baffling scientists with their ability to recall an incredible amount of their lives.
Some claim they can remember every day as if it were yesterday. Now Aurelien is the first Briton to go public with this extraordinary talent. Is it an elaborate trick or some sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour, or perhaps the result of physical differences in their brains? Aurelien is put to the test by eight-time world memory champion Dominic O'Brien, and examined by memory expert Professor Giuliana Mazzoni.
This remarkable documentary explores the recently discovered phenomenon known as superior autobiographical memory. It looks into the theories of scientists trying to unravel the mystery in the UK and US, and the lives of the seemingly ordinary people who appear to have an extraordinary power we had no idea humans could possess. For the experts racing to find the answers, the discovery of this new group of people could transform the way we look at the workings of memory.
Perhaps we all have the same infinite memory system and we just need to work out how to unlock it. But if we could have an almost endless memory, would we really want it? American school administrator Jill Price was the first person in the world to be discovered with the condition and gives her first interview in over a year. Jill provides an insight into just how difficult life can be for some people when they can't forget.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 27th
News: Documentaries
Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 1/2
The first programme unravels the mysteries of MDMA, revealing how the drug affects the brain.
Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London will reveal the results of the scientific trial and the programme follows some of the volunteers - who include actor Keith Allen, novelist Lionel Shriver, a vicar, a former MP and an ex-soldier - through the trial.
The programme also looks at the potential side-effects and dangers of taking MDMA and includes a discussion with an expert who disagrees with the study and is sceptical about its purpose.
Documentaries
Exposure: The British Way of Death
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm, 1/6
The first in a new series of Exposure documentaries goes undercover to reveal the dark side of the hugely profitable funeral business, with shocking examples of racism and disrespect of bodies and the bereaved.
Factual; Documentaries
Storyville: My Friend Sam - Living for the Moment
Documentary about an extraordinary man named Sam Frears. Sam, now 39 years old, was born with an extremely rare genetic disorder - Familial Dysautonomia - which left him with only a 50% chance of making it to his fifth birthday.
The film reveals a complex, engaging, exceptional person as he struggles with everyday life while pursuing his joint goals of getting his acting career back on track and finding love.
____________________________________________
Thursday 28th
News
Tonight: In Self Defence
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
Julie Etchingham investigates the issue of a homeowner's right to defend themself and their property, meeting one couple who have been locked in a nightmare since intruders broke into their home with terrible consequences.
News: Documentaries
Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 2/2
The second programme investigates the implications of the scientific study of the effects of MDMA, including potential clinical uses - such as whether it could offer a breakthrough in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The programme discovers what recreational users can learn from the trial before discussing MDMA's classification as a Class A drug and possible long-term effects.
____________________________________________
Friday 29th
Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
JK Rowling - Writing for Grown-Ups: A Culture Show Special
12:50-1:20am
Harry Potter is one of the most successful publishing phenomena of our time, selling 450 million copies. Its success transformed its author, JK Rowling, from impoverished single mother to one of the nation’s richest women and our most successful living author.
Since The Deathly Hallows was published in 2007, Rowling’s fans have been desperate to know what she was going to do next. The answer is The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults with some very grown-up themes.
The novel is set in the idyllic fictional English town of Pagford. Parish councillor Barry Fairbrother dies and the community is left reeling. As tensions gather around the ensuing local election, cracks in the picture-perfect town start to emerge…
One of the most hotly anticipated books of the year, The Casual Vacancy is published on 27 September 2012 and details are shrouded in secrecy. Expectation and pressure are enormous. In this Culture Show Special, broadcast the night before the novel is published, JK Rowling will finally reveal the exact nature of the novel, with exclusive readings and in-depth discussion about its ideas, characters and inspiration.
Interviewer James Runcie will meet the notoriously private writer in her hometown of Edinburgh to find out about the pressure and pitfalls of following up the 20th Century’s biggest literary phenomenon. Rowling will reveal how she finally moved on from Potter and the challenges of making the leap writing fiction for adults.
Runcie believes The Casual Vacancy is an intensely personal and passionate work, reveals unseen facets of the writer and will shock many of her fans. The world has changed since 2007, and Rowling has taken on some huge themes.
____________________________________________
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Off-air recordings for week 15-21 September 2012
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.
_____________________________________________
Saturday 15th September
Factual; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:25-11:25am, 1/3, Candidate
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
This first episode follows Bill Clinton's bumpy road to the 1992 presidential victory. From the political backwaters of Arkansas, Bill Clinton rises to Yale, where he meets a young woman named Hillary Rodham, who shares his intellect and idealism and becomes his wife. During a campaign repeatedly under siege by allegations ranging from draft dodging to womanizing, the Clintons unite and appear on 60 Minutes to rebuff the charges. Having emerged as a political force, the Clintons win the election. But despite all of their education and experience, the pair are unprepared for political life in Washington, and the tragic suicide of their close friend and ally, deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, underlines the new harsh reality they have to face up to.
_____________________________________________
Sunday 16th September
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media
British Passions on Film
BBC4, 11:45pm-12:15am, 1/3 - Fun and Games
Three-part series celebrating the hobbies, pastimes and leisure pursuits that have preoccupied the people of Britain during the last century. As a nation, the British have long been renowned for the creativity and enthusiasm they bring to their leisure pursuits. Whether by collecting cheese labels, painting characters on eggshells or finding unusual uses for sticky back plastic, Britons have always demonstrated enormous passion - and often, deep eccentricity - when pursuing the serious business of having fun. The first episode features enthusiasts of some of Britain's best-loved games, hobbies and leisure activities - and pays tribute to those with more offbeat preoccupations, including D-I-Y obsessives and those with a penchant for collecting street furniture.
___________________________________________
Monday 17th September
Crime; Law and Order; Documentaries
Frontline Police
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm, 6/6
With the weather turning from bad to worse it seems the roads have been transformed into a demolition derby and the frontline unit battles to keep the county moving. With the chopper overhead, the dog unit is dispatched to track down a driver involved in an accident, but will the irate father of the crash victim beat them to it?
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 4/8 - Trouble in Utopia
Robert Hughes' classic series about art in the twentieth century; the avant-garde and the modernist in the century of change.
This edition deals with the aspirations and reality of the art in which we live, architecture. Utopian visions rarely work in reality and Hughes examines the utopian in the parallel lines of concrete, towering verticals of steel and planes of glass of modernism in the buildings, built and planned, of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, which he contrasts with the paintings of Mondrian
____________________________________________
Tuesday 18th September
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
British Passions on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/3 - Getting Away From it All
During the course of the 20th Century, millions of British workers benefited from the expansion of paid leave and an increase in leisure time. This enabled many Britons to realize a cherished dream: at last, they could escape from their everyday lives, and go on holiday.
Getting Away from it All traces the evolution of the British holiday, from hugely popular day-trips and annual fortnights in holiday camps to the mass market package holiday to the Costas - and shows how Britons have never been more at home when they've been far away from home, having fun in the sun.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Vikings
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
Neil Oliver heads out from the Scandinavian homelands to Russia, Turkey and Ireland to trace the beginnings of a vast trading empire that handled Chinese silks as adeptly as Pictish slaves. Neil discovers a world of 'starry-eyed maidens' and Buddhist statues that are a world away from our British experience of axe-wielding warriors, although it turns out that there were quite a few of those as well.
___________________________________________
Wednesday 19th September
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Imagine... The Fatwa: Salman's Story
BBC1, 10:45pm-12:05am
Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, tells for the first time the inside story of how it felt to be condemned to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, and to spend the next decade in hiding. To coincide with the publication of Rushdie's new book about that time, Alan Yentob has been given unique access to the author and to the bodyguards who lived with him. Friends and writers like Ian McEwan and Hanif Kureshi speak frankly, as do Rushdie's sister, ex-wife and sons.
___________________________________________
Thursday 20th September
Documentaries
One Born Every Minute: Plus Size Mums
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm
One Born: Plus Size Mums follows three severely obese pregnant mothers as they, and the professionals who care for them, do all they can to bring their children safely into the world
___________________________________________
One Born: Plus Size Mums follows three severely obese pregnant mothers as they, and the professionals who care for them, do all they can to bring their children safely into the world
___________________________________________
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