Friday, 18 January 2013
Off-air recordings for week 19-25 January 2013
Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
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Saturday 19th January
Science and Nature; Documentaries
Is Our Weather Getting Worse?
More4, 10:00-11:05pm
In Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception. It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse. The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought.
In Aberdeen in March, temperatures soared to 23 degrees Celsius. But within four weeks, everything had changed. April 15 marked the beginning of our wettest summer on record. Towns such as Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were flooded not once, but twice, and by the end of August 4000 homes across Britain had been devastated by floods. But the strange events of 2012 are only part of the story. For the past decade, our weather has been so erratic that government scientists have begun to use words like 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinary'. This programme gets to the truth of our extraordinary decade of extreme weather.
Blending dramatic archive footage, expert insight and cutting-edge graphics, the film investigates the most severe weather events to have struck Britain in recent memory and puts them into the wider context of climate change. Are the strange events of 2012 a one-off or an ominous sign of climate change in action? How does the changing global climate affect the British weather and what can we expect in the future? Is our weather getting worse?
Science and Nature; Documentaries
The Year Britain Froze
More4, 11:05pm-12:10am
Britain's roads were in chaos; planes were strewn over runways as airports ground to a halt; thousands of cars were abandoned; trains and passengers froze overnight; ambulance services had their busiest day ever; and lives were lost as a deadly freeze gripped the country. All over Britain people suffered inconvenience, hardship and danger. There were heroic rescues, tales of human tragedy and heartwarming stories of survival against the odds. This film tells the story of the extreme weather of 2010 and explores the science behind why Britain came to a frozen halt. This was not just bad weather. This was the coldest December since records began, in the year Britain froze.
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Monday 21st January
News
Panorama: Immigration Undercover
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
More than half a million foreign migrants are estimated to be hiding from the authorities in the UK. Some are failed asylum seekers who live in graveyards and abandoned garages or 'disappear' within their own communities. They include bogus students planning to work illegally and others who have crossed the Channel hidden in the back of a lorry. Many of those without papers turn to a life of criminality involving drugs, violence and prostitution - and with money Panorama has discovered they can come and go on an illegal travel network which smuggles them OUT of the UK as well as in. Reporter Paul Kenyon goes undercover with this new type of smuggling gang - charging £1,500 a time - to help illegals out of the UK right under the nose of the British authorities.
Science and Nature; Documentaries
Jaguars: Born Free: A Natural World Special
BBC2, 9:30-10:30pm
In this Natural World special, three tiny orphaned jaguar cubs are discovered in a Brazilian forest. A family decide to take the place of their mother and train them to become wild again. Over two years they must learn to climb trees, swim, and hunt for their dinner. If they can be successfully released, it will give new hope to these rare animals. Narrated by Zoe Wanamaker.
Factual; Documentaries
Crazy for Party Drugs
BBC3, 9:00-10:00pm
Britain's drug culture is changing - fast. Cocaine and ecstasy are out and mephedrone, ketamine and GHB are in. Shot in Leeds over the biggest party weekend of the year - Halloween and Bonfire Night - this film gets under the skin of the new party drugs. We follow Holly, Tony and Oliver from the dancefloor to the morning after and, with unique access to the first specialist 'club drug clinic' outside London, we find out what happens to those who want to keep going even when the party's over.
Factaul; Documentaries
Harry Belafonte: Sing Your Song
BBC4, 10:00-10:00pm
Storyville: Wonderfully archived and told with a remarkable sense of intimacy, visual style and musical panache, this inspiring biographical documentary surveys the life and times of singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte. From his rise to fame as a singer and his experiences touring a segregated country to his provocative crossover into Hollywood, Belafonte's groundbreaking career personifies the American civil rights movement and impacted many other social justice movements. The film reveals Belafonte as a tenacious hands-on activist who worked intimately with Dr Martin Luther King Jr, mobilised celebrities for social justice, participated in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and took action to counter gang violence, prisons and the incarceration of youth.
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Tuesday 22nd January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC4, 2:00-2:30am
Throughout the 1960s, the Rank Organisation produced hundreds of short, quirky documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. Shot on high-quality colour film stock, they were screened in cinemas, but until now very little of the footage has been shown on television. This series draws on this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into a pivotal decade in modern British history.
This episode examines Look at Life's coverage of what was the most important political conflict of the era - the Cold War. With international tensions rising, the series recorded the enormous anti-nuclear protests in London; the experiences of British forces stationed in Berlin; and visited Eastern Europe, to observe everyday life for the people living behind the Iron Curtain.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Art Deco Icons
BBC4, 2:30-3:00am
David Heathcote goes to spend the weekend at Casa Del Rio - a remarkable Art Deco fantasy house hidden away in rural Devon. He uncovers the story of Walter Price, a baker from Devon who went to visit California in the 1930s and who was so impressed by Pickfair - the glamorous residence of Hollywood stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - that he decided to create his own Deco mansion back in the Devon countryside, complete with marble staircase built to look like a piano keyboard.
Heathcote explores the house that was the perfect glamorous weekend retreat for Price and his friends and plays with some of the many Deco gadgets that brought glamour into so many people's lives in the 1930s - a perfect toaster, a Bakelite radio and even a cocktail shaker.
The original Pickfair mansion in California was demolished, so Casa Del Rio remains as a rare British example of a Deco fantasy house, built at time when Britain was in love with Hollywood, Art Deco and its glamour.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Tales of Winter: The Art of Snow and Ice
BBC4, 9:00-10:30pm
Winter was not always beautiful. Until Pieter Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow, the long bitter months had never been transformed into a thing of beauty. This documentary charts how mankind's ever-changing struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, resulting in images that are now amongst the greatest paintings of all time. With contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and many others, the film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life out into the cold to reflect on the paintings that have come to define the art of snow and ice.
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Wednesday 23rd January
Factual; Science and Nature, Nature and Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Microworlds
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 1/3 - Canada's Coastal Forests
Steve Backshall pulls apart the pieces of Canada's remarkable coastal forest to reveal why this ancient sylvan environment is not only home to some of the largest trees on Earth, but also some of the greatest aggregations of top predators in North America. He untangles the complex relationships between the seasons, the landscape and the wildlife to discover what might be fuelling this forest's prolific productivity and supporting eagles, bears and wolves. In this complex coastal system, the secret to success comes in a remarkable annual event.
Factual; Science and Nature, Nature and Environment; Documentaries
Africa
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 4/6 - Cape
Southern Africa is a riot of life and colour because of two great ocean currents that sweep around the continent's Cape.
To the east, the warm Agulhas current generates clouds that roll inland to the wettest place in southern Africa. To the west is the cold Benguela current, home to more great white sharks than anywhere else. Moisture laden fog rolls inland, supporting an incredible desert garden. Where the two currents meet, the clash of warm and cold water creates one of the world's most fabulous natural spectacles - South Africa's sardine run. This is the greatest gathering of predators on the planet, including Africa's largest, the Bryde's whale.
Crime
Inside Death Row with Trevor McDonald
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm, 1/2
There is something quite eerie and almost surreal about watching Trevor McDonald make genial chit-chat with the doomed inmates on Indiana State Maximum Security Prison’s death row. Everyone is so terribly, impeccably polite in the most incongruous of ways. One condemned man describes a fellow prisoner’s murder and mutilation of a 14-year-old girl as “uncalled-for”. This is after he attacks the murderer’s “lack of morals”.
Another man gossips quite amiably with McDonald about how his execution was commuted to a 150-year prison sentence. Another has been on death row for 18 and a half years. Why? “They said I killed three people” is his answer. Louis Theroux has done this kind of reportage before, and done it better. McDonald is too constrained by his own nice-ness, he’s not inquisitive enough. He looks terribly ill at ease, too, which is perhaps understandable; it’s a hell of a forbidding place.
The broadcaster ventures inside Indiana State Prison, meeting 12 condemned men awaiting execution and some of the other inmates in the maximum security facility. Among those Trevor talks to are Benjamin Ritchie, who murdered a policeman, and John Stephenson, who killed three people on the orders of a gang boss, while James Harrison reveals how he escaped the death penalty with only weeks to spare after accepting a deal of life inside instead. Trevor also visits the 1950s-style barber shop where all the hairdressers are convicts, including Rick Pearish who explains why they are given permission to use cut-throat razors and sharp implements.
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Thursday 24th January
Documentaries
Nursing the Nation
ITV1, 8:3-9:00pm, 4/7
When Kay is on call she can expect the phone to ring at any time. In tonight’s episode we follow her at 4am as she goes to the aid of expectant mum, Natalie, whose waters have broken. With the nearest hospital 15 miles away it is the job of Kay and her colleague Jane to help delivery the baby at home, but with Natalie’s husband, children and extended members of their family present they can only hope everything remains calm.
In Somerset District Nurse Iona attends to the needs of the elderly in her area. 72 year old Richard is one of Iona’s younger patients. He lives with his mum Doris, who at 102, is Iona’s oldest patient. Despite that she enjoys putting Iona through her paces with her feisty spirit.
Iona says, “I don’t actually consider anybody old until they’re at least 85… It’s different from being in hospital. We often go in for years and years and years, they’re just much more themselves in their own environment than they would be in a hospital ward.”
There are more than 10,000 district nurses across the country, visiting more than 2 million people every year. For many these are the unsung heroes of the NHS. They develop relationships with patients that can last for years on end and as they see them in their own homes, they often become a huge part of their lives and cornerstones of the local community.
Inside Death Row with Trevor McDonald
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm, 1/2
Trevor McDonald’s sparse interviewing technique, mainly because it is so incongruously polite that it throws the prosaic horrors of capital punishment into stark relief. Concluding his visit to Indiana State Prison, McDonald is led into the death chamber, where the condemned spend their final hours before the lethal injection. Later, he interviews a prisoner who slit the throats of a woman and her four-year-old daughter. “I do deserve to be executed,” says the killer during a riveting ten minutes where McDonald, a kindly stranger, just lets him talk.
The broadcaster interviews Fredrick Baer, who has been on death row at Indiana State Prison for seven years following his conviction for the murders of a woman and her four-year-old daughter. Baer talks about his abusive childhood and explains what led him to a life of crime, before Trevor visits the chamber where the condemned man will one day be executed. There's also an insight into the more privileged part of the facility, where inmates stay in a dormitory with cubicles instead of cells. There, he talks to John Serwatka, who was paid to kill two innocent strangers and will never be released.
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Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Off-air recordings for week 12-18 January 2013
Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
____________________________________________
Monday 14th January
Factual; Arts, Culture, and the Media; Documentaries
Art Deco Icons
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
David Heathcote explores the dramatic 1930s London Transport HQ in St James's, London. When it was built in the1930s, it was the highest skyscraper in London. Heathcote goes behind the scenes and uncovers the story of a building so controversial that Frank Pick, who commissioned it, offered to resign from the London Underground Company, because there were so many complaints about its ambitious design.
The HQ became the nerve centre for an Art Deco transformation of the underground which remains today. David Heathcote ventures out on the Piccadilly Line to Southgate to investigate. For many, it is just the scene of a crowded journey to work, but Heathcote discovers a perfect example of a co-ordinated Deco look. The sleek tube station uses streamlined features, soft uplighting and chrome to create a glamorous overall effect. It may be lost on the commuters on their way to work, but for Heathcote it is a moment to stand back and enjoy the marvel that was Art Deco.
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
The Polar Bear Family and Me
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/3 - Spring
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan follows a wild polar bear family over three seasons, something no one has done before. Gordon and arctic survival experts travel by boat to far flung Svalbard. They manage to find a polar bear birth den and meet mother Lyra and her cubs Miki and Luca as they emerge from their den.
Little is known about the family life of polar bears because no one has been able to follow them this closely before. Gordon helps scientists fit Lyra with a tracking collar and takes on the mission of living with this remarkable bear family. To help him observe the polar bears Gordon tests a 'bear proof' filming hide - the 'Ice Cube' and gets closer to polar bears than anyone has ever done before.
Factual; History; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Why The Industrial Revolution Happened Here
BBC2, 9:30-10:30
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary and revolutionary periods in British history: the industrial revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever.
He traces the unprecedented explosion of new ideas and technological inventions that transformed Britain's agricultural society into an increasingly industrial and urbanised one. "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here " explore's two fascinating questions - why did the industrial revolution happen when it did, and why did it happen in Britain?
Professor Black discusses the reasons behind this transformation; from Britain's coal reserves which gave it a seemingly inexhaustible source of power to the ascendency of political liberalism, with engineers and industrialists able to meet and share ideas and inventions. He explains the impact that genius's like Josiah Wedgewood had on the consumer revolution and travels to Antigua to examine the impact Britain's empire had on this extraordinary period of growth.
Factual; Documentaries
Storyville: The House I Live In
BBC4, 10:00-11:45pm
As America remains embroiled in overseas conflict, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. For over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are more available today than ever before.
Filmed in more than twenty states, this film captures a definitive and heart-wrenching portrait of individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America's longest war, revealing its profound human rights implications.
While recognising the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have instead treated it as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast political and economic machine that feeds largely on America's poor, especially minority communities. Yet beyond simple misguided policy, the film investigates how political and economic corruption have fuelled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic and practical failures.
Ultimately, the documentary seeks, through compassionate inquiry, to promote public awareness of the history and contemporary mechanics of this human rights crisis and to begin a national conversation about its reform.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 15th January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Developing the Regency Brand
Lucy Worsley looks at Britain in the wake of Waterloo - and asks how this new, triumphant nation wanted to be seen and how it set about celebrating itself in its architecture and design. Again, the Regent led the way. As he grew fatter, barely able to climb stairs or walk about, architecture became his chief creative outlet - and nowhere more so than in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. At the start of his reign as Regent, this had been an elegant neoclassical villa, but working with the architect John Nash, George transformed it after 1815 into the most outrageous of palaces. In it, Lucy discovers more about the Regent's tastes, and finds out what he and his chef had in common.
But while the Regent was building away, what were his people doing? Lucy finds out why Waterloo Bridge became the official memorial to Britain's victory, and how it became an obsession for the painter John Constable. She also explores the powerful influence of the Elgin Marbles, purchased for the British Museum in 1816. These broken statues caused a revolution in Regency ideas and taste, and helped to spread the Greek revival in architecture across the British Isles - even if some buildings, like Edinburgh's very own Parthenon, didn't quite get finished.
So who was behind the Regency 'look'? Lucy finds out more about one of the most influential architects of the age, exploring Sir John Soane's strange architectural ideas and discovering some of his more unexpected legacies. But even if, to our eyes, Soane's ideas may be more exciting, it was his rival John Nash who really defined Regency style - and worked with the Regent himself.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Travel;
The Riviera: A History in Pictures
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2 - The Golden Era
Richard E Grant explores how modern art and the Riviera grew up together when France's Cote D'Azur became the hedonistic playground and experimental studio for the great masters of 20th century painting. With Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso resident on the coast, other artists from Jean Cocteau to Henri Lartigue, Raoul Dufy to Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia to Sergei Diaghilev were drawn to the area. As transatlantic liners brought America's super-rich to the region, art and celebrity became integrally intertwined as cultural gurus and multi-millionaires all partied on the beach. In an era of sunshine and bathing, of cinema and fast cars, of the Ballet Russes and Monte Carlo casinos, Grant discovers the extraordinary output of what became briefly the world's creative hub.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 16th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries
Africa
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - Congo
The very heart of Africa is covered in dense tropical rainforest. The animals that live here find the most ingenious ways to carve out their space in a claustrophobic landscape. Danger lurks in every shadow, but some animals thrive here, from honey-stealing chimps to birds with a lineage as old as the dinosaurs, thundering elephants and kick-boxing frogs. Here in the Congo, no matter how tough the competition, you must stand up and fight for yourself and your patch.
Documentaries
Saving Face
Channel 4, 10:00-11:10pm
This extended version of the Oscar-winning film Saving Face chronicles the journey of pioneering British plastic surgeon Dr Mohammad Jawad as he goes back to Pakistan to help the recovery of acid-attack victims. Every year in Pakistan, over 100 people - most of them women - are known to be victimised by brutal acid attacks, while numerous other cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery, survivors are physically and emotionally scarred. Many reported assailants, typically a husband or someone else close to the victim, receive minimal punishment from the state.
Dr Jawad is the surgeon responsible for treating British acid-attack victim Katie Piper - as documented in Channel 4's Bafta-nominated Katie: My Beautiful Face - and he regularly returns from his prominent London surgery to Pakistan to help the victims of such attacks. The film follows Dr Jawad as he makes every effort to save and reconstruct the faces of two women. Thirty-nine-year-old Zakia's husband threw acid over her after she filed for divorce. Most of the time she is too afraid to leave the house, while, at school, her daughter struggles to cope with the stigma.
As well as needing to alleviate the pain and restore functioning and features to her face, Zakia is bravely fighting for her husband to be brought to justice. Rukhsana is a 23-year-old mother who was attacked with acid and set alight by her husband and in-laws. Rukhsana has had to reconcile with them and continue living under the same roof. Her life becomes impossible as the family forbid her from seeing her daughter, and she seeks help.
This compelling True Stories documentary follows Zakia and Rukhsana, who are supported by NGOs such as the Acid Survivors Foundation-Pakistan and Islamic Help; sympathetic policymakers; attorney Ms Sarkar Abbass, who fights Zakia's case; and female politician Marvi Memon, who advocates for new legislation - all working to bring their assailants to justice and help these woman move on with their lives.
Saving Face takes an intimate look inside Pakistani society, illuminating two women's personal journey while showing how reformers in Pakistan are tackling this horrific problem.
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Thursday 17th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
Lost Kingdoms of South America
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/4 - People of the Clouds
Archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper embarks on an epic journey into the remote Peruvian Andes in search of the mysterious Chachapoya people. Once numbering half a million, they were known as the 'People of the Clouds'. Dr Cooper reveals how they developed sophisticated methods of recording stories, traded in exotic goods found hundreds of miles from their territory, and had funeral traditions that challenge assumptions about ancient human behaviour. His search for evidence takes him to astonishing cliff tombs untouched for 500 years and one of the most spectacular fortresses in South America, where the fate of the Chachapoya is revealed.
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Friday 18th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Carved with Love: The Genius of British Woodwork
BBC4, 3:00-4:00pm, 2/3 - The Glorious Grinling Brothers
Paul Copley narrates the story of Grinling Gibbons, the 17th-century woodcarver who helped restore London to its former glory in the aftermath of the Great Fire. He reveals how Gibbons' masterpieces - created for the likes of Charles II and William of Orange - were held in such high regard he came to be known as `the Michelangelo of wood'.
_____________________________________________
*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.
____________________________________________
Monday 14th January
Factual; Arts, Culture, and the Media; Documentaries
Art Deco Icons
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
David Heathcote explores the dramatic 1930s London Transport HQ in St James's, London. When it was built in the1930s, it was the highest skyscraper in London. Heathcote goes behind the scenes and uncovers the story of a building so controversial that Frank Pick, who commissioned it, offered to resign from the London Underground Company, because there were so many complaints about its ambitious design.
The HQ became the nerve centre for an Art Deco transformation of the underground which remains today. David Heathcote ventures out on the Piccadilly Line to Southgate to investigate. For many, it is just the scene of a crowded journey to work, but Heathcote discovers a perfect example of a co-ordinated Deco look. The sleek tube station uses streamlined features, soft uplighting and chrome to create a glamorous overall effect. It may be lost on the commuters on their way to work, but for Heathcote it is a moment to stand back and enjoy the marvel that was Art Deco.
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
The Polar Bear Family and Me
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/3 - Spring
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan follows a wild polar bear family over three seasons, something no one has done before. Gordon and arctic survival experts travel by boat to far flung Svalbard. They manage to find a polar bear birth den and meet mother Lyra and her cubs Miki and Luca as they emerge from their den.
Little is known about the family life of polar bears because no one has been able to follow them this closely before. Gordon helps scientists fit Lyra with a tracking collar and takes on the mission of living with this remarkable bear family. To help him observe the polar bears Gordon tests a 'bear proof' filming hide - the 'Ice Cube' and gets closer to polar bears than anyone has ever done before.
Factual; History; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Why The Industrial Revolution Happened Here
BBC2, 9:30-10:30
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary and revolutionary periods in British history: the industrial revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever.
He traces the unprecedented explosion of new ideas and technological inventions that transformed Britain's agricultural society into an increasingly industrial and urbanised one. "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here " explore's two fascinating questions - why did the industrial revolution happen when it did, and why did it happen in Britain?
Professor Black discusses the reasons behind this transformation; from Britain's coal reserves which gave it a seemingly inexhaustible source of power to the ascendency of political liberalism, with engineers and industrialists able to meet and share ideas and inventions. He explains the impact that genius's like Josiah Wedgewood had on the consumer revolution and travels to Antigua to examine the impact Britain's empire had on this extraordinary period of growth.
Factual; Documentaries
Storyville: The House I Live In
BBC4, 10:00-11:45pm
As America remains embroiled in overseas conflict, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. For over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are more available today than ever before.
Filmed in more than twenty states, this film captures a definitive and heart-wrenching portrait of individuals at all levels of America's War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America's longest war, revealing its profound human rights implications.
While recognising the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have instead treated it as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast political and economic machine that feeds largely on America's poor, especially minority communities. Yet beyond simple misguided policy, the film investigates how political and economic corruption have fuelled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic and practical failures.
Ultimately, the documentary seeks, through compassionate inquiry, to promote public awareness of the history and contemporary mechanics of this human rights crisis and to begin a national conversation about its reform.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 15th January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Developing the Regency Brand
Lucy Worsley looks at Britain in the wake of Waterloo - and asks how this new, triumphant nation wanted to be seen and how it set about celebrating itself in its architecture and design. Again, the Regent led the way. As he grew fatter, barely able to climb stairs or walk about, architecture became his chief creative outlet - and nowhere more so than in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. At the start of his reign as Regent, this had been an elegant neoclassical villa, but working with the architect John Nash, George transformed it after 1815 into the most outrageous of palaces. In it, Lucy discovers more about the Regent's tastes, and finds out what he and his chef had in common.
But while the Regent was building away, what were his people doing? Lucy finds out why Waterloo Bridge became the official memorial to Britain's victory, and how it became an obsession for the painter John Constable. She also explores the powerful influence of the Elgin Marbles, purchased for the British Museum in 1816. These broken statues caused a revolution in Regency ideas and taste, and helped to spread the Greek revival in architecture across the British Isles - even if some buildings, like Edinburgh's very own Parthenon, didn't quite get finished.
So who was behind the Regency 'look'? Lucy finds out more about one of the most influential architects of the age, exploring Sir John Soane's strange architectural ideas and discovering some of his more unexpected legacies. But even if, to our eyes, Soane's ideas may be more exciting, it was his rival John Nash who really defined Regency style - and worked with the Regent himself.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Travel;
The Riviera: A History in Pictures
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2 - The Golden Era
Richard E Grant explores how modern art and the Riviera grew up together when France's Cote D'Azur became the hedonistic playground and experimental studio for the great masters of 20th century painting. With Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso resident on the coast, other artists from Jean Cocteau to Henri Lartigue, Raoul Dufy to Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia to Sergei Diaghilev were drawn to the area. As transatlantic liners brought America's super-rich to the region, art and celebrity became integrally intertwined as cultural gurus and multi-millionaires all partied on the beach. In an era of sunshine and bathing, of cinema and fast cars, of the Ballet Russes and Monte Carlo casinos, Grant discovers the extraordinary output of what became briefly the world's creative hub.
____________________________________________
Wednesday 16th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries
Africa
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - Congo
The very heart of Africa is covered in dense tropical rainforest. The animals that live here find the most ingenious ways to carve out their space in a claustrophobic landscape. Danger lurks in every shadow, but some animals thrive here, from honey-stealing chimps to birds with a lineage as old as the dinosaurs, thundering elephants and kick-boxing frogs. Here in the Congo, no matter how tough the competition, you must stand up and fight for yourself and your patch.
Documentaries
Saving Face
Channel 4, 10:00-11:10pm
This extended version of the Oscar-winning film Saving Face chronicles the journey of pioneering British plastic surgeon Dr Mohammad Jawad as he goes back to Pakistan to help the recovery of acid-attack victims. Every year in Pakistan, over 100 people - most of them women - are known to be victimised by brutal acid attacks, while numerous other cases go unreported. With little or no access to reconstructive surgery, survivors are physically and emotionally scarred. Many reported assailants, typically a husband or someone else close to the victim, receive minimal punishment from the state.
Dr Jawad is the surgeon responsible for treating British acid-attack victim Katie Piper - as documented in Channel 4's Bafta-nominated Katie: My Beautiful Face - and he regularly returns from his prominent London surgery to Pakistan to help the victims of such attacks. The film follows Dr Jawad as he makes every effort to save and reconstruct the faces of two women. Thirty-nine-year-old Zakia's husband threw acid over her after she filed for divorce. Most of the time she is too afraid to leave the house, while, at school, her daughter struggles to cope with the stigma.
As well as needing to alleviate the pain and restore functioning and features to her face, Zakia is bravely fighting for her husband to be brought to justice. Rukhsana is a 23-year-old mother who was attacked with acid and set alight by her husband and in-laws. Rukhsana has had to reconcile with them and continue living under the same roof. Her life becomes impossible as the family forbid her from seeing her daughter, and she seeks help.
This compelling True Stories documentary follows Zakia and Rukhsana, who are supported by NGOs such as the Acid Survivors Foundation-Pakistan and Islamic Help; sympathetic policymakers; attorney Ms Sarkar Abbass, who fights Zakia's case; and female politician Marvi Memon, who advocates for new legislation - all working to bring their assailants to justice and help these woman move on with their lives.
Saving Face takes an intimate look inside Pakistani society, illuminating two women's personal journey while showing how reformers in Pakistan are tackling this horrific problem.
______________________________________________
Thursday 17th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
Lost Kingdoms of South America
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/4 - People of the Clouds
Archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper embarks on an epic journey into the remote Peruvian Andes in search of the mysterious Chachapoya people. Once numbering half a million, they were known as the 'People of the Clouds'. Dr Cooper reveals how they developed sophisticated methods of recording stories, traded in exotic goods found hundreds of miles from their territory, and had funeral traditions that challenge assumptions about ancient human behaviour. His search for evidence takes him to astonishing cliff tombs untouched for 500 years and one of the most spectacular fortresses in South America, where the fate of the Chachapoya is revealed.
_______________________________________________
Friday 18th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Carved with Love: The Genius of British Woodwork
BBC4, 3:00-4:00pm, 2/3 - The Glorious Grinling Brothers
Paul Copley narrates the story of Grinling Gibbons, the 17th-century woodcarver who helped restore London to its former glory in the aftermath of the Great Fire. He reveals how Gibbons' masterpieces - created for the likes of Charles II and William of Orange - were held in such high regard he came to be known as `the Michelangelo of wood'.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Off-air recordings for week 22 December - 4 January 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.
_____________________________________________
Sunday 23rd December
Documentaries
Joanna Lumkley: The Search for Noah's Ark
ITV1, 9:00-10:30pm
Joanna Lumley embarks on an epic journey overseas to investigate one of the oldest and most famous stories in the world – Noah’s Ark.
Joanna sets out across two continents to investigate the origins of this ancient tale. Was there a global flood and where did it happen? What was the ‘Ark’ ship like and where is it now? Perhaps most importantly – why does this story hold such resonance and significance for people across so many religions and cultures around the world?
The story of Noah has fascinated many adventurers and explorers who have gone in search of the Ark – from Marco Polo to Sir Walter Raleigh, and more recently NASA astronaut James Irwin. But beyond a physical search for the ship, Joanna is also keen to unearth the symbolism of the story – from the dove as a sign of peace to the rainbow as a sign of hope.
Joanna’s epic adventure takes her from nomads on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey to an ancient Sumerian flood tale on the Mesopotamian flood plain – now on the Turkish/Syrian border. In India a lost civilization, ancient trade routes and the Hindu faith turn up more clues, as do the sinking mountain ranges and maritime history of Oman.
The twists and turns of Joanna’s detective story provide a fresh perspective on how myth, legend, religion and science have come to play their part in understanding a story far older than the Bible itself. The journey to uncover the origins of one of the most enduring tales of all time is a surprising one.
_____________________________________________
Monday 24th December
Literature; Animation
A Christmas Carol
BBC1, 6:45-8:15pm
An animated retelling of Charles Dickens' classic novel about a Victorian-era miser taken on a journey of self-redemption, courtesy of several mysterious Christmas apparitions.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 25th December
Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Arena: Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospel
BBC2, 5:25-6:25pm
The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett - all teeth and glasses - burst on to our screens in the 1990’s. An instant star, she glided around the world in her habit telling us the story of painting. But she revealed nothing of her own, extraordinary story.
Was she in fact a real nun? How did she know so much about art? And how could this consecrated virgin and hermit justify appearing on television and keep her rule of silence?
Arena goes in search of the ‘real’ Wendy, who, at 82, talks frankly and humourously about her life – and death (“not too long now, I hope!”) for the first time. The film's director, Randall Wright, met Wendy over 20 years ago, living in a caravan in the middle of a wood, abiding by a strict timetable of nightly prayer. That meeting led to her hugely popular TV programmes, but while they told us a great deal about art they told us little about her. Now Wright revisits Sister Wendy to offer her the chance to make a film on her own terms.
Her Carmelite monastery gave Arena unprecedented access to their grounds in Quidenham, Norfolk, where Sister Wendy still follows her strict and eccentric regime: praying every night for six hours from midnight, then joining the other Sisters for mass via electric scooter. Sister Rachael is the former prioress at the monastery: “I would say if you expressed it in the old jargon, she could read souls.”
Typically, Sister Wendy set her own unusual ground rules for the programme: she would – albeit reluctantly - talk about her own life, but also wanted to share with us a carefully chosen selection of paintings by the greatest old masters – mostly in the National Gallery and Louvre – in an attempt to connect us to the big emotional insights in the Gospel stories they depict. These are the stories that are at the core of her faith and have formed her unique rebellious spirit. Yet these same stories - that were once universally familiar - and formed the moral template of Western civilisation – are now largely forgotten.
“I have noticed it in museums,” she says: “People looking at the kind of Christian stories that they would have been told in Sunday school in the past. Now they just don’t know.”
As we rediscover both the stories and the paintings, we also discover how Wendy found God, aged four, sitting under a table. How she left her parents aged 16 – without a backward glance - to become a nun. She tells us she has never experienced sexual feelings, and so felt being a nun was no real sacrifice. She reveals how her first job, as a teaching nun, led to a physical and nervous breakdown. And how living as a hermit ironically gave her the strength to face the outside world again, and encourage people towards the beauty of art.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 26th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Air: The Elixir of Life
Take a deep breath. Inside your lungs is a mixture of highly reactive and incredibly stable gases. Oxygen is the most reactive constituent. When we eat it’s these O2 molecules that seize electrons from our food to give our bodies the energy to live. Add a third oxygen atom and we make ozone, a gas so reactive that it’s toxic if we breathe it in, but high up in the stratosphere this gas protects us from the sun’s radiation. Add a carbon atom and we produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas responsible for warming the planet. We will unravel the puzzle of how and why these compounds of oxygen hold the key to the viability of life on the planet.
Nitrogen, the most common element in air, is an unreactive gas, but a key atom in every cell in every living thing on Earth. How can we imitate nature to bring this suffocating gas alive? Even less reactive are the Noble or inert gases. They’re so stable they are the only elements that exist naturally as individual atoms – but what is it about them that make them so inert? And how can we excite these gases enough to join the chemical party? We’ve come a long way from the days when alchemists thought air was a single element.
Children's Literature; Drama; Documentaries
Moominlandtales: The Life of Tove Jansson
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Moomintroll and the Moomin family are characters loved by children and parents worldwide who have grown up listening to Finnish writer Tove Jansson's delightful stories about a group of philosophical trolls who face a range of adventures in Moominland. This documentary reveals the strong autobiographical slant in the Moomins series as it traces the author's own extraordinary story from living the bohemian life of an artist in war-torn Helsinki to becoming a recluse on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland. Enjoying unprecedented access to Jansson's personal archive, the film reveals an unconventional, brave and compelling woman whose creative genius extended beyond Moominland to satire, fine art and masterful adult fiction - not least her highly-regarded The Summer Book. With home movie footage shot by her long-term female lover and companion, it offers a unique glimpse of an uncompromising fun-loving woman who developed love as the central theme of her work.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 27th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Water: The Fountain of Youth
Water is essential to life since every reaction in our bodies takes place in it. But what makes this fluid so special? What happens when you add a lighted splint to a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen? Kaboom! But why? What makes this particular rearrangement of atoms to form water so explosive? Can we tap this energy release to provide environmentally friendly solution to our energy problems? Plants have the ability to reverse this reaction by using the energy from sunlight to release oxygen from water. We are starting to learn how to do the same.
In this lecture we unpack how energy lies at the heart of chemistry. We’ll also look at the salts contained in water. Once again we will see the startling difference between a compound and its constituent elements. Take sodium chloride – aka table salt. Sodium is a soft silvery metal that explodes with water; chlorine a deadly poisonous, choking green gas. Both elements are lethal to us, but after they have met, a dramatic change takes place. The sodium and chloride ions that form are essential components in our bodies. They help generate the electrical impulses that make our brains and nerves work. We begin to see how chemistry plays a vital role in our lives.
_____________________________________________
Friday 27th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Earth: The Philosopher's Stone
The rocks that form planet Earth have always fascinated alchemists. Deep in the bowels of the Earth they thought the metals literally grew in the rocks and that one metal over time matured into another. They dreamed of replicating these natural processes turning ‘base metals’ into gold. Today the extraction of minerals and metals from rocks has made fortunes, but not quite in the way the alchemists imagined. We now know many rocks are the result of oxygen combining with different elements – each with individual properties. Breaking the strong bonds between oxygen and these elements has always been a challenge. Humankind learned how to release copper in the Bronze Age, and iron in the Iron Age, through smelting. Now we can extract even more exotic materials.
By understanding the properties of materials, such as the silicon present in computers, or the rare earth magnets generating our electricity in wind turbines, we are entering a new era of chemistry in which we can engineer electrons in new configurations for future technologies. We can now put together the unique cluster of protons, neutrons and electrons that form each of the 80 elements in exciting new ways. If the ancient alchemists were alive today they’d be dazzled by the wonders created by the Modern Alchemist.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 1st January 2013
Religion; Documentaries
Goodbye To Canterbury
BBC2, 5:30-6:30pm
On the eve of his retirement as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams gives BBC Two an exclusive insight into his thoughts after 10 years in one of the toughest jobs in Britain.
Goodbye To Canterbury reveals how the art and architecture of Canterbury Cathedral have been a spiritual touchstone throughout his ministry; how ancient stones and relics are signposts in the modern world; and what this extraordinary building has to teach his successors.
The Archbishop reveals how the struggle between the established Catholic church and the new forces of the Reformation shaped the cathedral and, even today, mean it is a divided building. He also reveals how the brave deeds of the ordinary people of Canterbury saved their church from the carpet bombing of the Luftwaffe in 1942 – and most recently, how the ancient stones have taught him how to respond to the pressures of being a modern Archbishop.
This is a journey through 2000 years of English art and architecture: most spectacularly, the exotic tombs of his predecessors, the Archbishops’ throne itself, the oldest illustrated book in England, a casket that once held remains of the most famous saint in the medieval world, and the Miracle Windows showing pilgrims restored to health.
Most importantly, the Archbishop reveals how the tensions between Church and State (which led to the murder of an archbishop in 1170, inside the cathedral) continue today as both the cathedral building and the individual holding the office of Archbishop must struggle to resolve twin loyalties to country and to God.
As Archbishop Williams asserts: “This is the mother church of England… throughout history, any battle about how this space was going to be used was in part a battle for the very soul of England… even today, it is the point of intersection between the kingdom of God, the values of God, and all the skill, the art, the problems, the politics of human beings.”
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3
In the first programme of this two-part series, Chris Packham takes us around the world to the scene of some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts and the science behind each phenomenon. There is the mysterious case of the car cocooned by caterpillars in Holland, and the baffling case of the exploding toads in Germany. In Switzerland a lakeside town is entombed in ice and a once in a lifetime storm turns Sydney, Australia crimson overnight. There are some disturbing plagues of mice and locusts and a swarm of ladybirds. And finally there are extraordinary strandings of starfish, crabs and whales. Chris tells the real story of the events behind the headlines and helps to explain what on earth happened.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 2nd January
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3
The second in this two-part series about the weirdest natural events on the planet features the incredible sea foam which turns part of the Australian coast into what looks like the world's biggest bubble bath. Plus there is a look at the mysterious death of thousands of sea birds on America's west coast, and the otherworldly phenomenon known as milky seas.
Other strange events include thousands of birds falling from the sky in America, causing panic and predictions of the apocalypse among the residents, and the fish that fell from the sky in south London.
And finally there is the story of the truly terrifying holes which open up in the earth's crust and swallow not only buildings, but in the case of a nature reserve in Florida, an entire lake.
Factual
Africa
BBC1, 1/6 - Kalahari
South West Africa is home to two great deserts. Animals will need their wits to survive.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 3rd January
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3
Chris Packham examines some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts behind each story
Factual; Documentaries
Death Camp Treblinka: Survival Stories
BBC4, 11:05pm-12:05am
The dark heart of the Nazi holocaust, Treblinka was an extermination camp where over 800,000 Polish Jews perished from 1942. Only two men can bear final witness to its terrible crimes. Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman were slave labourers who escaped in a dramatic revolt in August 1943. One would seek vengeance in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, while the other would appear in the sensational trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This film documents their amazing survivor stories and the tragic fate of their families, and offers new insights into a forgotten death camp.
____________________________________________
*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.
_____________________________________________
Sunday 23rd December
Documentaries
Joanna Lumkley: The Search for Noah's Ark
ITV1, 9:00-10:30pm
Joanna Lumley embarks on an epic journey overseas to investigate one of the oldest and most famous stories in the world – Noah’s Ark.
Joanna sets out across two continents to investigate the origins of this ancient tale. Was there a global flood and where did it happen? What was the ‘Ark’ ship like and where is it now? Perhaps most importantly – why does this story hold such resonance and significance for people across so many religions and cultures around the world?
The story of Noah has fascinated many adventurers and explorers who have gone in search of the Ark – from Marco Polo to Sir Walter Raleigh, and more recently NASA astronaut James Irwin. But beyond a physical search for the ship, Joanna is also keen to unearth the symbolism of the story – from the dove as a sign of peace to the rainbow as a sign of hope.
Joanna’s epic adventure takes her from nomads on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey to an ancient Sumerian flood tale on the Mesopotamian flood plain – now on the Turkish/Syrian border. In India a lost civilization, ancient trade routes and the Hindu faith turn up more clues, as do the sinking mountain ranges and maritime history of Oman.
The twists and turns of Joanna’s detective story provide a fresh perspective on how myth, legend, religion and science have come to play their part in understanding a story far older than the Bible itself. The journey to uncover the origins of one of the most enduring tales of all time is a surprising one.
_____________________________________________
Monday 24th December
Literature; Animation
A Christmas Carol
BBC1, 6:45-8:15pm
An animated retelling of Charles Dickens' classic novel about a Victorian-era miser taken on a journey of self-redemption, courtesy of several mysterious Christmas apparitions.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 25th December
Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Arena: Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospel
BBC2, 5:25-6:25pm
The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett - all teeth and glasses - burst on to our screens in the 1990’s. An instant star, she glided around the world in her habit telling us the story of painting. But she revealed nothing of her own, extraordinary story.
Was she in fact a real nun? How did she know so much about art? And how could this consecrated virgin and hermit justify appearing on television and keep her rule of silence?
Arena goes in search of the ‘real’ Wendy, who, at 82, talks frankly and humourously about her life – and death (“not too long now, I hope!”) for the first time. The film's director, Randall Wright, met Wendy over 20 years ago, living in a caravan in the middle of a wood, abiding by a strict timetable of nightly prayer. That meeting led to her hugely popular TV programmes, but while they told us a great deal about art they told us little about her. Now Wright revisits Sister Wendy to offer her the chance to make a film on her own terms.
Her Carmelite monastery gave Arena unprecedented access to their grounds in Quidenham, Norfolk, where Sister Wendy still follows her strict and eccentric regime: praying every night for six hours from midnight, then joining the other Sisters for mass via electric scooter. Sister Rachael is the former prioress at the monastery: “I would say if you expressed it in the old jargon, she could read souls.”
Typically, Sister Wendy set her own unusual ground rules for the programme: she would – albeit reluctantly - talk about her own life, but also wanted to share with us a carefully chosen selection of paintings by the greatest old masters – mostly in the National Gallery and Louvre – in an attempt to connect us to the big emotional insights in the Gospel stories they depict. These are the stories that are at the core of her faith and have formed her unique rebellious spirit. Yet these same stories - that were once universally familiar - and formed the moral template of Western civilisation – are now largely forgotten.
“I have noticed it in museums,” she says: “People looking at the kind of Christian stories that they would have been told in Sunday school in the past. Now they just don’t know.”
As we rediscover both the stories and the paintings, we also discover how Wendy found God, aged four, sitting under a table. How she left her parents aged 16 – without a backward glance - to become a nun. She tells us she has never experienced sexual feelings, and so felt being a nun was no real sacrifice. She reveals how her first job, as a teaching nun, led to a physical and nervous breakdown. And how living as a hermit ironically gave her the strength to face the outside world again, and encourage people towards the beauty of art.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 26th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Air: The Elixir of Life
Take a deep breath. Inside your lungs is a mixture of highly reactive and incredibly stable gases. Oxygen is the most reactive constituent. When we eat it’s these O2 molecules that seize electrons from our food to give our bodies the energy to live. Add a third oxygen atom and we make ozone, a gas so reactive that it’s toxic if we breathe it in, but high up in the stratosphere this gas protects us from the sun’s radiation. Add a carbon atom and we produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas responsible for warming the planet. We will unravel the puzzle of how and why these compounds of oxygen hold the key to the viability of life on the planet.
Nitrogen, the most common element in air, is an unreactive gas, but a key atom in every cell in every living thing on Earth. How can we imitate nature to bring this suffocating gas alive? Even less reactive are the Noble or inert gases. They’re so stable they are the only elements that exist naturally as individual atoms – but what is it about them that make them so inert? And how can we excite these gases enough to join the chemical party? We’ve come a long way from the days when alchemists thought air was a single element.
Children's Literature; Drama; Documentaries
Moominlandtales: The Life of Tove Jansson
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Moomintroll and the Moomin family are characters loved by children and parents worldwide who have grown up listening to Finnish writer Tove Jansson's delightful stories about a group of philosophical trolls who face a range of adventures in Moominland. This documentary reveals the strong autobiographical slant in the Moomins series as it traces the author's own extraordinary story from living the bohemian life of an artist in war-torn Helsinki to becoming a recluse on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland. Enjoying unprecedented access to Jansson's personal archive, the film reveals an unconventional, brave and compelling woman whose creative genius extended beyond Moominland to satire, fine art and masterful adult fiction - not least her highly-regarded The Summer Book. With home movie footage shot by her long-term female lover and companion, it offers a unique glimpse of an uncompromising fun-loving woman who developed love as the central theme of her work.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 27th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Water: The Fountain of Youth
Water is essential to life since every reaction in our bodies takes place in it. But what makes this fluid so special? What happens when you add a lighted splint to a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen? Kaboom! But why? What makes this particular rearrangement of atoms to form water so explosive? Can we tap this energy release to provide environmentally friendly solution to our energy problems? Plants have the ability to reverse this reaction by using the energy from sunlight to release oxygen from water. We are starting to learn how to do the same.
In this lecture we unpack how energy lies at the heart of chemistry. We’ll also look at the salts contained in water. Once again we will see the startling difference between a compound and its constituent elements. Take sodium chloride – aka table salt. Sodium is a soft silvery metal that explodes with water; chlorine a deadly poisonous, choking green gas. Both elements are lethal to us, but after they have met, a dramatic change takes place. The sodium and chloride ions that form are essential components in our bodies. They help generate the electrical impulses that make our brains and nerves work. We begin to see how chemistry plays a vital role in our lives.
_____________________________________________
Friday 27th December
Science; Lectures
Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Earth: The Philosopher's Stone
The rocks that form planet Earth have always fascinated alchemists. Deep in the bowels of the Earth they thought the metals literally grew in the rocks and that one metal over time matured into another. They dreamed of replicating these natural processes turning ‘base metals’ into gold. Today the extraction of minerals and metals from rocks has made fortunes, but not quite in the way the alchemists imagined. We now know many rocks are the result of oxygen combining with different elements – each with individual properties. Breaking the strong bonds between oxygen and these elements has always been a challenge. Humankind learned how to release copper in the Bronze Age, and iron in the Iron Age, through smelting. Now we can extract even more exotic materials.
By understanding the properties of materials, such as the silicon present in computers, or the rare earth magnets generating our electricity in wind turbines, we are entering a new era of chemistry in which we can engineer electrons in new configurations for future technologies. We can now put together the unique cluster of protons, neutrons and electrons that form each of the 80 elements in exciting new ways. If the ancient alchemists were alive today they’d be dazzled by the wonders created by the Modern Alchemist.
_____________________________________________
Tuesday 1st January 2013
Religion; Documentaries
Goodbye To Canterbury
BBC2, 5:30-6:30pm
On the eve of his retirement as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams gives BBC Two an exclusive insight into his thoughts after 10 years in one of the toughest jobs in Britain.
Goodbye To Canterbury reveals how the art and architecture of Canterbury Cathedral have been a spiritual touchstone throughout his ministry; how ancient stones and relics are signposts in the modern world; and what this extraordinary building has to teach his successors.
The Archbishop reveals how the struggle between the established Catholic church and the new forces of the Reformation shaped the cathedral and, even today, mean it is a divided building. He also reveals how the brave deeds of the ordinary people of Canterbury saved their church from the carpet bombing of the Luftwaffe in 1942 – and most recently, how the ancient stones have taught him how to respond to the pressures of being a modern Archbishop.
This is a journey through 2000 years of English art and architecture: most spectacularly, the exotic tombs of his predecessors, the Archbishops’ throne itself, the oldest illustrated book in England, a casket that once held remains of the most famous saint in the medieval world, and the Miracle Windows showing pilgrims restored to health.
Most importantly, the Archbishop reveals how the tensions between Church and State (which led to the murder of an archbishop in 1170, inside the cathedral) continue today as both the cathedral building and the individual holding the office of Archbishop must struggle to resolve twin loyalties to country and to God.
As Archbishop Williams asserts: “This is the mother church of England… throughout history, any battle about how this space was going to be used was in part a battle for the very soul of England… even today, it is the point of intersection between the kingdom of God, the values of God, and all the skill, the art, the problems, the politics of human beings.”
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3
In the first programme of this two-part series, Chris Packham takes us around the world to the scene of some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts and the science behind each phenomenon. There is the mysterious case of the car cocooned by caterpillars in Holland, and the baffling case of the exploding toads in Germany. In Switzerland a lakeside town is entombed in ice and a once in a lifetime storm turns Sydney, Australia crimson overnight. There are some disturbing plagues of mice and locusts and a swarm of ladybirds. And finally there are extraordinary strandings of starfish, crabs and whales. Chris tells the real story of the events behind the headlines and helps to explain what on earth happened.
_____________________________________________
Wednesday 2nd January
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3
The second in this two-part series about the weirdest natural events on the planet features the incredible sea foam which turns part of the Australian coast into what looks like the world's biggest bubble bath. Plus there is a look at the mysterious death of thousands of sea birds on America's west coast, and the otherworldly phenomenon known as milky seas.
Other strange events include thousands of birds falling from the sky in America, causing panic and predictions of the apocalypse among the residents, and the fish that fell from the sky in south London.
And finally there is the story of the truly terrifying holes which open up in the earth's crust and swallow not only buildings, but in the case of a nature reserve in Florida, an entire lake.
Factual
Africa
BBC1, 1/6 - Kalahari
South West Africa is home to two great deserts. Animals will need their wits to survive.
_____________________________________________
Thursday 3rd January
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3
Chris Packham examines some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts behind each story
Factual; Documentaries
Death Camp Treblinka: Survival Stories
BBC4, 11:05pm-12:05am
The dark heart of the Nazi holocaust, Treblinka was an extermination camp where over 800,000 Polish Jews perished from 1942. Only two men can bear final witness to its terrible crimes. Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman were slave labourers who escaped in a dramatic revolt in August 1943. One would seek vengeance in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, while the other would appear in the sensational trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This film documents their amazing survivor stories and the tragic fate of their families, and offers new insights into a forgotten death camp.
____________________________________________
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Off-air recordings for week 8-14 December 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.
_____________________________________________
Sunday 9th December
Factual; Documentaries
The Trouble with Aid
BBC4, 9:00-11:00pm
45 years ago a group of young men and women set out to make the world a better place. They wanted to bring aid to those in dire need. These idealists would help create a new mass movement - humanitarianism. Its core belief is a simple one - that it is our duty to help those in desperate need, wherever they are. But trying to do good in the world's worst conflict zones is filled with danger and compromise.
The Trouble with Aid tells the story of what really happened during the major humanitarian disasters of the last 50 years: from the Biafran War, through to the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid, to the military intervention in Somalia and to present-day Afghanistan. Despite the best intentions, aid can have some unintended and terrible consequences.
Using the testimony of key players from the world's largest aid agencies, the film looks at what happens when good people try to help in a bad world.
Today, any humanitarian crisis leads to cries that we must 'do something'. The Trouble with Aid challenges this fundamental assumption by asking the question few us are prepared to face: can aid sometimes do more harm than good?
Factual; Discussion and Talk
The Trouble with Aid - The Debate
BBC4, 11:00-11:45pm
Saving lives in dangerous and complex humanitarian crises is fraught with moral dilemmas. Further exploring the emergencies highlighted in Ricardo Pollack's film The Trouble with Aid, aid professionals and critics debate whether there are occasions when humanitarian aid might do more harm than good, and what emergency aid means in the 21st century.
_____________________________________________
Monday 10th December
News
Panorama: The Secret Drone War
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
America's CIA is fighting a secret war in the badlands of Pakistan - targeting al Qaeda and other militants with hellfire missiles in drone strikes that the UN says are illegal. No one knows the true number who have died, but it is estimated that the death toll may be around 3,000 - some of them, it is claimed, innocent women and children.
Panorama goes to Waziristan, one of the most dangerous places in the world, to report on the drone war and to find out from its victims why they are seeking justice in the British courts.
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Tuesday 11th December
Documentaries
Is Our Weather Getting Worse?
Channel 4, 9:00-9:00pm
n Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception. It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse.
The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought. In Aberdeen in March, temperatures soared to 23 degrees Celsius. But within four weeks, everything had changed. April 15 marked the beginning of our wettest summer on record. Towns such as Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were flooded not once, but twice, and by the end of August 4000 homes across Britain had been devastated by floods. But the strange events of 2012 are only part of the story. For the past decade, our weather has been so erratic that government scientists have begun to use words like 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinary'.
This programme gets to the truth of our extraordinary decade of extreme weather. Blending dramatic archive footage, expert insight and cutting-edge graphics, the film investigates the most severe weather events to have struck Britain in recent memory and puts them into the wider context of climate change. Are the strange events of 2012 a one-off or an ominous sign of climate change in action? How does the changing global climate affect the British weather and what can we expect in the future? Is our weather getting worse?
Factual; News
Cuba with Simon Reeve
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale. Simon Reeve meets ordinary Cubans whose lives are being transformed, from the owners of fledgling businesses to the newly rich estate agents selling properties worth up to 750,000 pounds.
In this hour-long documentary for the BBC's award-winning This World strand, Simon gets under the skin of a colourful and vibrant country famous for its hospitality and humour and asks if this new economic openness could lead to political liberalisation in a totalitarian country with a poor human rights record. Will Cuba be able to maintain the positive aspects of its long isolation under socialism - low crime, top-notch education and one of the best health systems in the world - while embracing what certainly looks like capitalism? Is this the last chance to see Cuba before it becomes just like any other country?
Factual; Documentaries
The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/4 - The Wonder of Islam
The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.
Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.
Along with Christianity, the Dark Ages saw the emergence of another vital religion - Islam. After emerging in the near East it spread across North Africa and into Europe, bringing its unique artistic style with it. Waldemar examines the early artistic explorations of the first Muslims, the development of their mosques and their scientific achievements
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Wednesday 12th December
Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries
Miniature Britain
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm
Biologist George McGavin goes on a journey around the British Isles to show us the extraordinary little things that are vital to our land. With a revolutionary new microscope camera seven thousand times more powerful than the human eye, George reveals the surprising beauty of Britain close-up.
Caterpillars' feet have hooks that anchor them to leaves even upside down, the wings of butterflies and moths are a kaleidoscope of colourful scales that keep them safe from predators, bee stings have barbs that make them stick deep in your skin, and feathers have thousands of hooks that zip together keeping birds airborne.
Our cities are full of invisible miniature life too: millions of cute 'water bears' graze pavement mosses, and our homes have legions of dust mites scavenging for food in our carpets. This is Britain as you've never seen it before.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Rome: A History of the Eternal City
9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
Simon Sebag Montefiore charts the rocky course of Rome's rise to become the capital of Western Christendom and its impact on the lives of its citizens, elites and high priests. Rome casts aside its pantheon of pagan gods and a radical new religion takes hold. Christianity was just a persecuted sect until Emperor Constantine took a huge leap of faith, promoting it as the religion of Empire. But would this divine gamble pay off?
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Thursday 13th December
Factual; News; Documentaries
Britain's Hidden Housing Crisis
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm
Britain is in the grip of a housing crisis of a sort not seen before, where even the most unexpected people are finding themselves homeless. Every two and a half minutes someone in Britain is threatened with losing their home. Hard-working people who’ve reliably paid their rent or mortgages for years can be only a few pay packets away from finding themselves without a roof over their heads. And with more people becoming homeless and fewer homes being built, tens of thousands of families are living in temporary accommodation, sometimes in squalid conditions.
In Britain’s New Homeless, Panorama follows the struggles and challenges faced by four people as they face the reality of losing their homes. Filmed over the course of five months, the programme reveals the devastating impact of losing everything: An investment banker who, following the crash of 2008, lost everything and eventually found himself sleeping rough in a park in Croydon; another businessman whose company went under in the recession and whose family home was repossessed when he was unable to keep up the mortgage repayments; a grandmother who had worked all her life but could no longer pay the mortgage when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was forced to stop work; and a bus driver, whose family of six was evicted from their council house when they couldn't keep up with the rental payments. The family found themselves living in one-bedroom emergency accommodation, while the council decided whether they have made themselves 'intentionally homeless'.
Documentaries
Pensioners Behind Bars
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm
This colourful film includes the stories of men and women who have turned to crime only in later years after a lifetime as law-abiding citizens. It features a septuagenarian heroin dealer, a former driving instructor turned brothel keeper and a retired builder convicted of possession of blackmarket cigarettes and cannabis. They explain what drew them into crime, what it’s like to be locked up for the first time at their age, and how they are dealing with the consequences. It also shows how career criminals such as former Krays associate Freddie Foreman are coping in retirement and asks if they still retain the urge to commit crime.
The number of over-60s in prison has trebled in the last 20 years and the programme begins with Anthony McErlean, 67, serving a five-year sentence at HMP Elmley for an audacious fraud. After faking his own death while abroad, in order to swindle his insurance company out of £500,000, he realised the potential pitfalls of spending his old age overseas. “I thought if I get sick I can’t go back to the UK as a dead person and get healthcare. I’m up s*** creek without a paddle. I thought how do you un-kill yourself?” Anthony was caught when police found his fingerprints on his own death certificate. He pleaded guilty to fraud and theft. He says: “I regret being in here, but I don’t feel that I shouldn’t be in here. I knew what I was doing and I knew the risks.”
But the programme features others who were shocked at being sent to prison. Grandmother Adele Lubin, 66, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for conspiracy to control prostitution at the age of 62 and began her term in Holloway. She started a legitimate massage therapy business but discovered that it was difficult to make money without offering extra services – and as her business expanded she became a brothel madam. “The phone used to ring and they would say, ‘What kind of massage is it?’ And I would say, ‘Well it’s very therapeutic, and relaxing and sensual.’ And then some people would say, ‘Well do you do a happy ending?’ And I’d have to say, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ “I never thought if I ever got caught I’d end up in jail… I just didn’t think I was doing anything too terrible.”
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Friday 14th December
News; World Affairs
Unreported World: Russia's Radical Chic
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm
Glamorous young Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak has swapped high-profile TV stardom for a life leading political protests against President Putin, who also happens to be a close family friend. Unreported World reveals how far Sobchak is risking her livelihood and privileged lifestyle to confront the strongman of the Kremlin, who has dealt ruthlessly with other political opponents. Sobchak is one of the most famous people in Russia, known by millions as the presenter of Russian Big Brother, and a member of the elite that made fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her father was the mayor of St Petersburg and mentor to Vladimir Putin, a family friend. A quick search of her career highlights on YouTube turns up clips of her dancing lasciviously, fighting with a boyfriend, and being carried home to her apartment in a drunken stupor.
So, when Muscovites took to the streets in December 2011 in a series of unprecedented mass protests against electoral fraud and the Putin regime, they were amazed when she joined them, telling them she had a lot to lose in fighting their cause. Since then, she's changed her image and started going out with Ilya Yashin, a political organiser. She's still using her celebrity, but now to oppose the regime of a man she's known since she was a child. And she's suffering the consequences. By opposing the government, Sobchak has swapped a life of privilege for one of uncertainty. She's been banished from mainstream television to a tiny cable station, where she hosts a political discussion programme. In June 2012, armed police raided her apartment.
Reporter Marcel Theroux and director David Fuller follow Sobchak as she records an hour-long interview with Katya Samutsevich, one of the Pussy Riot protestors. It's Sobchak's idea to film the interview outside with the cathedral the protestors invaded. At Sobchak's suggestion, she and Samutsevich wear prison jackets. It's a well-calculated tease, but the Kremlin is showing signs of losing patience with her.
Sobchak tells Theroux that she's just had word that her mother, a career politician, has lost her job. She attributes this, like her banishment to cable television and the police raid, to a government that is trying to squeeze the life out of the opposition. To a certain extent, it's succeeding. With Putin in office for another six years, and the most recent elections marked by low turn-outs and widespread apathy, it appears that a certain Russian fatalism is returning. As the Unreported World team leaves Moscow, Theroux concludes that high-wattage stars like Sobchak, who can galvanise Russia's younger and least cynical voters, could be an answer to this fatalism.
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Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Off-air recordings for week 1-7 December 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 2nd December
Factual; Documentaries
Solar Mamas
BBC4, 6/8 - Why Poverty? season
Solar Mamas follows the remarkable story of Rafea, a mother-of-four from Jordan who challenges the status quo of her traditional marriage by travelling to India to train as a solar engineer for six months. Along with 27 other mothers and grandmothers from poor communities around the world - many of whom are illiterate - she will learn the skills needed to bring electricity and light back to her village.
For Rafea, it is a life changing journey. As the second wife of a Bedouin living in a remote part of the Jordanian desert, she has had limited opportunities in life. Now she has been selected to attend the Barefoot College in India run by the inimitable Roy Bunker. Alongside women from Kenya, Burkina Faso and Colombia and across cultural and language divides, Rafea needs to get to grips with electrical components, circuit boards and soldering. Her new knowledge will see her do things she never imagined, but it will also have an unanticipated effect on her relationship with her patriarchal husband.
Addressing themes of education, gender equality, environmental sustainability and development, the documentary takes an inspiring and compelling look at poverty - and the ways women around the world are working to pull themselves out of the poverty trap.
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Monday 3rd December
News
Panorama: How Safe Is Your Hospital?
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
The NHS is under huge pressure with increasing demand, limited finances and facing the largest reorganization in its history. With the latest data on hospital death rates, Panorama reveals poor patient care is putting thousands of people at risk of death or serious injury every year.
Many of these problems were first highlighted five years ago during the scandal at Stafford Hospital when hundreds of people died unnecessarily. Despite assurances that it could never happen again, reporter Declan Lawn finds serious ongoing problems in trusts across the country - and a systemic failure to act on warnings that patients are being put at risk.
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Tuesday 4th December
Factual; History; Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 5/5 - The Joy of Tech
Factual; Documentaries
Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/4 - What The Barbarians Did For Us
The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.
Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.
The 'Barbarians' are often blamed for the collapse of the Roman Empire, but in reality they were fascinating civilisations that produced magnificent art. Focusing on the Huns, Vandals and Goths, Waldemar follows each tribe's journey across Europe and discovers the incredible art they produced along the way.
Factual; Documentaries
The Great Land Rush
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm, 7/8 - Why Poverty? season
75 per cent of Mali's population are farmers, but rich land-hungry nations like China and Saudi Arabia are leasing Mali's land in order to turn large areas into agri-business farms. Many Malian peasants do not welcome these efforts, seeing them as yet another manifestation of imperialism. Tackling questions such as food sovereignty, land ownership and how development is sold to Africa, Hugo Berkeley and Osvalde Lewat's film asks who owns Africa.
A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, the film screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty. The global cross-media event sees the same eight films screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
Factual, Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
Imagine... Jeanette Winterson: My Monster and Me
BBC1, 10:35-11:55pm
Nearly thirty years after her triumphant debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson returns with Alan Yentob to the scenes of her extraordinary childhood in Lancashire. She was adopted and brought up to be a missionary by the larger-than-life Mrs Winterson. But Jeanette followed a different path: she found literature, fell in love with a girl, and escaped to university.
Following her recent memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, Jeanette Winterson tells the story of her recent breakdown and suicide attempt, her quest to find her birth mother and how the power of books helped her to survive.
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Wednesday 5th December
factual; Documentaries
Supersized Earth
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3
In this final episode, Dallas examines what it takes to keep seven billion humans alive with food, energy and water. 40% of the Earth's surface is now devoted to growing food. To appreciate how we have transformed vast swathes of land to produce food, Dallas paraglides over the south coast of Spain, where what was once an arid landscape is now home to the world's largest greenhouse array.
He also rides with cowboys on Brazil's largest cattle ranch, to help herd over 125,000 cattle. He visits Lake Mead, the biggest man-made lake in the USA, to see how it has helped us transform harsh desert into the bright lights of Las Vegas. He also joins the team building a 750 mile long artificial river to transport water from south to north China.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Rome: A History of the Eternal City
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Simon Sebag Montefiore looks at how every event in ancient Rome revolved around religion. From the foundation myth through to the deification of Emperors; nothing could happen without calling upon the Pantheon of Roman gods. Simon investigates how the Roman's worshipped and sacrificed to the gods. He discovers that sacredness defined what was Roman and it was the responsibility of every Roman to play their part in the cult. Even the ancient Roman sewer was holy ground!
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Thursday 6th December
News; Documentaries
Madeley Meets The Squatters
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm
Today in Britain, it’s estimated there are anything between 20,000 and 50,000 people squatting. They are often portrayed as anti-social, drug-taking freeloaders, who contribute nothing to society. But is that really the case? With a new law having just come into force making squatting a criminal offence, Richard Madeley is on a mission to meet Britain’s squatters, to see what their lives are really like and find out why they squat. He also hears from landlords and even brings them face-to-face with the people occupying their property against their wishes.
Richard travels the country to meet squatters from wide-ranging backgrounds, all with a different story to tell and conflicting views on the morality of how they live. In doing so, he examines how the change in the law will impact on the current situation faced by both squatters and landlords.
Richard visits a former pub in Walthamstow, used as a squat for five years despite being surrounded by local businesses. Nigel Jenkins owns the garage opposite and explains what he has seen in the past: “Nine o’clock in the morning they are drunk out of their skulls. First thing in the morning we come in…they have used the driveway as toilets.” Despite this he admits: “Everyone sees them as an inconvenience but nobody sees the amount of trouble these people are in. What are you going to do with them? Unless you can re-house them, there’s nothing you can do with them.”
Richard heads to Bristol, where he discovers that local squatters have organised themselves into groups, with their own planning committee that meets each week to help members find new squats to live in. Richard attends one of the meetings to find out more and a squatter explains to him: “I like to think of us as urban wombles, we roam the streets that aren’t being used and we make a use of them. How can you argue the morality of that? We don’t pay rent, no, but at least people aren’t sleeping rough.”
There is a tense atmosphere when Richard introduces Dave Durant to the squatters who have occupied a property he owns in south Bristol. It’s the second time he’s had squatters in his building and with Richard as mediator he confronts the people occupying his building: “I know that the place was locked, you know that the place was locked. I know, that you must have broken into my house.” Squatter Tristan refuses to confirm how he gained access but is keen to respond: “If people are suffering they should be allowed to sleep under a roof, especially if it lies dormant like this one.” He tells Richard: ”I see it as greed. When there are five of us wandering the streets, hungry, needing somewhere to live, when he has multiple properties, I see that as greed. Until you’ve been in our position and suffered like we have, you’re going to find it hard to have a balanced view.”
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Friday 7th December
News; World Affairs
Unreported World - Egypt: Sex, Mobs and Revolution
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm
Unreported World examines the increase in sexual assaults and harassment in Egypt.
The programme reveals claims that young men are being paid to carry out horrendous mob attacks on women. It is claimed that this started under the Mubarak regime and it is suspected by some to still continue.
Women have been at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution but are now often fearful of taking part in the regular public demonstrations.
Sexual harassment is not a new problem in Egypt. In a 2010 United Nations survey, more than 80 per cent of women surveyed said they'd been sexually harassed.
But there are signs that the problem has got worse with the breakdown of public order since the revolution. Reports of mob sex attacks are on the increase.
Reporter Ramita Navai and director Dimitri Collingridge meet a young woman who has recently survived such an attack. Nihal was out at a protest in Tahrir Square with four other women. She managed to escape but her friend suffered an ordeal that is typical of these attacks.
She was stripped naked and dozens of men raped her with their hands. Nihal's friend sustained internal injuries and couldn't walk for a week. She has since fled Egypt. Nihal too was severely traumatised.
Nihal has become involved in Harassmap, an anti-sexual harassment movement that charts mob attacks and allows women to log sexual harassment. In the last two years the team has received more than 900 reports from women across the country.
Despite the publicity on the issue, the women themselves are worried about speaking about their personal experiences. It's a taboo subject and many of them are even afraid to tell their parents what they've suffered.
Even when women decide to go to the police, they say they rarely receive help. Twenty-one-year-old student Dina has been the victim of several assaults. She claims that on one occasion she managed to alert a nearby police officer, but that he refused to help, telling her the attack was her fault because she was wearing the wrong clothes.
The team witnesses the everyday harassment women face. As they film, a woman is chased by a group of teenagers. And as Navai and Dina walk down a busy main street, they are constantly verbally abused.
Many of the women Unreported World meets say that age, dress and looks have very little to do with becoming a target. In one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cairo, Stable Anta, all the women are veiled and they suffer harassment similar to their more westernised counterparts downtown...
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Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Off-air recordings for week 24-30 November 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 25th November
Factuall Life Stories; Documentaries
Return to Forgotten Britain
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/2
In the previous series of 'Forgotten Britain', the BBC's foreign correspondent Fergal Keane took a journey closer to home to see how some of Britain's hard pressed communities were managing at the turn of the millennium. In the first episode of this follow-up series, Fergal retraces his steps to find out what happened to the inspiring families he met then and how they are coping today.
Factual; Documentaries
Give Us The Money
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Documentary taking an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at 30 years of Bob Geldof and Bono's campaign against poverty. Their work has made them icons of aid and even garnered them Nobel Peace Prize nominations, but what impact has it really had on Africa? Through archive footage and candid new interviews with key players including Geldof, Bono and Bill Gates, the film re-examines three decades of unprecedented campaigns and scrutinises the effectiveness of celebrity-led activism.
Nearly 30 years ago, two young pop singers set out to challenge the world. Their aim - to use their celebrity status to end poverty in Africa. After Bob Geldof instigated a chart-topping charity single and staged one of the biggest rock concerts ever seen, he and Bono joined forces and went on to build a multi-million dollar lobbying organisation. Along the way, they hi-jacked the Brits, enlisted IT billionaires, fashion models and academics, won over the wiliest of politicians, lobbied world leaders and put the politics of poverty firmly on the international agenda. They raised vast sums for charity and persuaded western powers to dramatically reduce third world debt.
But did they really help make poverty history in Africa? What impact has their work really had on economic growth and poverty reduction? And if they haven't made poverty history, has their campaign at least been responsible for a big step forward?
Factual; History; Documentaries
Michael Wood: The Story of India
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 6/6
The final episode examines the British Raj and India's freedom struggle. In South India, Michael sees how a global corporation, the East India Company, came to control much of the subcontinent. He visits the magical culture of Lucknow and discovers the enigmatic Briton, 'the rebel in the Raj' who helped found the freedom movement. Then the Amritsar massacre, the rise of Gandhi and Nehru and the fateful events that led to the Partition of India in 1947. The series ends with India once again a global giant, as she has been for most of her amazing history
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Monday 26th November
Documentaries
Dispatches: Where Has Your Aid Money Gone?
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
Public spending is being slashed across the board. But the Department for International Development, which doles out Britain's overseas aid, is set to enjoy substantial year-on-year increases to £11bn by 2015.
Jonathan Miller travels to Rwanda - the jewel in the crown of British overseas aid - to investigate what British taxes have paid for, and to ask what our government has achieved with the influence our aid supposedly buys us.
David Cameron personally backs increasing British aid to Rwanda to nearly £100m a year by 2015. He's called it 'a role model for development and lifting people out of poverty in Africa'.
The Conservatives have a particularly close relationship with the architect of Rwanda's success, President Paul Kagame.
But Dispatches has found that, far from creating a beacon of democracy, Kagame has established a repressive regime with a worrying disregard for human rights.
Dispatches asks if British aid to Rwanda is truly helping the poor, or helping to create Africa's next tyrant?
Documentaries
The Curious Case of the Clark Brothers
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
What would you do if your adult children developed an age-defying disease that made them regress to childhood in front of your eyes? How would you cope with seeing them go from man to boy and looking after them 24 hours a day? This documentary tells the harrowing but brutally honest story of Tony and Christine Clark and their two sons Matthew, who's 39 and Michael, who's 42, as they live and cope with this dreadful condition; not once, but twice.
Michael and Matthew Clark from Hull had lived normal lives until their late thirties. They were totally unaware their brains were carrying a deadly neurological time bomb: a rare and little known condition called Leukodystrophy. The condition causes a progressive loss of every neurological function - speech, memory, movement, sight, hearing, touch, eating, swallowing - and normally affects children. To discover a late onset strain is exceptional and what makes it even more astonishing to the Clark family is that it should attack two members of the same family.
Christine and Tony thought their parenting days were over. They had taken early retirement and were enjoying a pleasant ex-pat life in Spain. When news of their sons' illness and rapid deterioration reached them, they had to abandon their life abroad and return to the UK. The family moved into a cramped one-bedroom flat and the parents were forced to look after and care for their two 'boys' 24 hours a day. This film follows the Clark family on their fascinating and traumatic journey as they struggle with their day-to-day life, trying to come to terms with watching their grown-up sons become young boys trapped in adult bodies.
Factual; Documentaries
Stealing Africa
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
Ruschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. There is so much money in the public coffers that mayor can't spend it all, largely thanks to the contribution from one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of commodities giant Glencore. However, Glencore's copper mines in Zambia don't generate similar tax windfalls for Zambians. The country has the third largest copper reserves in the world, but 60 per cent of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80 per cent are unemployed. Christoffer Guldbrandsen investigates the dark heart of the tax system employed by multi-nationals and asks how much profit is fair.
A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Stealing Africa screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty. The global cross-media event sees the same eight films screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
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Tuesday 27th November
Factual; Documentaries
The State of Welfare
BBC Radio 4, 10:00am-1:00pm
Seventy years ago William Beveridge wrote a report that was to lay the foundations for the welfare state. He identified the Five Giants that society needed to slay: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. His vision was to lead to the welfare state we know today. Jane Garvey and Julian Worricker discuss how well the state serves those who rely it on it and those who pay for it. They'll hear from a new BBC-commissioned poll on attitudes to those on welfare and how well the system is working. They also challenge some of the myths surrounding the Beveridge report with his biographer Jose Harris and political historian Steven Fielding. They will be exploring fresh visions for welfare in 2012 from Julia Slay of the New Economics Foundation, the author James Bartholomew and Frances O'Grady, the leader of the TUC. They'll face some tough questioning from a panel of Anne McElvoy of The Economist magazine, Patrick Nolan from the thinktank Reform and Alison Garnham of The Child Poverty Action Group. And debating how we make decisions about fairness and entitlement to welfare are Frank Field, Labour MP, the philosopher Roger Scruton and social commentator Polly Toynbee. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith will also be taking questions on welfare.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC 4, 8:30-9:00pm, 4/5 - Dedicated Followers of Fashion
Throughout the 1960s, the Rank Organisation produced hundreds of short, quirky documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. Shot on high-quality colour film stock, they were screened in cinemas, but until now very little of the footage has been shown on television. This series draws on this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into a pivotal decade in modern British history. This episode examines the films that recorded developments in one of 1960s Britain's most dynamic, innovative and industries - the glamorous and fast-moving world of fashion.
Factual; Documentaries
The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4
The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.
Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.
In the first episode he looks at how Christianity emerged into the Roman Empire as an artistic force in the third and fourth centuries. But with no description of Jesus in the Bible, how were Christians to represent their God? Waldemar explores how Christian artists drew on images of ancient gods for inspiration and developed new forms of architecture to contain their art.
Factual; Documentaries
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
740 Park Avenue - an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan - is currently home to more billionaires than any other building in the United States. Less than five miles to the north is another Park Avenue in the South Bronx, where almost 40 per cent live in poverty and life prospects are less promising for those stuck at the bottom of the American pile. As international attention focuses on the US elections, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney looks at inequality in the US through the prism of these two, near-adjacent places, to ask if America is still the land of opportunity.
"There's always been a gap between the wealthiest in our society and everyone else, but in the last 30 years something changed: that gap became the Grand Canyon," says Gibney. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, he argues that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America. By focusing on the residents of 740 Park, he asks questions about the influence of CEOs in Washington in return for tax policies that favour the ultra-rich. What chances do those at the bottom of the ladder have for upward mobility? Can someone who starts life on Park Avenue in the South Bronx end up living on Park Avenue in Manhattan?
Through archive and interviews with academics, political scientists, psychologists, former lobbyists and even a former doorman at 740 Park, Gibney's film is a polemical look at the socio-economic political landscape of contemporary USA.
Factual; Arts, Culure and the Media; Documentaries
Imagine... How Music Makes Us Feel
BBC1, 10:35-11:40pm
Many people turn to music when words are not enough, at funerals and weddings, at times of heartbreak and euphoria. It seems to hold more emotion and go deeper than words.
Musicians as varied as Emeli Sande, who enthralled the world when she sang at the Olympics, opera diva Jessye Norman, dubstep artist Mala and modern classical composer George Benjamin explain how music makes them feel. Alan Yentob also talks to a vicar, a psychologist, a Hollywood composer, an adman and even the people who choose the music played in shopping malls. He sees babies dance to a rhythm, and old people brought forth out of silence by the power of music.
______________________________________________
Wednesday 28th November
Factual; Documentaries
Supersized Earth
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - The Way We Move
Supersized Earth traces the spectacular story of how humans have transformed our world in a generation. In this awe-inspiring three-part series, Dallas Campbell travels the globe, visiting the world's largest and most ambitious engineering projects, exploring the power of human ingenuity and the making of the modern world.
In this episode, Dallas explores how we can travel further and faster than ever before - and how our desire to shrink the world is inspiring some of the most extraordinary engineering projects on the planet. He takes a treacherous walk along what will be one of the longest suspension bridges in the world and reveals how to move an object the size of Buckingham Palace half way around the globe. He examines how we have created a permanent home beyond the atmosphere in space and here on earth, he takes part in a modern day love affair - a drive-through wedding.
Factual; Documentaries
Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm
Do we know what poverty is? Throughout human existence, the poor have always been with us. Beginning with the Neolithic age, Ben Lewis's funny and sinister animated odyssey takes us through the changing image of poverty - helping us define what poverty looks like today and question whether it is inevitable.
A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Poor Us screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty. The global cross-media event sees the same eight films screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
______________________________________________
Thursday 29th November
Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
The Beat Hotel
BBC Radio 4, 11:30am-12:04pm
Professor Andrew Hussey retraces the steps of the Beat Generation writers who found refuge in a Parisian hotel during the 1950s and 60s. He recounts how they created some of their most significant works in the city, including William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and that relaxed French social attitudes helped them to thrive.
News; Documentaries
Britain's Deadly Gun Trade
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
When two unarmed female police officers were shot dead in Manchester in September, the nation was horrified and the Government responded by pledging to crack down on the trade in illegal firearms in a bid to keep guns off our streets.
This special Tonight investigation looks at how guns are finding their way into the hands of criminals and uncovers a new supply route that could see the number of illegal weapons in circulation rise dramatically.
Fiona Foster meets the family of an innocent victim who was shot dead by accident and the police officers who risk their lives every day. She also heads to America following the trail of an international gun-runner, who was allegedly arming criminals in the North West.
News; Current Affairs
Stoned Again
BBC Radio 5 Live, 10:00-11:00pm
In a revealing documentary, former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith talks to some of her fiercest critics as she reassesses her 2008 decision to reclassify cannabis from Category C to the more serious Category B, a decision that prompted public debate, but attracted criticism from some drugs charities, health workers and academics.
In “Stoned Again”, Jacqui Smith tests the evidence and reasons for her decision and considers its impact.
She talks to those who opposed the decision including her first face-to-face meeting with Professor David Nutt, who was on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at the time.
She and another former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, discuss the political decision making process involved in the cannabis debate. David Blunkett was previously responsible for downgrading the cannabis classification from B to C.
Drug users and front-line workers talk about their experiences of the law and the drug, and Jacqui sees drugs education in action. As Jacqui reflects on these conversations, she considers whether she stands by this decision and whether it had any impact on cannabis use in Britain.
Stoned Again presented by Jacqui Smith will be broadcast on BBC Radio 5 live on Thursday 29 November at 10pm. Tony Livesey will continue the discussion of the issues raised in the programme at 11pm.
______________________________________________
Friday 30th November
News; Documentaries
Unreported World: Mumbai's Party Police
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm
Young clubbers in Mumbai are being arrested, assaulted and accused of being prostitutes in a police crackdown on the city's nightlife. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Alex Nott investigate why a policeman dubbed 'Inspector Killjoy' is now enforcing long-forgotten laws and how being caught up in the raids can change young women's lives forever.
The film looks at the fault lines where East meets West and where generations clash as India changes.
The team is taken to one of the city's best-known clubs - the Blue Frog - by Nisha Harale Bedi, a former Miss Mumbai. It's a place where models and Bollywood stars come to party, but it's also one of over 200 venues the police have raided this year, under 60-year-old licensing laws that many feel are out of step with modern Mumbai.
The policeman leading the crackdown, Assistant Police Commissioner Vasant Dhoble, has detained at least 1000 clubbers on suspicion of anything from taking drugs to selling sex. Nisha tells Kleeman how during one raid she was forced into a bathroom and strip searched.
Female clubbers have also been humiliated when the police have accused them of being prostitutes in front of local TV cameras.
Karishma Ramesh Kadam was born in a slum and is now a shop assistant who aspires to the glamorous lifestyle that Nisha and her friends enjoy. The first time she ever went clubbing she was caught in a raid.
Dhoble told reporters he'd been tipped off that prostitutes were soliciting from the club, and he arrested all the female customers. They were imprisoned for three weeks and then released without charge.
Karishma tells Kleeman she was strip searched and beaten, but the worst thing was that the raid had been filmed and photographed by journalists who publically branded her a prostitute. Her family say she's brought shame on them. They won't let her come home and refuse to speak to her. Karishma says she has tried to kill herself twice since they rejected her.
______________________________________________
*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.
______________________________________________
Sunday 25th November
Factuall Life Stories; Documentaries
Return to Forgotten Britain
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/2
In the previous series of 'Forgotten Britain', the BBC's foreign correspondent Fergal Keane took a journey closer to home to see how some of Britain's hard pressed communities were managing at the turn of the millennium. In the first episode of this follow-up series, Fergal retraces his steps to find out what happened to the inspiring families he met then and how they are coping today.
Factual; Documentaries
Give Us The Money
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Documentary taking an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at 30 years of Bob Geldof and Bono's campaign against poverty. Their work has made them icons of aid and even garnered them Nobel Peace Prize nominations, but what impact has it really had on Africa? Through archive footage and candid new interviews with key players including Geldof, Bono and Bill Gates, the film re-examines three decades of unprecedented campaigns and scrutinises the effectiveness of celebrity-led activism.
Nearly 30 years ago, two young pop singers set out to challenge the world. Their aim - to use their celebrity status to end poverty in Africa. After Bob Geldof instigated a chart-topping charity single and staged one of the biggest rock concerts ever seen, he and Bono joined forces and went on to build a multi-million dollar lobbying organisation. Along the way, they hi-jacked the Brits, enlisted IT billionaires, fashion models and academics, won over the wiliest of politicians, lobbied world leaders and put the politics of poverty firmly on the international agenda. They raised vast sums for charity and persuaded western powers to dramatically reduce third world debt.
But did they really help make poverty history in Africa? What impact has their work really had on economic growth and poverty reduction? And if they haven't made poverty history, has their campaign at least been responsible for a big step forward?
Factual; History; Documentaries
Michael Wood: The Story of India
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 6/6
The final episode examines the British Raj and India's freedom struggle. In South India, Michael sees how a global corporation, the East India Company, came to control much of the subcontinent. He visits the magical culture of Lucknow and discovers the enigmatic Briton, 'the rebel in the Raj' who helped found the freedom movement. Then the Amritsar massacre, the rise of Gandhi and Nehru and the fateful events that led to the Partition of India in 1947. The series ends with India once again a global giant, as she has been for most of her amazing history
______________________________________________
Monday 26th November
Documentaries
Dispatches: Where Has Your Aid Money Gone?
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
Public spending is being slashed across the board. But the Department for International Development, which doles out Britain's overseas aid, is set to enjoy substantial year-on-year increases to £11bn by 2015.
Jonathan Miller travels to Rwanda - the jewel in the crown of British overseas aid - to investigate what British taxes have paid for, and to ask what our government has achieved with the influence our aid supposedly buys us.
David Cameron personally backs increasing British aid to Rwanda to nearly £100m a year by 2015. He's called it 'a role model for development and lifting people out of poverty in Africa'.
The Conservatives have a particularly close relationship with the architect of Rwanda's success, President Paul Kagame.
But Dispatches has found that, far from creating a beacon of democracy, Kagame has established a repressive regime with a worrying disregard for human rights.
Dispatches asks if British aid to Rwanda is truly helping the poor, or helping to create Africa's next tyrant?
Documentaries
The Curious Case of the Clark Brothers
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
What would you do if your adult children developed an age-defying disease that made them regress to childhood in front of your eyes? How would you cope with seeing them go from man to boy and looking after them 24 hours a day? This documentary tells the harrowing but brutally honest story of Tony and Christine Clark and their two sons Matthew, who's 39 and Michael, who's 42, as they live and cope with this dreadful condition; not once, but twice.
Michael and Matthew Clark from Hull had lived normal lives until their late thirties. They were totally unaware their brains were carrying a deadly neurological time bomb: a rare and little known condition called Leukodystrophy. The condition causes a progressive loss of every neurological function - speech, memory, movement, sight, hearing, touch, eating, swallowing - and normally affects children. To discover a late onset strain is exceptional and what makes it even more astonishing to the Clark family is that it should attack two members of the same family.
Christine and Tony thought their parenting days were over. They had taken early retirement and were enjoying a pleasant ex-pat life in Spain. When news of their sons' illness and rapid deterioration reached them, they had to abandon their life abroad and return to the UK. The family moved into a cramped one-bedroom flat and the parents were forced to look after and care for their two 'boys' 24 hours a day. This film follows the Clark family on their fascinating and traumatic journey as they struggle with their day-to-day life, trying to come to terms with watching their grown-up sons become young boys trapped in adult bodies.
Factual; Documentaries
Stealing Africa
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
Ruschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. There is so much money in the public coffers that mayor can't spend it all, largely thanks to the contribution from one resident - Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of commodities giant Glencore. However, Glencore's copper mines in Zambia don't generate similar tax windfalls for Zambians. The country has the third largest copper reserves in the world, but 60 per cent of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80 per cent are unemployed. Christoffer Guldbrandsen investigates the dark heart of the tax system employed by multi-nationals and asks how much profit is fair.
A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Stealing Africa screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty. The global cross-media event sees the same eight films screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
______________________________________________
Tuesday 27th November
Factual; Documentaries
The State of Welfare
BBC Radio 4, 10:00am-1:00pm
Seventy years ago William Beveridge wrote a report that was to lay the foundations for the welfare state. He identified the Five Giants that society needed to slay: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. His vision was to lead to the welfare state we know today. Jane Garvey and Julian Worricker discuss how well the state serves those who rely it on it and those who pay for it. They'll hear from a new BBC-commissioned poll on attitudes to those on welfare and how well the system is working. They also challenge some of the myths surrounding the Beveridge report with his biographer Jose Harris and political historian Steven Fielding. They will be exploring fresh visions for welfare in 2012 from Julia Slay of the New Economics Foundation, the author James Bartholomew and Frances O'Grady, the leader of the TUC. They'll face some tough questioning from a panel of Anne McElvoy of The Economist magazine, Patrick Nolan from the thinktank Reform and Alison Garnham of The Child Poverty Action Group. And debating how we make decisions about fairness and entitlement to welfare are Frank Field, Labour MP, the philosopher Roger Scruton and social commentator Polly Toynbee. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith will also be taking questions on welfare.
Factual; History; Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC 4, 8:30-9:00pm, 4/5 - Dedicated Followers of Fashion
Throughout the 1960s, the Rank Organisation produced hundreds of short, quirky documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. Shot on high-quality colour film stock, they were screened in cinemas, but until now very little of the footage has been shown on television. This series draws on this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into a pivotal decade in modern British history. This episode examines the films that recorded developments in one of 1960s Britain's most dynamic, innovative and industries - the glamorous and fast-moving world of fashion.
Factual; Documentaries
The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4
The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.
Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.
In the first episode he looks at how Christianity emerged into the Roman Empire as an artistic force in the third and fourth centuries. But with no description of Jesus in the Bible, how were Christians to represent their God? Waldemar explores how Christian artists drew on images of ancient gods for inspiration and developed new forms of architecture to contain their art.
Factual; Documentaries
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
740 Park Avenue - an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan - is currently home to more billionaires than any other building in the United States. Less than five miles to the north is another Park Avenue in the South Bronx, where almost 40 per cent live in poverty and life prospects are less promising for those stuck at the bottom of the American pile. As international attention focuses on the US elections, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney looks at inequality in the US through the prism of these two, near-adjacent places, to ask if America is still the land of opportunity.
"There's always been a gap between the wealthiest in our society and everyone else, but in the last 30 years something changed: that gap became the Grand Canyon," says Gibney. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, he argues that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America. By focusing on the residents of 740 Park, he asks questions about the influence of CEOs in Washington in return for tax policies that favour the ultra-rich. What chances do those at the bottom of the ladder have for upward mobility? Can someone who starts life on Park Avenue in the South Bronx end up living on Park Avenue in Manhattan?
Through archive and interviews with academics, political scientists, psychologists, former lobbyists and even a former doorman at 740 Park, Gibney's film is a polemical look at the socio-economic political landscape of contemporary USA.
Factual; Arts, Culure and the Media; Documentaries
Imagine... How Music Makes Us Feel
BBC1, 10:35-11:40pm
Many people turn to music when words are not enough, at funerals and weddings, at times of heartbreak and euphoria. It seems to hold more emotion and go deeper than words.
Musicians as varied as Emeli Sande, who enthralled the world when she sang at the Olympics, opera diva Jessye Norman, dubstep artist Mala and modern classical composer George Benjamin explain how music makes them feel. Alan Yentob also talks to a vicar, a psychologist, a Hollywood composer, an adman and even the people who choose the music played in shopping malls. He sees babies dance to a rhythm, and old people brought forth out of silence by the power of music.
______________________________________________
Wednesday 28th November
Factual; Documentaries
Supersized Earth
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - The Way We Move
Supersized Earth traces the spectacular story of how humans have transformed our world in a generation. In this awe-inspiring three-part series, Dallas Campbell travels the globe, visiting the world's largest and most ambitious engineering projects, exploring the power of human ingenuity and the making of the modern world.
In this episode, Dallas explores how we can travel further and faster than ever before - and how our desire to shrink the world is inspiring some of the most extraordinary engineering projects on the planet. He takes a treacherous walk along what will be one of the longest suspension bridges in the world and reveals how to move an object the size of Buckingham Palace half way around the globe. He examines how we have created a permanent home beyond the atmosphere in space and here on earth, he takes part in a modern day love affair - a drive-through wedding.
Factual; Documentaries
Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm
Do we know what poverty is? Throughout human existence, the poor have always been with us. Beginning with the Neolithic age, Ben Lewis's funny and sinister animated odyssey takes us through the changing image of poverty - helping us define what poverty looks like today and question whether it is inevitable.
A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Poor Us screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty. The global cross-media event sees the same eight films screened in 180 countries to explore why, in the 21st Century, a billion people still live in poverty.
______________________________________________
Thursday 29th November
Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
The Beat Hotel
BBC Radio 4, 11:30am-12:04pm
Professor Andrew Hussey retraces the steps of the Beat Generation writers who found refuge in a Parisian hotel during the 1950s and 60s. He recounts how they created some of their most significant works in the city, including William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and that relaxed French social attitudes helped them to thrive.
News; Documentaries
Britain's Deadly Gun Trade
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
When two unarmed female police officers were shot dead in Manchester in September, the nation was horrified and the Government responded by pledging to crack down on the trade in illegal firearms in a bid to keep guns off our streets.
This special Tonight investigation looks at how guns are finding their way into the hands of criminals and uncovers a new supply route that could see the number of illegal weapons in circulation rise dramatically.
Fiona Foster meets the family of an innocent victim who was shot dead by accident and the police officers who risk their lives every day. She also heads to America following the trail of an international gun-runner, who was allegedly arming criminals in the North West.
News; Current Affairs
Stoned Again
BBC Radio 5 Live, 10:00-11:00pm
In a revealing documentary, former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith talks to some of her fiercest critics as she reassesses her 2008 decision to reclassify cannabis from Category C to the more serious Category B, a decision that prompted public debate, but attracted criticism from some drugs charities, health workers and academics.
In “Stoned Again”, Jacqui Smith tests the evidence and reasons for her decision and considers its impact.
She talks to those who opposed the decision including her first face-to-face meeting with Professor David Nutt, who was on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at the time.
She and another former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, discuss the political decision making process involved in the cannabis debate. David Blunkett was previously responsible for downgrading the cannabis classification from B to C.
Drug users and front-line workers talk about their experiences of the law and the drug, and Jacqui sees drugs education in action. As Jacqui reflects on these conversations, she considers whether she stands by this decision and whether it had any impact on cannabis use in Britain.
Stoned Again presented by Jacqui Smith will be broadcast on BBC Radio 5 live on Thursday 29 November at 10pm. Tony Livesey will continue the discussion of the issues raised in the programme at 11pm.
______________________________________________
Friday 30th November
News; Documentaries
Unreported World: Mumbai's Party Police
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm
Young clubbers in Mumbai are being arrested, assaulted and accused of being prostitutes in a police crackdown on the city's nightlife. Reporter Jenny Kleeman and director Alex Nott investigate why a policeman dubbed 'Inspector Killjoy' is now enforcing long-forgotten laws and how being caught up in the raids can change young women's lives forever.
The film looks at the fault lines where East meets West and where generations clash as India changes.
The team is taken to one of the city's best-known clubs - the Blue Frog - by Nisha Harale Bedi, a former Miss Mumbai. It's a place where models and Bollywood stars come to party, but it's also one of over 200 venues the police have raided this year, under 60-year-old licensing laws that many feel are out of step with modern Mumbai.
The policeman leading the crackdown, Assistant Police Commissioner Vasant Dhoble, has detained at least 1000 clubbers on suspicion of anything from taking drugs to selling sex. Nisha tells Kleeman how during one raid she was forced into a bathroom and strip searched.
Female clubbers have also been humiliated when the police have accused them of being prostitutes in front of local TV cameras.
Karishma Ramesh Kadam was born in a slum and is now a shop assistant who aspires to the glamorous lifestyle that Nisha and her friends enjoy. The first time she ever went clubbing she was caught in a raid.
Dhoble told reporters he'd been tipped off that prostitutes were soliciting from the club, and he arrested all the female customers. They were imprisoned for three weeks and then released without charge.
Karishma tells Kleeman she was strip searched and beaten, but the worst thing was that the raid had been filmed and photographed by journalists who publically branded her a prostitute. Her family say she's brought shame on them. They won't let her come home and refuse to speak to her. Karishma says she has tried to kill herself twice since they rejected her.
______________________________________________
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