Off-air recordings for week 11-17 May 2013

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence
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Saturday 11th May

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries

United States of Television: America in Primetime
BBC2, 10:30-11:30pm, 4/4 - The Crusader


Alan Yentob concludes the series with a look at the crusading heroes who seek truth, protect the innocent and do the right thing - the cops, the cowboys, the doctors and the spooks.

The line separating the hero from the villain has often been a fine one in American history, and the ambiguities that lie at the heart of heroism have inspired some of primetime's most popular and long-running shows, including MASH, The X Files, 24, NYPD Blue and The Wire.

From the white-hat versus black-hat pieties of the 1950s to the gritty dilemmas of the post 9/11 world, this episode talks to the stars, creators, writers and producers who have tried to 'do the right thing' for audiences. There are interviews with Hugh Laurie (House), Alan Alda (Hawkeye in MASH), Gillian Anderson (Scully in The X-Files), Dennis Franz (Sipowicz in NYPD Blue) and Michael K Williams (Omar in The Wire).



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Sunday 12th May

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

Roundhead or Cavalier: Which One are You?
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm


In the middle of the 17th century, Britain was devastated by a civil war that divided the nation into two tribes - the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. In this programme, celebrities and historians reveal that modern Britain is still defined by the battle between the two tribes. The Cavaliers represent a Britain of panache, pleasure and individuality. They are confronted by the Roundheads, who stand for modesty, discipline, equality and state intervention.

The ideas which emerged 350 years ago shaped our democracy, civil liberties and constitution. They also create a cultural divide that influences how we live, what we wear and even what we eat and drink. Individuals usually identify with one tribe or the other, but sometimes they need some elements of the enemy's identity - David Cameron seeks a dash of the down-to-earth Roundhead, while Ed Miliband looks for some Cavalier charisma.



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Monday 13th May

Factual > History > Documentaries

The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 3/4 - Hadrian's Wall: Life on the Frontier

Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over Hadrian's Wall to reveal a new view of its history. The first full aerial survey of Hadrian's Wall has helped uncover new evidence about the people who once lived there. Carried out over the last few years by English Heritage, it is allowing archaeologists to reinterpret the wall. Across the whole landscape hundreds of sites of human occupation have been discovered, showing that people were living here in considerable numbers. Their discoveries are suggesting that far from being a barren military landscape, the whole area was richly populated before during and after the wall was built. There is also exciting new evidence that the Romans were here earlier than previously thought.


Factual > Crime & Justice > Documentaries

The Prisoners
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3


Filmed over a year, this final episode follows a group of repeat offenders from Holloway and Pentonville prisons. Chloe, in Holloway, has a cross-prison relationship with her fiance and co-defendant Michael in Pentonville. They want to build a better life together on release, but Chloe gets out first and has to face the world outside alone. Ben deliberately offended to get into jail and get help, but can he stay clean when released? And can Holloway's Jayde finally break her re-offending cycle?


Factual > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries

Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 2/2

Julian Richards returns to the excavation of two burials from the Stone Age - the grave of an entire Neolithic family in Dorset and a tomb on Orkney that is helping to reveal some strange and unexpected burial rites from over 5,000 years ago.

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Tuesday 14th May

Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries

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


This episode takes a look at the country's single biggest killer, heart disease. Every day 282 people will have a heart attack and 200 will die. In Manchester, a specialist team race to treat a steady stream of heart attack victims, some of whom have a 20 year history of heart disease. In Liverpool six-month-old Kyran undergoes open heart surgery to correct a defect first detected in the womb and in Yorkshire, air ambulance paramedics attempt to resuscitate an 80-year-old mechanic who has collapsed while working on a neighbour's car.

Despite improvements in treatment, our increasingly sedentary lifestyle combined with an ageing population will only add to the pressure on the NHS, a dilemma playing out across the whole organisation as demands increase and the money to pay for it doesn't.



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Wednesday 15th May

Factual > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries

Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm - 3/4 - Sacred Women of the Iron Age

Archaeologist Julian Richards revisits some of his most important digs to discover how science, conservation and new finds have changed people's understanding of ancient history. His journey continues at the excavations of two vastly different Iron Age women - the possible sacrifice of a teenage girl from the Cotswolds, and the chariot burial of a queen from 400BC whose well preserved possessions are leading to astonishing conclusions about belief in early times.


Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries

Great Artists in Their Own Words
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3

Footage from the BBC's archive collections is unlocked to reveal the story of the birth of modern art, as told by those who created this cultural revolution. The second episode looks at the tortured images of Francis Bacon, born of the horror of the Second World War, the pop art of Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol and the vibrant paintings of David Hockney. Featuring contributions by Joan Bakewell, Antony Gormley and Waldemar Januszczak.


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Thursday 16th May

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

Archaeology: A Secret History
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm, 3/3 - Power of the Past


News > Current Affairs

Tonight: America and its Guns
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm

Reporter Robert Moore travels across the US investigating the prevalence of guns, talking to owners about why they have them and why they would never give them up. He also meets families who have suffered the consequences of firearms being so ingrained in society, and the programme features an interview with a man whose son accidentally shot his little sister.


Crime > Murder > Bereavement > Psychology > Counselling

Cutting Edge: The Murder Workers
Channel 4, 9:00-10:25pm


The Murder Workers is a powerful and insightful Cutting Edge documentary exploring a side of murder that most people know very little about. It follows members of Victim Support’s National Homicide team as they work closely with families who have been bereaved by murder or manslaughter.

The Murder Workers offer practical and emotional support for families at different stages of bereavement from the initial shock right up until the steps needed to start re-building their lives again. The families are often thrown into a world of police investigations forced to navigate the deeply confusing world of the criminal system and it is the Murder Worker’s responsibility to guide them through this difficult time.

When others don’t know what to say or how they can help, it’s Murder Workers Dave, Alli and Carol who step in to help with funeral arrangements, apply for compensation, seek specialist help, close down bank accounts, cancel booked holidays or be there when their homes are turned into crime scenes; but most importantly, they are a shoulder to cry on. They are there to fight the family’s corner and whether its humour or a hug that's required, they know the right thing to say – they have an extraordinary capacity to go into the unknown and alleviate some of the stress put on the families.

The Murder Workers also goes into the lives and homes of those recently bereaved to learn about the impact of homicide. Marie is an extraordinary woman with an inner fight and superior strength preparing to come face-to-face with the men accused of killing her son Lee. Elsewhere, Jackie who was getting ready for her retirement now has her hands and house full of young children. Her three grandchildren, aged five, eight and thirteen years old moved in with her after their father killed their mother, who was Jackie's daughter. She is now battling to become the children’s legal guardian.

Directed by Jessie Versluys – who produced the award-winning Katie: My Beautiful Face – this fascinating one-off Cutting Edge documentary goes behind the headlines to observe the extraordinary strength needed to fight, survive and heal the traumatic events of a murder from the eyes of The Murder Workers.



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Friday 17th May

News > World Affairs

Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00pm, 6/8 - Bangladesh Women's Driving School


Bangladesh is one of the most dangerous places in the world to drive a car. Reporter Clemency Burton-Hill and director Elizabeth C Jones take to the roads of Dhaka with a group of young women who are learning to be professional drivers against extraordinary odds: on top of dreadful drivers, teeming traffic and huge potholes, these learners are battling entrenched social taboos as they try to enter a profession almost entirely dominated by men.

Inside the residential driving school, the young women - many of whom have come from difficult circumstances - live, sleep, eat and study together, swapping life stories and forging friendships. Their driving tuition, both in the classrooms and on the roads, is intense: 8am to 6pm every day except Fridays.

Dhaka has appalling traffic and more than 20,000 people die on Bangladesh's roads every year. Before the women get anywhere near the wheel, however, one of the first issues they are taught about is 'gender sensitivity'. As female drivers, prejudice, discrimination and abuse are as likely to await them as potholes, traffic jams and exhaust fumes.

Twenty-year-old Mafuza was forced to leave school when she was 14 and marry a man she'd never met. Having divorced her husband after he allegedly mistreated her, she has retreated back to her village with her two-year-old daughter.

Nobody else in her village drives a car, but she dreams of becoming a professional driver to provide her parents with much more income. She also hopes to be an inspiration to other women in the village by proving that women - even young, divorced women - can be equal to men, and can forge an independent livelihood despite the prevailing social taboos.

Twenty-one-year-old Konika claims she was so badly beaten by her husband that she lost her baby during the ninth month of her pregnancy. Now divorced, Konika is making good progress, but worries that she can't stop her legs from shaking whenever she drives.


Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries

Leopards: 21st Century Cats - A Natural World Special

BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Conservationist Rom Whitaker discovered a leopard had moved on to his farm near Chennai and decided to investigate India's complex relationship with the big cats and find out why hundreds of the animals are being stoned, trapped or shot. He examines why such a large predator is still relatively common in a country of 1.2 billion people and explores the reasons behind some leopards becoming man-eaters.


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Off-air recordings for week 4-10 May 2013

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence
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Saturday 4th May

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries

United States of Television: America in Primetime
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm, 3/4 - The Independent Woman


In the third programme in this star-studded series that examines the social history of America through the prism of popular primetime TV shows, Alan Yentob considers the remarkable journey made by women in the 'United States of Television'.

Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie), Roseanne Barr (Roseanne), Mary Tyler Moore (The Mary Tyler Moore Show),  Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex In The City), Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy) and many more stars, creators, writers and producers reflect on the dramatic social changes that transformed the homemaking, apple pie-baking CEO of the kitchen sink of the 1950s into the 'independent woman' of today, struggling with the push and pull of having it all.

Dependent on advertising dollars controlled by conservative corporations, mainstream primetime television was slow to reflect the revolution that was taking place in the economic, sexual and domestic situation of women in the America of the 60s and 70s, but into the breach opened up by non-conformists like Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy) came other unforgettable characters who changed the way that women were perceived and how women were expected to behave: Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, Roseanne and not forgetting Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte of Sex and the City fame/notoriety.

Today, the independent women of primetime have to struggle with challenges that Donna Reed, the perfectionist queen of 1950s TV, could not have dreamed of - careers, childcare, infidelity, drug addiction (or in the case of Nancy Botwin of Weeds, drug dealing) and, of course, the eternal questions of love - where to find it, how to keep it and at what cost.



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Sunday 5th May

Factual > History > Documentaries

Timewatch: Stonehenge
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm

An investigation into a radical theory that Stonehenge, far from being a place of burial as is commonly assumed, was in fact a place of healing - a Bronze Age Lourdes. The investigation takes in forensic testing of bones excavated over the past decades and hard-won permission for the first dig in 50 years at the Henge, watched live online by millions of viewers around the world. Does the theory of the healing stones bear up to modern-day forensic science?


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Monday 6th May

Factual > History > Documentaries

The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/4


Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over the Broads where aerial photos have discovered a staggering 945 previously unknown ancient sites. Many are making historians rethink the history of the area
The fate of the Roman town of Caistor St Edmund has puzzled archaeologists for decades. It's long been a mystery why the centre never became a modern town. Now archaeologists have discovered a key piece of evidence. And near Ormseby the first proof of Bronze Age settlement in the east of England has been revealed.



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Tuesday 7th May



Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries


Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 7/8


This episode takes a look at the NHS outside of the hospital environment, and through a vast patchwork of experiences reveals the health system's role in British lives from cradle to grave.

Featuring a Yorkshire District Nurse who spends her day changing dressings and tubes for elderly patients, a maverick GP in Everton who takes in addicts and abusive patients who have been rejected by other surgeries, and a pair of West Midlands paramedics who compare their nightshift to that of a mini-cab service. In London, the air ambulance crew rush to the scene of two serious accidents, whilst in Birmingham, a medical student makes his 16th sperm donation.



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Wednesday 8th May

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

Great Artists in Their Own Words
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3

In the first episode of the series, this programme unlocks the BBC archives to tell the story of the birth of modern art, in the words of the artists who created a cultural revolution - from the startling innovations of Picasso to the explosion of colour in the paintings of Matisse, to LS Lowry's industrial cityscapes and the often shocking work of surrealists like Max Ernst, Magritte and Dali.


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Thursday 9th May

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

Archaeology: A Secret History
BBC4, 10:50-11:50pm, 2/3 - The Search for Civilisation

Archaeologist Richard Miles presents a series charting the history of the breakthroughs and watersheds in our long quest to understand our ancient past. He shows how discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries overturned ideas of when and where civilisation began, as empires competed to literally 'own' the past.


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Off-air recordings for week 27 April - 3 May 2013

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.

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Saturday 27th April  

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media >Documentaries

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

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

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


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Sunday 28th April  

Documentaries  

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


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Monday 29th April

News  

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

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Tuesday 30th April  

History > Documentaries  

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

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



Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries

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

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

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Wednesday 1st May  

Documentaries  

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

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

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

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


History > Documentaries  

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

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

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

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


History > Documentaries

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

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


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Thursday 2nd May  

Factual > Arts, Culture and Media > History

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

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


Crime > Documentaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Friday 3rd May  

Science & Technology > Documentaries  

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

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


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Off-air recordings for week 20-26 April 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 20th April

History > Documentaries

Walking through History
Channel 4, 8:15-9:20pm, 4/4 - Battle in the Glens


Tony takes on a tough four-day trek through the Kintail region of the west Scottish Highlands to discover the story of the Jacobite uprisings of the early 1700s.  On three occasions, Highland armies, assisted by the French and the Spanish, attempted to overthrow the King and put a Stuart back on the throne.

What made the Highlands such a breeding ground for revolution and how did the unique character of this landscape shape the character of the Highlanders?  Tony's journey of discovery starts in Shiel Bridge, at the mouth of Glen Shiel, where he heads to the site of the earliest known dwellings here, the 'skyscrapers' of the Iron Age.  On to the village of Glenelg with its fantastic views over the Sound of Sleat to Skye... and the hulking remains of a British barracks built 200 years ago by George I to pacify and terrify the locals.

Via the town of Kyle of Lochalsh, Tony reaches the stunning Eilean Donan Castle. It has now been rebuilt, but it was destroyed after the invading Spanish troops landed here and were attacked by British warships.  Finally, Tony heads up the awe-inspiring Glen Shiel to the site of the climactic battle where royalist troops faced off against the rebels.



Factual > Arts, Culture and the Media > Documentaries

America in Primetime
BBC2, 10:15-11;15pm, 1/4 - Man of the House


Alan Yentob presents the first in a series of star-studded documentaries on the history of primetime television in America. With a potential audience in excess of 300 million to please, the most popular and enduring drama series and sitcoms have had to track the dramatic changes that have transformed America since the age of mass television began in the 1950s, so this more than an entertainment history, it's a social history of the 'United States of Television'.

Man of the House traces the trajectory of the archetypal American dad from the breadwinning patriarch of the 'Honey I'm Home' 1950s to the angst-ridden, plate-spinning multitasker who has to build his home on the shifting sands of the 21st century. From the cast iron certainties and benign omniscience of Jim X (Father Knows Best) and Andy Griffith to the crippling anxieties and bad choices Tony Soprano and Homer Simpson, Man of the House takes us on the rollercoaster ride of six decades of American masculinity. Includes interviews with legendary creators, stars, writers and producers: Ron Howard (The Andy Griffith Show), David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Rob Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show), David Chase (The Sopranos), John Hamm (Mad Men). James L. Brooks (The Simpsons) and many more.



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Sunday 21st April

Factual > Life Stories > Documentaries

Arena: aka Norman Parkinson
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm

To mark the centenary of his birth, Arena examines the glamorous life and exceptionally long career of pioneering photographer Norman Parkinson, an eccentric English gentleman who also produced his own brand of sausages. Featuring an abundance of beautiful images and with previously unseen footage, the film explores Parkinson's work with contributions from his models and collaborators, including Iman, Jerry Hall, Carmen Dell'Orefice, creative director of Vogue Grace Coddington and his grandson Jake Parkinson-Smith.


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Monday 22nd April

Documentaries > Crime

Dispatches: Britain's Millionaire Criminals
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm


Why are some convicted criminals still enjoying luxury lifestyles funded by their ill-gotten gains?  Successive governments have pledged to ensure crime doesn't pay and that the public purse will get these rich criminals' money. However, a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation has discovered that dozens of fraudsters, drug dealers and money launderers are still enjoying the high life despite being convicted of serious crimes.

Luxury properties, fast cars and overseas bank accounts are supposed to be in reach of the long arm of the law. Despite this, Dispatches reveals the institutional failings and legal loopholes that result in some of the country's most serious offenders being able to retain their criminal wealth, and discovers that the state has failed to recover even a fifth of the cash that Britain's wealthiest criminals have been ordered to pay back.

Reporter Antony Barnett speaks to police, lawyers and a convicted money launderer who explains how easy it is to avoid having criminal assets confiscated by the authorities.  He discovers a combination of legal obstacles and incompetence mean smart criminals are evading the justice system. Dispatches goes on the hunt for the criminals who have found that crime does pay.


News

Panorama: Secrets of Britain's Sharia Councils

BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

Panorama goes undercover to investigate what is really happening in Britain's Sharia Councils - Islamic religious courts. Some women reveal they have suffered domestic violence ignored by these councils as campaigners say it is time to tackle the parallel legal system which can run counter to British law.


Documentaries > Crime and Punishment

The Prisoners
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3


Filmed over a year, this episode - Holloway And Pentonville - follows a group of repeat offenders from both Pentonville and Holloway prison.  Chloe, in Holloway, has a cross-prison relationship with her fiancé and co-defendant Michael in Pentonville. They want to build a better life together on release but Chloe gets out first and has to face the world outside alone.  Ben deliberately offended to get into jail and receive help, but can he stay clean when released? And can Holloway’s Jayde finally break her re-offending cycle?



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Tuesday 23rd April

Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 5/8


Agnes and Rose are in hospital in London to have brain surgery to help control their tremors, which has a dramatic and immediate impact. In Blackpool, Terry, a patient in a psychiatric unit, is taken on a day trip to the zoo to help assess whether he's well enough to return to the community. We meet some of the 130 chemotherapy patients that are treated at a Manchester Cancer Unit on any one day and follow Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, just six weeks into the job, being given a tour of a new cancer centre in London.  The film shows the challenge of taking care of people with long-term conditions, a job only likely to get tougher with an ageing population.



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

The High Art of the Low Countries
BBC4, 10:55-11:55pm, 3/3


Following a brief period of decline, the entrepreneurial and industrious region of the Low Countries rose again to become a cultural leader in the modern age. Despite its small and almost insignificant size it produced important forward-thinking artists like Van Gogh, Mondrian, Magritte and Delvaux, who changed the face of art forever.

Andrew's journey takes him to a remote beach in north west Holland that inspired Mondrian's transition to his now-renowned abstract grid paintings. Andrew digs deep into the psychology and social history of the region, exploring how the landscape of the past has informed the culture and identity of the Low Countries today and the impossibility of the Dutch drive to turn the philosophy of Mondrian's geometric order into a way of living.



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Wednesday 24th April

History > Literature > Documentaries

The Century that Wrote Itself
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - A World Shaped by Writing


This final instalment argues that the British Empire would never have happened without the new appetite for the written word in the 1600s. To prove his point, presenter Adam Nicolson pores over the letters of a Puritan couple and their wayward son, the beautifully illustrated journal of a lowly seaman and correspondence of a colonial wheeler-dealer. He also takes a plunge in a pool in Barbados, bounces around on a BMX bike and loses his train of thought on a choppy rollercoaster.

While the visual gimmicks are sometimes more distracting than illuminating, Nicolson has a lovely way with words and paints a vivid portrait of 17th-century life.

Adam Nicolson traces the roots of today's globalised Britain to a 17th-century golden age of communication, and reveals how it was a period during which society was on the move, with writing making this change possible. He looks at the letters of a lowly sailor able to document strange new worlds for those at home, and a slave-trader laying the foundations for a new global economy, highlighting how their work brings to life this turbulent era.



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Thursday 25th April

Archaeology > History > Documentaries

Jerusalem: An Archaeological Mystery Story
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm


Archaeology is politics in the Middle East. The precarious balance of Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites in the ancient heart of Jerusalem is informed as much by what’s below ground as what’s above. Which is why evidence revealed here, suggesting that the Jewish exile from Jerusalem in AD 70 may never have actually happened, has such severe ramifications for relations in the region.

Film-maker Ilan Ziv explores the archaeological challenges to the traditional narrative of the Jewish Diaspora, long buried in the sands of Galilee and beneath the streets of Jerusalem, and asks what this means for both Israelis and Palestinians today.

Documentary by Ilan Ziv looking at new evidence which suggests the majority of Jewish people may not have been exiled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Travelling from Galilee, Israel, to the catacombs of Rome, he discovers whether the event that has played a central role in Christian and Jewish theology for nearly 2000 years really happened, raising ethical questions about its impact on modern Middle Eastern issues.



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Friday 26th April

Science, Nature & the Environment > Documentaries

Iceland: Ash Cloud Apocalypse
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm

Documentary examining past volcanic events in Iceland, such as the poisonous sulphur dioxide haze exhaled by Laki in 1783, and exploring how it is possible for us to reconstruct them. The film also looks at how science enables us to predict the style and magnitude of future eruptions and the effect they might have on modern society.


Science & Technology > Arts, Culture and the Media > History > Documentaries

The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm


JMW Turner is considered the great Romantic landscape painter - a master of sunsets and dramatic skies. Against wild seas and vast, daunting crags man is portrayed as small and helpless, dwarfed by the awesome power of nature. But there's another side that doesn't necessarily fit with this Romantic view – Turner as a man of science.

This fascinating film for BBC Two takes six of Turner’s works and looks at them alongside some of the most pivotal scientific and industrial moments in 19th century British history. As the country was transformed by steam power, rather than resist change, Turner delivered a visual story of the Industrial Revolution in his work. Captivated by science, technology and machines, Turner found his artistic voice in the new age of industry.



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Off-air recordings for week 13-19 April 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 13th April

History > Documentaries

Walking Through History
Channel 4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/4 - The Tudor Way

Tony Robinson sets off on a 45-mile hike through the countryside of the Weald in Kent and the Downs of East Sussex to discover the area's rich and surprising Tudor heritage. At Penshurst Place, author Philippa Gregory helps him relish the fate of the Grand Duke of Buckingham at the hands of the young Henry VIII. From there, he travels up what used to be secret paths to Hever Castle and finds out how the monarch's reign brought not just fame and disaster to the women who caught his eye, but also wrought huge social, political and industrial change. He ends this leg of his journey in Lewes, where he relives one of the more brutal monastic dissolutions.

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Monday 14th April

Factual > Crime and Justice > Documentaries

The Prisoners
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, Pentonville


This second episode follows a group of repeat offenders from Pentonville prison, which holds over a thousand male prisoners.  Mick is in his 40s and has spent years going in and out of jail; unless he gets housing once he's released, he will commit crime to get back behind bars.  Senol is trying to put a violent past behind him and build a better future with his fiancée, but on the outside he struggles with alcohol and his temper. While each journey is different, nearly all share a shocking truth that many offenders feel more at home in prison than out.


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Tuesday 15th April

Factual > Health and Wellbeing  > Documentaries

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 4/8


The story of a tetraplegic coming to terms with the changed relationship with his daughter; the former pilot and burns victim undergoing the latest of many bouts of reconstructive surgery and a couple in a bedside vigil over their daughter in a Birmingham Critical Care Unit.  In Sussex, military plastic surgeon Tania operates on a young patient who lost her legs to bacterial meningitis at the age of 17.  The film shows the range of different ways in which the NHS helps people live as normal a life as possible, from rehab to nutrition appointments, gender reassignment to nipple tattooing.


Factual > Crime > Documentaries

Secrets of the Shoplifters
4Seven, 11:00pm-12:00am, series 2 episode 2


Britain is the shoplifting capital of Europe, with over two billion pounds worth of goods being stolen every year. Secrets of the Shoplifters hits the High Street with a look at the run up to Christmas, when more 'lifting' goes on than at any other time of year. From the girl gangs, to the pros who steal presents to order, it's a festive crime wave.

The programme features exclusive access to the undercover retail police of South Yorkshire: a hard-pressed unit with its own mission to fulfil. They're aiming to lock up their top ten most wanted shoplifters in time for Christmas, but will they catch them all in time?  The 'lifters' come from all walks of life and include a former store detective turned thief and a professional woman shoplifter who claims to earn to £300 a day shoplifting for her middle class clients. For certain people, it seems that Christmas is a time to eat, drink and go thieving...


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Wednesday 17th April

Current Affairs > World News > Documentaries

Israel: Facing the Future
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

John Ware travels around Israel to examine how it has responded to the changes sweeping the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring. He meets Israelis from all walks of life to analyse what is next for the country as religious and secular factions battle over its future.


Current Affairs > World News > Documentaries

Syria: Across the Lines
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm


Award-winning documentary maker Olly Lambert spends weeks living deep inside Syrian territory - with both government and opposition supporters - to explore how the two-year-old conflict is tearing communities apart. This unprecedented film witnesses first hand how the country is collapsing into a sectarian conflict and faces a bleak, Balkan-style future.

Lambert is the only western journalist to spend such an extended period filming on both sides of Syria’s sectarian and political divide. For five weeks he lived in the Orontes River Valley in rural Idlib, an almost entirely unreported frontline that is fast becoming a microcosm of what Syria will become if (or when) the regime of Bashar Al-Assad finally falls. His film is a graphic and unflinching portrait of a society cleaving apart in the face of dwindling international support, escalating violence and a growing mutual desire for revenge.

The fertile plains of the Orontes River used to be place of peaceful coexistence for Syria’s many sects and religions. But today, the river marks a sectarian frontline: on one side, the rebel Free Syrian Army holds ground in Sunni villages whose residents are calling for the fall of President Assad and his regime. But less than a mile away, Alawite villagers remain fiercely loyal to the government, and gladly host army checkpoints that almost daily fire shells and mortars into the Sunni villages across the valley.

Nearly all communication between the two sides has now broken down. Some villages just 800 metres apart are now sealed off from each other. Farmers are shot at while tending their crops and IEDs are planted on country roads. Sniper and mortar fire between villages has become a daily reality, while government artillery and air strikes only add to the mounting civilian death toll, further fuelling the anger and hatred, and forcing each community to become increasingly entrenched along sectarian lines.

Lambert films on both sides of the valley, with unprecedented access to the villages and communities on either side. With the Alawite supporters of Assad, he lives in the frontline village of Aziziya, filming inside checkpoints which are used to shell rebel villagers, even interviewing a military commander who is manning the gun position that had fired on Lambert only weeks earlier He talks to the Syrian Army commanders, Ba’ath party officials and loyalist villagers about why their support for the regime is unwavering, how they feel about the recent rupture in the social fabric of their valley, and what fate may await them if the regime falls....


Factual > History > Documentaries

The Century that Wrote Itself
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - The Rewritten Universe


Author Adam Nicolson feeds an ostrich, dabbles in beekeeping and pretends to drink sulphuric acid. It’s not like BBC4 to resort to play-acting and there’s no need. The musings of 17th-century diarists may sound dry, but Nicolson’s enthusiasm is infectious.

First up is an Essex puritan who painstakingly logged his many trials and tribulations; followed by a nature-loving Norfolk doctor who coined more than a hundred words including “computer” and “literary”; and a neighbour of Samuel Pepys who strived to set up a universal information service – a sort of 17th-century Google. Last but certainly not least, Nicolson pores over the journals of Isaac Newton.

Adam Nicolson examines how the writing revolution of the 17th century helped redefine society's vision of the world, as individuals began to question attitudes toward God, the nature of reality and the structure of the universe. The advancement of literacy allowed creative thought and significant scientific advances not only to be recorded, but shared.


Factual > History &> Photography > Documentaries

Images of Conflict
Yesterday, 11:00pm -12:00am

Examining the work of seven war photographers, looking at the images they have captured over the past 50 years from the conflict in Vietnam to the military operations in Iraq


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Thursday 18th April

Factual > Documentaries

Maureen Lipman: If Memory Serves Me Right
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm


During the last 15 years of his life, Maureen Lipman’s father had no short-term memory. “He lost his essence,” says Lipman, “I lost the father I knew.” During this funny, surprising and informative documentary, a spirited Lipman seeks out ways to keep her memory sharp.

She attends a reunion at her old school in Hull where a psychologist analyses her memories and those of her former classmates. We have, he says, a “reminiscence bump” between the ages of 15 and 25, when, effectively, most of our most enduring memories are gathered.

Lipman also talks to a sparky and determined Terry Pratchett, who was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2007, and with her pal, actor Larry Lamb, takes part in a fiendish experiment conducted by scientist Michael Mosley. The pair have to memorise the names and birthdays of 25 strangers using a fascinating cognitive technique.

Maureen Lipman embarks on a personal journey to find out how memory works, and whether there is anything people can do to improve it. Deeply affected by how the loss of her father's short-term memory changed him, Maureen constantly worries about losing her own power of recall - without which she could not work as an actress. Here she explores through her own recollections how the process works, from cradle to grave, with the help of family, friends and scientists.


Science and Nature > Documentaries

Could We Survive a Mega-Tsunami?
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm


The short answer is no. This is one of those gleefully alarmist, CGI-stuffed documentaries designed to make us sleep less peacefully in our beds.

You see, regular tsunamis (or tidal waves, as we used to know them) are caused by ocean-floor earthquakes. They can, of course, cause colossal damage and loss of life. But a so-called mega-tsumani is different – caused by the kind of landslide you get when part of a volcanic island (such as La Palma in the Canaries, potentially) collapses into the sea. The resulting waves could be the height of two Empire State Buildings and travel at the speed of a jet aircraft. Run for the hills!

The destructive effects of tsunamis has been all too evident in recent years, with the one on Boxing Day 2004 killing around 250,000 people in southern Asia and another striking Japan in March 2011 - bringing one of the world's most advanced countries close to a nuclear catastrophe. This documentary uses the latest scientific modelling to present a minute-by-minute account of what might happen if there was a mega-tsunami in the Atlantic, and what would it do to cities including Casablanca, Lisbon, London and New York.


Factual > Arts, Culture and the Media > Documentaries

A Night at the Rijksmuseum
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

Andrew Graham-Dixon gets a behind-the-scenes look at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as the staff prepare to open the doors following a 10-year renovation project - one of the most significant revamps ever undertaken by a museum. It now has more than 8,000 works of art telling the story of eight centuries worth of Dutch history and is home to masterpieces by Vermeer to Rembrandt.


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Friday 19th April

Factual >  Art, and Culture > History > Documentaries

The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

You may be surprised to see that this hagiography on the great Georgian potter is presented by novelist-historian AN Wilson, but in fact he’s the perfect presenter. Wilson grew up in Stoke; his father was production director at Wedgwood in the 1950s, a potter like all the family for ten generations.

Steeped in the myth as he is, you can forgive Wilson Jr for worshipping at Josiah Wedgwood’s non-clay feet. His account of how a young artist-industrialist applied science to the craft of pottery and created “a Georgian superbrand” is fascinating. We see drawers full of ceramic fragments – some of the thousands of glaze tests Josiah ran in his search for the perfect finish. We hear of the passion for social justice that drove him to campaign against slavery. And we see plenty of superb pots and vases.

Historian and author AN Wilson explores the life of 18th-century potter Josiah Wedgwood, who was one of the founding fathers of the Industrial Revolution. He was an innovative scientist and a man with a passion for human rights at a time when Britain still had a slave trade, and wanted to craft objects that made the world a more beautiful place. Wilson navigates his way through Wedgwood's story through a selection of pots, plates and other wares that were turning points in his life.

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Off-air recordings for week 6-12 April 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 6th April

History > Documentaries

Walking Through History
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/4 - Frontline Dorset

Tony's walk in this episode takes him back to 1940 when Dorset became the unlikely frontline in the war against Hitler.  His five-day, 60-mile walk along the Jurassic coast reveals the county's hidden World War II story.  Starting by the defences on Chesil Beach (still standing 70 years on), Tony's journey encompasses stunning scenery and amazing acts of ingenuity and bravery as he heads east towards Swanage and Studland Bay.  He uncovers the strange part a world-famous swannery played in developing a secret weapon.

He hears of the bravery of the man who won the Victoria Cross serving in Portland Harbour when it became one of the first places in Britain to be bombed by the Germans.  He reveals the role Dorset had to play in protecting Britain from invasion, and in an emotional climax he meets one of the veterans who survived after landing on Omaha Beach on D Day.


Factual > Documentaries

Archive on 4: Riding into Town
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-9:00pm

The excitement and romance of the wild west was a powerful force on the imaginations of the British from the 1930s until the '70s. Samira Ahmed reflects on the love of the Western.

The American Film Institute defines western films as those "set in the American West that embody the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier". The term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World Magazine.

In this personal exploration, Samira Ahmed will see how Westerns nourished post-war British children and how they explored the politics and fears of their day. Samira says, "I remember sitting at an uncle's house in Hillingdon, possibly celebrating Eid, with lots of Hyderabadi relatives, and we were all - kids and adults alike - gathered round the TV watching the end of the original True Grit."

The programme considers the central cast of characters in the western form. Samira explores her interest in the weird and wonderful women and their ranches full of outlaws, such as Marlene Dietrich in Rancho Notorious: "I especially loved the strong Indian and Mexican women - Katy Jurado in High Noon, as opposed to anaemic Grace Kelly. And there were always strong women in Westerns, holding their own in a deeply macho world. Then there were those secretly gay, camp, polysexual or just plain wacko Westerns - Johnny Guitar, the French critics' favourite, and The Singer Not the Song featuring Dirk Bogarde's highly unlikely Mexican bandido in black leather jeans and gloves."


Drama > Films

Coriolanus
BBC2, 9:45-11:40pm

Ralph Fiennes's acclaimed directorial debut transposes Shakespeare's Roman tragedy to a contemporary Balkan conflict. Proud Roman General Caius Martius refuses to court public opinion, laying bare his contempt for his fellow citizens even when his equally proud mother Volumnia encourages him to run for consul.


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Sunday 7th April

Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries

Perspectives: Portillo on Picasso
ITV1, 10:00-11:00pm

Broadcaster, journalist and former government minister Michael Portillo shares his love for art as he travels to Spain and France to discover the genius of Picasso in this fourth programme of the Perspectives arts strand on ITV.  Michael talks of how his love of art has been influenced by his father, an exiled Spanish republican, as he explores the life and work of Pablo Picasso.  He travels to Malaga, birthplace of the celebrated artist, and where he came to love the bullfight. Michael stands in the bullring which inspired his famous paintings.  He meets Picasso’s granddaughter Diana in the Paris studio where he painted Guernica, his most iconic work, and Salvador Farelo, one of Malaga’s greatest bullfighters, who says bullfighting appears so much in Spanish art because bullfighting is itself pure art.

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Monday 8th April

Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts

What Do Artists Do All Day?
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Jack Vettriano

Jack Vettriano is arguably Britain's most popular artist, with his nostalgic paintings of a lost age of glamour being instantly recognisable and his most famous work, The Singing Butler, the country's bestselling image, reproduced on everything from calendars to jigsaws. But despite his popularity, the self-taught miner's son from Fife has never been fully accepted by the art establishment. This film offers an intimate and revealing portrait of Vettriano, as he creates his latest painting, featuring actress Kara Tointon, and sees him talk with brutal honestly about his critics and how he deals with fame. 




Factual > History > Documentaries

Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - Tudors to Stuarts: From Gods to Men

Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, explores how the physical and mental health of our past monarchs has shaped the history of the nation. From Henry VIII to Edward VIII's abdication in 1936, this three-part series re-introduces our past royals not just as powerful potentates, but as human beings, each with their own very personal problems of biology and psychology.

Stripping away the regal facade, Lucy examines their medical problems, doctors' reports, personal correspondence and intimate possessions to gain a unique insight into the real men and women behind the royal portraits. She uncovers how kings and queens have had to deal with infertility, religious extremism, depression, bisexuality and culture shock. But could these supposed chinks in the royal armour provide a surprising explanation for the enduring power of the British monarchy? Lucy argues that the survival of the monarchy has been determined not so much by the strengths of our past monarchs but by their weaknesses.

In this first episode, Lucy explores the medical histories of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, beginning with the ascension of Henry VIII and tracing the changing fortunes of these two very different royal families up to the execution of Charles I. Five hundred years ago our monarchs derived their authority from God alone, but despite their semi-divine status, they were subject to exactly the same harsh physical realities as the rest of us. Lucy discovers how the Tudors and Stuarts coped with royal bodies that were often too young or too old, too infirm or too infertile and sometimes simply the wrong sex at a time when male heirs were all important.

Lucy investigates the most critical medical problems and family psychodramas faced by a fascinating cast of royal characters, including the trouble Henry VIII had in producing a male heir and the cause of his daughter Mary I's phantom pregnancy. She sheds new light on the biological and psychological make-up of some of our greatest rulers by examining their personal correspondence and private possessions, including intimate love letters exchanged between James I and his lover the Duke of Buckingham, and the special orthopaedic boots worn by Charles I. 


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Tuesday 9th April

Documentaries

The Prozac Economy
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-8:40pm

Prozac is 25 years old. One of the first blockbuster drugs, it has been taken by over 40 million people around the world and made billions of dollars for Eli Lilly, the company that created it.

In this programme, Will Self examines the legacy of the so-called ‘wonder drug’. As he sets off on a personal exploration of the conflicting and sensational stories that surround Prozac, he talks to those who make the drug, those who take it and those who prescribe it.

Anti-depressant use in the UK is rising sharply, but as Will discovers when he talks to Eli Lilly's Dr Robert Baker, the medical world still doesn't really know exactly how Prozac works. Dr David Wong, one of the fathers of the drug, reveals to Will that he believes too many people are taking it. Psychotherapist Susie Orbach diagnoses a generation of 'Prozac children' raised on the promise of on-demand happiness.

Dr David Healy, one of Prozac's most outspoken critics, tells Will why he thinks that the drug and its siblings are responsible for hundreds of unnecessary deaths in this country each year, and Linda Hurcombe explains to Will why she believes Prozac is linked to the death of her teenage daughter, Caitlin. On the flip side, Will meets Dorothy Neilson who explains how the drug saved her from a horrifying pit of depression


Factual > Health & Wellbeing

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/8

The groundbreaking eight-part series that tells the story of a single day in the NHS. One hundred camera crews were dispatched across the country to capture how this giant institution collides with every aspect of life in Britain. Through the experience of patients and staff, each film reveals the grief, frustration, heroism and joy evident in the NHS every single day.

In the third episode: a GP struggling with an unusual medical emergency on a Scottish Island and a top surgeon performing a high risk brain operation while the patient Daryl is still awake. In London, Pat waits anxiously for his wife Laura to come round from an induced coma. This film shows the vastly different contexts in which the NHS operates; urban and rural; both the cutting edge treatment for those who are critically ill with the more everyday procedures that make up the ailments and dilemmas of modern Britain.


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Wednesday 10th April

History > Documentaries

The Century that Wrote Itself
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - The Written Self

In a new three-part series for BBC Four, author Adam Nicolson takes an intimate look at the diarists and letter writers of the 17th century who produced the first great age of self-depiction.

The Century That Wrote Itself explores how, at a time of great upheaval in England, writing was both a means of escape and of fighting for what you believed. It was a time when account books became confessionals, and letters became weapons against the authorities.

In the first episode, The Written Self, Adam traces our modern sense of self back to the time when ordinary people first took up the quill. From a Quaker woman who used the written word as an instrument of revolution (imprisoned after sparking debates with her pamphlets and leaflets fighting for free speech, a free press and for the rights of women as preachers), to an ambitious shepherd who traded one of his sheep in return for lessons in reading and writing, the programme explores how rising literacy allowed people to re-write the country’s future - and their own.

Of the series, presenter Adam Nicolson says: “The 17th century was the most revolutionary moment in our history. The whole geometry of the country, the way people dealt with each other, the way they were thinking about religion and science, their relationships with the rest of the world - all of that was in flux.

“You could think of it as 'the English Spring' - the moment when all kinds of inherited authority, medieval hierarchies, the crown and the church, started to melt and bubble. But this wasn't an easy slide into modernity – it was an agonising process, with many steps forward and many back. And all of it was dependent on the liberalising effects of written communication. If you could read and write you didn't have to depend on what others told you. You could know it for yourself. You could challenge what they had to say.”


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Thursday 11th April

Factual > History > Religion & Ethics > Documentaries

Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 6/6 - Caves

In this final episode, Ifor ap Glyn sets out to discover why subterranean sites have some of the richest religious histories in Britain. Why do people seem to feel closer to the divine by going underground?

Ifor’s first stop is Lud’s Church in Derbyshire, a natural canyon of labyrinthine corridors which is one of the most dramatic and atmospheric holy places in the country. He then ventures into the depths of a cave in North Wales where evidence of ritual use dating back 14,000 years make this perhaps the oldest holy place in Britain.

Ifor then follows in the footsteps of St Cuthbert’s body, which was shifted between caves in the north of England to escape the attention of Viking raiders, and he visits a coastal cave in St Govan, South Wales, where a hermit is said to have been miraculously enveloped in rock, allowing him to evade a gang of local wreckers.

Back in Derbyshire, Ifor visits the Anchor Church at Ingleby, arguably the finest example of a cave church in Britain, before heading to Norwich, where he meets a nun who tells him all about a young woman who, in the 1370s, chose to be bricked up alive for over 40 years in an act of almost unbelievable devotion. Finally, Ifor visits the dramatic crypt at Ripon Cathedral in North Yorkshire, a recreation of the most holy site in Christendom - Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem.


Factual > Art, Culture & the Media > History > Documentaries

The High Art of the Low Countries
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - Boom and Bust

This second episode of the series is the very exemplar of art-history documentaries. Andrew Graham-Dixon looks at the Dutch Golden Age, exploring the period lasting just over a century from the 1560s to the 1670s. It saw this small country become the most powerful on Earth, exchanging regal tyranny for a market-led republicanism, built, like the country itself, by its citizens. But it was a boom-and-bust economy — witness the mania for tulips of the early 1600s — that was reflected in the wavering fortunes of its finest artists: Franz Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer. 

The paintings are stupendous, but so is the analysis. Graham-Dixon is in his element here, quoting Descartes and Montaigne one minute, and asking, “Have you ever seen a more vividly rendered cowpat?” (about a painting of a majestic bull) the next. Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the countries of Holland and Belgium, famous for their tulips and windmills, but which were actually forged through conflict and division. He examines how a period of economic prosperity, driven by the secular middle class, led to the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, during which time the concept of oil painting was conceived, and the master painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer found success.


Documentaries

One Mile Away
Channel 4, 11:10pm-1:00am

Penny Woolcock's award-winning documentary charts the attempts by two warring gangs, the Burger Bar Boys (B21) and the Johnson Crew (B6), to bring peace to their neighbourhoods in inner city Birmingham.  It follows Penny Woolcock's hip hop musical 1 Day, which was partly informed by these postcode wars.

One Mile Away was initiated by Shabba, a young man affiliated to the Johnson side, who met Penny during her research for 1 Day. He saw her as neutral and as someone who had built trust on both sides.  Penny agreed to get involved and introduced Shabba to Dylan Duffus, the lead actor in 1 Day and affiliated to the Burger side.

The film follows their painstaking journey over two years to recruit supporters from both sides. Along the way, they get advice from Jonathan Powell, who oversaw the Good Friday Agreement, and the riots erupt in Birmingham in summer 2011, with surprising consequences. This compelling documentary demonstrates how film and the determination of ordinary people can transform entrenched social problems. One Mile Away is now also a developing social enterprise, working with schools to reduce gang culture in the UK.


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Friday 12th April

History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries

Isaac Newton: The Last Magician
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Recluse. Obsessive. Heretic. Isaac Newton is now considered to be the greatest genius of all-time, a great rationalist who laid the foundations for many of the scientific and mathematical breakthroughs that shape the modern world.

But this 60-minute biography, part of the BBC’s Genius Of Invention season, reveals a much more complex figure by interviewing experts and delving into his own writings and those of his contemporaries. Newton emerges as an often divisive figure, one who lived a largely solitary life. In the secrecy of his study and laboratory, we find that he also delved into heretical religion, alchemy and the occult.

Sir Isaac Newton transformed how we understand the universe. By the age of 21, he had rejected 2,000 years of scientific orthodoxy to develop his own insights through a relentless - and often dangerous – series of experiments. From his obsessions with light and gravity, to alchemy and biblical texts, Newton held no truth – or text – so sacred that it could not be questioned. His work put him at odds with fellow scientists and led to dark periods of isolation throughout his life.

But his genius could not be denied: he rose through the scientific ranks to become the President of the Royal Society and one of the most influential scientists in the world. His heretical religious views and his obsession with alchemy remained a closely guarded secret in his lifetime. After his death, his unpublished alchemical research and documents relating to his heretical views were buried to protect his reputation. They remained largely hidden until 1936 when they were purchased by the economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes revealed that Newtown was a much more complex man than history had allowed. The programme concludes that Newton’s secret obsession with alchemy helped him to achieve some of his greatest scientific insights.

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