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 6th February
News, Current Affairs
Panorama: Hunting the Internet Bullies
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
Online bullying is rapidly growing in frequency and intensity. A new breed of self-styled 'trolls' are stalking social networking websites, aiming their vicious attacks at victims who range from TV celebrities to grieving teenagers.
Declan Lawn meets X Factor star Cher Lloyd, who describes how cyber attacks are ruining her life, and highlights a new survey revealing that one in thirteen young people face persistent online bullying. Panorama tracks down some of the bullies and asks: what more could be done to stop them?
Factual; Health and Wellbeing; Documentaries
San Francisco's Year Zero: We Were Here
BBC4, 10:00-11:30pm
2011 marks 30 years since AIDS descended. In 1981, the flourishing gay community in San Franscisco was hit with an unimaginable disaster. Through the eyes of those whose lives changed in unimaginable ways, this film tells how their beloved city was changed from a hotbed of sexual freedom and social experimentation into the epicentre of a terrible sexually transmitted 'gay plague'. From their different vantage points as caregivers, activists, researchers, friends and lovers of the afflicted and as people with AIDS themselves, it shares stories which are intensely personal. Speaking to our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, this is the story of the incredible power of a community coming together with love, compassion and determination.
________________________________________________________
Tuesday 7th February
Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
How to Grow a Planet
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3, Life from a Light
In this series Professor Iain Stewart tells a stunning new story about our planet. He reveals how the greatest changes to the Earth have been driven, above all, by plants.
In this first episode Iain journeys from the spectacular caves of Vietnam to the remote deserts of Africa. He sees how plants first harnessed light from the sun and created our life-giving atmosphere. He uncovers the epic battle between the dinosaurs and the tallest trees on the planet. And, using remarkable imagery, he shows plants breathing - and for the first time talking to each other.
Documentaries; Science
Katie: The Science of Seeing Again
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
Following a vicious acid attack in 2008, Katie Piper has undergone 109 operations to rebuild her face. But it is the 110th op, using controversial cutting-edge science, which could truly transform her life, providing her only chance of seeing again through her badly damaged left eye. After spending three and a half years struggling to accept she would forever be blind in one eye, Katie heard about pioneering surgery that could potentially restore her sight using the extraordinary power of stem cells. She tracked down the doctor responsible for it and has put herself forward to be one of the first people in the world to undergo the treatment, which entails transplanting stem cells directly into her eye.
Criminology; Forensics
Death Unexplained
BBC1, 10:35-11:20pm, 1/3
With unprecedented access to forensic pathologists, mortuary technicians, police and the Coroner herself, Death Unexplained follows Her Majesty’s Coroner Alison Thompson and her team as they examine in painstaking detail mysterious, violent and unnatural deaths in West London, one of the busiest jurisdictions in the country.
Behind each case is also a very human story, movingly told by families themselves and revealing more about the circumstances of loved ones’ lives and deaths.
In the first episode, Alison’s team investigate a rare case of suspected poisoning; a possible prescription drugs overdose and the case of a man whose body lay undiscovered for months. In court the Coroner must reach her verdict – who were the deceased and when, where and how did they die?
________________________________________________________
Wednesday 8th February
Factual; Homes and Gardens; Science and Nature; Science and Environment
Bees, Butterflies and Blooms
BBC2; 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3, Villages, Farms and Countryside
Our bees and other pollinating insects are in crisis. It’s a complex problem that scientists the world over are trying to fathom, but the prognosis is grim - without healthy populations of insect pollinators across the world, our food security is under threat.
Our pollinating insects are vital to the production of the vast majority of the fruits and vegetables we need in our healthy 5-a-day diets. If we don’t start to look after our insect pollinators, eventually our favourite foods could vanish from our supermarket shelves, from apples and pears through to coffee and chocolate.
Sarah wants to show us all that we could make a difference and reverse this trend if we all do our bit. She wants to inspire and inform everyone, no matter where they live – village, town, city or countryside – to get planting nectar rich plants.
Backed by recent research, Sarah believes that one of the main reasons our pollinators are under threat is due to their poor health and nutrition. A lack of a rich and varied supply of pollen and nectar throughout the year to feed our insect workforce is leaving them vulnerable to the effects of pesticides and parasites and threatening some species with extinction.
Sarah believes in ‘people power’, and that together, we can all do our bit to help save our precious pollinators, and bring their needs to the fore.
If we all make small changes in our local areas and grow more wildflowers and insect-friendly plants, then we can lend a strong helping hand to our bees, butterflies and pollinating bugs.
Together, we could help to reverse the trend, maybe stop extinctions and secure a future for our threatened pollinating insects.
Documentary
Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:50am
Amongst all the crackpot politics of early 70s USA, the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst by anti-capitalist revolutionaries was the freakiest act in town. Robert Stone's fascinating Guerrilla combines a stunning wealth of contemporary footage with interviews from many - but sadly not all - of the major surviving players to brilliantly document the ideological fury of the captors, the harebrained reaction of the establishment, and the whirling media lunacy that fuelled both sides.
In 1973, a dismayed group of Berkley radicals and an escaped convict formed the Symbionese Liberation Army dedicated to destroying the "fascist insect" the USA had become. Attempting to bring about a prisoner swap, the SLA snatched Hearst, great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and heiress to the publishing empire the SLA regarded as "chief propagandists of the military dictatorship".
The film's most comic and shocking moments come from the fact that every wild twist in the drama was pumped out on wall-to-wall television, especially when Patty herself turned up two months later as a bank-robbing, gun-toting member of the SLA - or when a month after that, six SLA members ended up dead in a two-hour shootout with the LA police.
Claiming brainwashing and using her family's considerable influence, Hearst obtained an early release from her ensuing prison sentence and an eventual Presidential pardon. The film suffers slightly, then, from a gaping Patty-shaped hole in the finale. Just as we are ready for some answers, Stone sidesteps the question of her truthfulness, claiming that the interesting part of the tale is the way America reacted. True as that may be, we, the bloodthirsty consumers of personality-led media, cannot help but be disappointed by her absence.
News; Current Affairs; Environment
Tonight: The Cost of Going Green
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
The UK Government is committed to having 15% of our total energy generated by renewable sources such as wind, water and solar power by the year 2020. This target has led to a number of innovative yet highly subsidised schemes – but at what cost to household bills? Jonathan Maitland investigates the cost of going green
_________________________________________________________
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Off-air recordings for week 28th January - 3rd February 2012
Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
___________________________________________________________
Saturday 28th January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Atlantis: The Evidence - A Timewatch Special
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
In this Timewatch special, historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event, the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world.
___________________________________________________________
Sunday 29th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and the Enviroment
Penguin Island
BBC1, 3:30-4:00pm, 1/6
Meet Bluey and Sheila, one of the 13,000 little penguin couples who live on Phillip Island, off the coast of Australia. As the devoted penguin couple returns to their cliff-top home to begin the annual breeding cycle, Penguin Island introduces the dedicated team of rangers and scientists who will monitor and protect them through the hottest summer on record.
Among them is Marg Healy. With over 26 years of experience with penguins and other animals, Marg runs Phillip Island's animal hospital, looking after injured wildlife including little penguins, possums, koalas and other birds.
Field researcher Leanne Renwick weighs and examines the penguins to ensure they are up to the task of breeding. Her colleague Elizabeth Lundahl-Hegedus is a parade ranger and has lived within the Summerlands penguin colony for 30 years. It is a short walk from her house to the Penguin Parade, where the nightly parade of little penguins returns from sea.
We meet the feathered residents of the Penguin Cafe, a cluster of 'love nests' behind the busy Phillip Island tourist centre, where perennial bachelor Rocky and the determined yet slightly dim-witted Spike vie for the attention of the passing females as they attempt to attract a mate - including recent divorcee Tash.
Meanwhile, Bluey and Sheila lay their first clutch of eggs. While Sheila is off at sea hunting for food, the eggs hatch and Bluey must guard them until Sheila is home to meet her two young sons for the first time.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 30th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
The Secret Catacombs of Paris
BBC Radio 4, 11:00-11:30am
Famously known as the City of Light, Paris is a diverse metropolis rich in architecture and steeped in history. But it has a dark alter ego that lies 30 metres under the ground, mirroring centuries of bloody wars, revolutions and riots on the surface. For Paris is porous - built on 177 miles of tunnels that were formed when limestone and gypsum were quarried to build the capital. Most people are only aware of just a tiny fraction of these tunnels - the world famous ossuary known as The Catacombs. The authorities have tried to keep a lid on the full extent of the labyrinthine remainder for hundreds of years. But there are little known entry points everywhere - in basements, in train stations, cellars and sewers. Throughout history, invaders have always found a way in, whether they were fighting Prussian soldiers, fleeing royalty of the French Revolution, the Nazis or The Resistance. Today they're home to the cataphiles - urban explorers who use the tunnels as an art space, a music venue or even a clandestine meeting point for secret societies.
The Guardian's architecture and design correspondent Jonathan Glancey investigates the underground maze of Paris, revealing a mysterious and intriguing history.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 31st January
Factual; Documentaries
Wonderland: My Child The Rioter
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In August 2011, parents all over Britain were waking up to a morning they had never imagined. For some, it was the police knocking on the door, for others, it was the sight of a pile of stolen goods in their child's bedroom. Some simply realised that it was their kid who had been out on the streets, smashing windows, looting shops and attacking the police.
In sitting rooms and kitchens around the country, these families endured some of the most difficult conversations of their lives. Olly Lambert's film takes viewers inside those homes and inside those conversations. Many of these families would find their children facing lengthy prison sentences, and they themselves were singled out by a prime minister who blamed the worst riots in recent British history on 'a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals'.
Eileen and Alan Bretherton's son Liam had recently served in Afghanistan, and was at the beginning of a promising career in the army. He got caught up in the events of last summer while home on leave; consequently, his parents now have to face the fact that the son in whom they took so much pride is now an ex-offender whose military career is in ruins.
In Manchester, childhood sweethearts Kerry and Liam Parkes looked on as their 19-year-old son defended the riots and took pride in what he did on the streets of Manchester. And in Willesden, David Clark watched his son break down in tears in fear of what his future may now hold.
This simple film cuts to the heart of families at the frontline of rioting Britain.
Factual; Politics
What Are The Police For?
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-8:30pm, 1/3
With policing top of the political agenda, and major change on the way, Mark Easton asks what we want from our police.
Mark spends time with police officers doing jobs as diverse as roads policing, neighbourhood policing and monitoring sex offenders to paint a picture of how we are policed in 2012 and examine whether the daily reality matches the political rhetoric. And he speaks to politicians, academics and the public to assess whether what we are getting is what we want.
In this first programme, he digs into the origins of the current political debate over policing, and asks what the huge political changes lined up for policing in 2012 - including budget cuts, elected Police and Crime Commissioners and major changes to working practices - will mean for the service.
___________________________________________________________
Wednesday 1st February
Factual; Crime and Justice
Burglar in the House
BBC1, 10:45-11:30pm
Every two minutes a house in Britain is burgled, and for years Nottingham has suffered the highest burglary rates in the UK. But the city's police are fighting back, and are now capturing the burglars on camera. They are installing hidden minicams inside ordinary homes, which record the thieves in action. They call them 'capture houses', Nottingham's new weapon in the fight against crime. But is this new technology as reliable as the police think? And should the police be allowed to set traps for burglars?
Part of the Modern Crime season, this gripping documentary takes viewers to the frontline of a surburban crime-wave, witnessing first-hand the cat-and-mouse battle currently being played out across Nottingham. The film shows heart-stopping footage of burglars breaking into homes, and follows the intelligence and burglary teams as they hunt the burglars down. And cameras are there in the interview room as the burglar is shown the damning footage. Many burglars protest their innocence at first, but once they see the capture house footage, the game is up.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 2nd February
Factual; History
Lost Kingdoms of Africa
BBC4, 11:10pm-12:10am, 1/4, The Kingdom of Asante
We know less about Africa's distant past than almost anywhere else on Earth. But the scarcity of written records doesn't mean that Africa lacks history - it is found instead in the culture, artefacts and traditions of the people. In this series, art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford explores some of the richest and most vibrant histories in the world, revealing fascinating stories of four complex and sophisticated civilisations: the Kingdom of Asante, the Zulu Kingdom, the Berber Kingdom of Morocco and the Kingdoms of Bunyoro & Buganda.
In this episode, Dr Casely-Hayford travels to Ghana in West Africa, where a powerful kingdom once dominated the region. Asante was built on gold and slaves, which ensured its important place in an economy that linked three continents. He reveals how this sophisticated kingdom emerged from the unlikely environment of dense tropical forest and how it was held together by a shared sense of tradition and history - one deliberately moulded by the kingdom's rulers.
Factual; History; Youth Culture
Teen Spirit
Yesterday, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
In this first episode, Suggs takes a look at post-war Britain in the 50s where the word teenager didn't even exist. Instead children simply left school and entered straight into adult life by getting a job, getting married and having children themselves. In an era where homes finally got the washing machine, electric fire and the telephone, young adults were also starting their own rebellious uprising. Bored of following the establishment, they decided to cry out to society by donning drainpipe trousers, drape jackets and crepe shoes to form the well known culture of the Teddy Boys. Suggs takes viewers back in time to explore the music, fashions and rebellious attitudes of the 50s teens. Don't forget your hair grease and comb.
___________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February
News; Factual; Current Affairs
Egypt: Children of the Revolution
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm
Documentary following three revolutionaries after the downfall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring, exploring their different visions for the country's future. Western-educated Gigi Ibrahim discusses his desire for a more liberal Egypt, Ahmed Hassan hopes the changes will lead to greater employment opportunities, and Tahir Yasin, who was tortured while in prison, dreams of the nation becoming an Islamic state.
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
___________________________________________________________
Saturday 28th January
Factual; History; Documentaries
Atlantis: The Evidence - A Timewatch Special
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
In this Timewatch special, historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event, the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world.
___________________________________________________________
Sunday 29th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and the Enviroment
Penguin Island
BBC1, 3:30-4:00pm, 1/6
Meet Bluey and Sheila, one of the 13,000 little penguin couples who live on Phillip Island, off the coast of Australia. As the devoted penguin couple returns to their cliff-top home to begin the annual breeding cycle, Penguin Island introduces the dedicated team of rangers and scientists who will monitor and protect them through the hottest summer on record.
Among them is Marg Healy. With over 26 years of experience with penguins and other animals, Marg runs Phillip Island's animal hospital, looking after injured wildlife including little penguins, possums, koalas and other birds.
Field researcher Leanne Renwick weighs and examines the penguins to ensure they are up to the task of breeding. Her colleague Elizabeth Lundahl-Hegedus is a parade ranger and has lived within the Summerlands penguin colony for 30 years. It is a short walk from her house to the Penguin Parade, where the nightly parade of little penguins returns from sea.
We meet the feathered residents of the Penguin Cafe, a cluster of 'love nests' behind the busy Phillip Island tourist centre, where perennial bachelor Rocky and the determined yet slightly dim-witted Spike vie for the attention of the passing females as they attempt to attract a mate - including recent divorcee Tash.
Meanwhile, Bluey and Sheila lay their first clutch of eggs. While Sheila is off at sea hunting for food, the eggs hatch and Bluey must guard them until Sheila is home to meet her two young sons for the first time.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 30th January
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
The Secret Catacombs of Paris
BBC Radio 4, 11:00-11:30am
Famously known as the City of Light, Paris is a diverse metropolis rich in architecture and steeped in history. But it has a dark alter ego that lies 30 metres under the ground, mirroring centuries of bloody wars, revolutions and riots on the surface. For Paris is porous - built on 177 miles of tunnels that were formed when limestone and gypsum were quarried to build the capital. Most people are only aware of just a tiny fraction of these tunnels - the world famous ossuary known as The Catacombs. The authorities have tried to keep a lid on the full extent of the labyrinthine remainder for hundreds of years. But there are little known entry points everywhere - in basements, in train stations, cellars and sewers. Throughout history, invaders have always found a way in, whether they were fighting Prussian soldiers, fleeing royalty of the French Revolution, the Nazis or The Resistance. Today they're home to the cataphiles - urban explorers who use the tunnels as an art space, a music venue or even a clandestine meeting point for secret societies.
The Guardian's architecture and design correspondent Jonathan Glancey investigates the underground maze of Paris, revealing a mysterious and intriguing history.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 31st January
Factual; Documentaries
Wonderland: My Child The Rioter
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In August 2011, parents all over Britain were waking up to a morning they had never imagined. For some, it was the police knocking on the door, for others, it was the sight of a pile of stolen goods in their child's bedroom. Some simply realised that it was their kid who had been out on the streets, smashing windows, looting shops and attacking the police.
In sitting rooms and kitchens around the country, these families endured some of the most difficult conversations of their lives. Olly Lambert's film takes viewers inside those homes and inside those conversations. Many of these families would find their children facing lengthy prison sentences, and they themselves were singled out by a prime minister who blamed the worst riots in recent British history on 'a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals'.
Eileen and Alan Bretherton's son Liam had recently served in Afghanistan, and was at the beginning of a promising career in the army. He got caught up in the events of last summer while home on leave; consequently, his parents now have to face the fact that the son in whom they took so much pride is now an ex-offender whose military career is in ruins.
In Manchester, childhood sweethearts Kerry and Liam Parkes looked on as their 19-year-old son defended the riots and took pride in what he did on the streets of Manchester. And in Willesden, David Clark watched his son break down in tears in fear of what his future may now hold.
This simple film cuts to the heart of families at the frontline of rioting Britain.
Factual; Politics
What Are The Police For?
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-8:30pm, 1/3
With policing top of the political agenda, and major change on the way, Mark Easton asks what we want from our police.
Mark spends time with police officers doing jobs as diverse as roads policing, neighbourhood policing and monitoring sex offenders to paint a picture of how we are policed in 2012 and examine whether the daily reality matches the political rhetoric. And he speaks to politicians, academics and the public to assess whether what we are getting is what we want.
In this first programme, he digs into the origins of the current political debate over policing, and asks what the huge political changes lined up for policing in 2012 - including budget cuts, elected Police and Crime Commissioners and major changes to working practices - will mean for the service.
___________________________________________________________
Wednesday 1st February
Factual; Crime and Justice
Burglar in the House
BBC1, 10:45-11:30pm
Every two minutes a house in Britain is burgled, and for years Nottingham has suffered the highest burglary rates in the UK. But the city's police are fighting back, and are now capturing the burglars on camera. They are installing hidden minicams inside ordinary homes, which record the thieves in action. They call them 'capture houses', Nottingham's new weapon in the fight against crime. But is this new technology as reliable as the police think? And should the police be allowed to set traps for burglars?
Part of the Modern Crime season, this gripping documentary takes viewers to the frontline of a surburban crime-wave, witnessing first-hand the cat-and-mouse battle currently being played out across Nottingham. The film shows heart-stopping footage of burglars breaking into homes, and follows the intelligence and burglary teams as they hunt the burglars down. And cameras are there in the interview room as the burglar is shown the damning footage. Many burglars protest their innocence at first, but once they see the capture house footage, the game is up.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 2nd February
Factual; History
Lost Kingdoms of Africa
BBC4, 11:10pm-12:10am, 1/4, The Kingdom of Asante
We know less about Africa's distant past than almost anywhere else on Earth. But the scarcity of written records doesn't mean that Africa lacks history - it is found instead in the culture, artefacts and traditions of the people. In this series, art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford explores some of the richest and most vibrant histories in the world, revealing fascinating stories of four complex and sophisticated civilisations: the Kingdom of Asante, the Zulu Kingdom, the Berber Kingdom of Morocco and the Kingdoms of Bunyoro & Buganda.
In this episode, Dr Casely-Hayford travels to Ghana in West Africa, where a powerful kingdom once dominated the region. Asante was built on gold and slaves, which ensured its important place in an economy that linked three continents. He reveals how this sophisticated kingdom emerged from the unlikely environment of dense tropical forest and how it was held together by a shared sense of tradition and history - one deliberately moulded by the kingdom's rulers.
Factual; History; Youth Culture
Teen Spirit
Yesterday, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
In this first episode, Suggs takes a look at post-war Britain in the 50s where the word teenager didn't even exist. Instead children simply left school and entered straight into adult life by getting a job, getting married and having children themselves. In an era where homes finally got the washing machine, electric fire and the telephone, young adults were also starting their own rebellious uprising. Bored of following the establishment, they decided to cry out to society by donning drainpipe trousers, drape jackets and crepe shoes to form the well known culture of the Teddy Boys. Suggs takes viewers back in time to explore the music, fashions and rebellious attitudes of the 50s teens. Don't forget your hair grease and comb.
___________________________________________________________
Friday 3rd February
News; Factual; Current Affairs
Egypt: Children of the Revolution
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm
Documentary following three revolutionaries after the downfall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring, exploring their different visions for the country's future. Western-educated Gigi Ibrahim discusses his desire for a more liberal Egypt, Ahmed Hassan hopes the changes will lead to greater employment opportunities, and Tahir Yasin, who was tortured while in prison, dreams of the nation becoming an Islamic state.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Off-air recordings for week 21-27 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.
__________________________________________________________
Saturday 21st January
Art, culture and the Media; Documentaries
Catfish
More4, 10:00-11:55pm
When New York photographer Nev Schulman receives a painting based on one of his photographs from Abby, an eight-year-old child prodigy in Michigan, they become Facebook friends, and Nev develops online relationships with Abby's family, in particular with her attractive elder half-sister Megan.
But is everything as it seems? Nev travels to Michigan to find out.
A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, Catfish is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.
__________________________________________________________
Sunday 22nd January
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Last Explorers
BBC2, 6:00-7:00pm, 1/4 Livingstone
Neil Oliver follows in the footsteps of four Scottish explorers who planted ideas rather than flags - ideas that shaped the modern world we know today. In this first programme, Neil travels down the Zambesi river to reveal how David Livingstone took the faith of his nation to the ends of the Earth and exploited his celebrity to end the slave trade. His was a moral mission: to reshape British values and bring commerce, Christianity and civilisation to the African continent.
__________________________________________________________
Tuesday 24th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and the Environment; Documentaries
Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 The Great Dying
It is estimated that 99 per cent of species have become extinct and there have been times when life's hold on Earth has been so precarious it seems it hangs on by a thread.
This series focuses on the survivors - the old-timers - whose biographies stretch back millions of years and who show how it is possible to survive a mass extinction event which wipes out nearly all of its neighbours. The Natural History Museum's Professor Richard Fortey discovers what allows the very few to carry on going - perhaps not for ever, but certainly far beyond the life expectancy of normal species. What makes a survivor when all around drop like flies?
In this episode Professor Fortey focuses on a series of cataclysms over a million year period, 250 million years ago.
Factual; Politics; Documentaries
The World Against Apartheid: Have You Heard From Johannesburg?
BBC2, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/5, The Road To Resistance
Ten years in the making, this series explores how a violent and racist government was destroyed by the concerted efforts of men and women working on multiple fronts inside and outside South Africa for more than three decades. Featuring archive of the struggle never seen before on television and interviews with the major players, it is one of the most fascinating stories of the last century.
In this opening episode, Oliver Tambo leads citizens of the world in their condemnation of South Africa's cruel and racist new regime. The world reacts with horror when protesters are gunned down in the town of Sharpeville and the entire ANC leadership is forced underground or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela is jailed for life and ANC deputy president Oliver Tambo escapes into exile, embarking on what will become a 30-year journey to engage the world in the struggle to bring democracy to South Africa. With resistance inside South Africa effectively crushed by the brutal apartheid regime, the fate of the liberation struggle is in Tambo's hands.
_________________________________________________________
Wednesday 25th January
Factual; Science and Nature
Natural World: Jungle Gremlins of Java
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm
The slow loris is the real-life gremlin, extremely cute but with a venom that can kill. Now it's also a YouTube superstar with millions of hits. Dr Anna Nekaris travels to the jungles of Java to solve the riddle of its toxic bite, but a shocking discovery awaits.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media
Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil
BBC2, 11:00pm-12:00am
Following the recent death of Ken Russell, Alan Yentob looks back over the career of the flamboyant film director responsible for Women In Love, Tommy and The Devils. Friends and admirers - including Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey - recall a pioneering documentary-maker, talented photographer and fearless film director.
When at the BBC in the Sixties, Russell first established his name with brilliant documentaries on Elgar, Delius and Debussy. Not only did he bring alive their music with inspiring images, he also humanised them by using actors, something unthinkable in factual film-making at the time. His unfettered imagination soon led to feature films. Women In Love earned Glenda Jackson an Oscar and notoriety for a nude wrestling scene featuring Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Although infamy dogged him with The Devils, he enjoyed considerable commercial success with The Boyfriend and his extravagant take on The Who's Tommy. Furiously creative to the end, Russell showed himself determined to pursue his original ideas, sometimes regardless of the personal cost.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 26th January
Factual; Archaeology
Saxon Hoard: A Golden Discovery
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm
Historian Dan Snow uncovers the secrets of one of Britain's most significant discoveries - the Staffordshire Hoard. Found by an amateur metal detecting enthusiast in 2009, the cache of 3,500 items offers an array of new clues into the Dark Ages, and the presenter pieces together the lives of the people who lived in these kingdoms.
Arts, Culture and the Media; Drama documentary
We'll Take Manhattan
BBC4, 9:00-10:30pm
We’ll Take Manhattan explores the explosive love affair between Sixties supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and photographer, David Bailey.
Focusing on a wild and unpredictable 1962 Vogue photo shoot in New York, the drama brings to life the story of two young people falling in love, misbehaving and inadvertently defining the style of the Sixties along the way.
Set predominantly in 1962 but also exploring the story of how Bailey and Shrimpton first met, this one-off drama reveals how a young, visionary photographer refused to conform. He insisted on using the unconventional model Jean Shrimpton on an important photo shoot for British Vogue and, over the course of a freezing week in Manhattan, went against the wishes of fashion editor, Lady Clare Rendlesham, and made startling, original photographs.
We’ll Take Manhattan is the story of that wild week, of Bailey and Jean’s love affair, and of how two young people accidentally changed the world for ever.
Biography; Documentary
David Bailey: Four Beats To The Bar and No Cheating
BBC4, 10:30-11:35pm
From Vogue magazine fashion photographer to filmmaker, painter and sculptor, David Bailey is a cultural icon who has been at the cutting edge of contemporary art for 50 years. A working-class Londoner, he befriended the stars, married his muses and still captures the spirit and elegance of his times with his refreshingly simple approach and razor-sharp eye. Approaching his 73rd year, Bailey is showing no sign of slowing up. In his London studio and his country home in Devon, he continues to create one of the most varied and pertinent collections of any modern artist. Featuring interviews with art critic Martin Harrison, former wife Catherine Deneuve, current wife Catherine Dyer and close friend Jerry Hall, this is a portrait of a private man who bared the soul of the swinging sixties and seventies with his photographs and films. Grounded, honest, open and ferociously creative, Bailey makes art the way Count Basie played jazz - four beats to the bar and no cheating.
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
__________________________________________________________
Saturday 21st January
Art, culture and the Media; Documentaries
Catfish
More4, 10:00-11:55pm
When New York photographer Nev Schulman receives a painting based on one of his photographs from Abby, an eight-year-old child prodigy in Michigan, they become Facebook friends, and Nev develops online relationships with Abby's family, in particular with her attractive elder half-sister Megan.
But is everything as it seems? Nev travels to Michigan to find out.
A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, Catfish is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.
__________________________________________________________
Sunday 22nd January
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Last Explorers
BBC2, 6:00-7:00pm, 1/4 Livingstone
Neil Oliver follows in the footsteps of four Scottish explorers who planted ideas rather than flags - ideas that shaped the modern world we know today. In this first programme, Neil travels down the Zambesi river to reveal how David Livingstone took the faith of his nation to the ends of the Earth and exploited his celebrity to end the slave trade. His was a moral mission: to reshape British values and bring commerce, Christianity and civilisation to the African continent.
__________________________________________________________
Tuesday 24th January
Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and the Environment; Documentaries
Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 The Great Dying
It is estimated that 99 per cent of species have become extinct and there have been times when life's hold on Earth has been so precarious it seems it hangs on by a thread.
This series focuses on the survivors - the old-timers - whose biographies stretch back millions of years and who show how it is possible to survive a mass extinction event which wipes out nearly all of its neighbours. The Natural History Museum's Professor Richard Fortey discovers what allows the very few to carry on going - perhaps not for ever, but certainly far beyond the life expectancy of normal species. What makes a survivor when all around drop like flies?
In this episode Professor Fortey focuses on a series of cataclysms over a million year period, 250 million years ago.
Factual; Politics; Documentaries
The World Against Apartheid: Have You Heard From Johannesburg?
BBC2, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/5, The Road To Resistance
Ten years in the making, this series explores how a violent and racist government was destroyed by the concerted efforts of men and women working on multiple fronts inside and outside South Africa for more than three decades. Featuring archive of the struggle never seen before on television and interviews with the major players, it is one of the most fascinating stories of the last century.
In this opening episode, Oliver Tambo leads citizens of the world in their condemnation of South Africa's cruel and racist new regime. The world reacts with horror when protesters are gunned down in the town of Sharpeville and the entire ANC leadership is forced underground or imprisoned. Nelson Mandela is jailed for life and ANC deputy president Oliver Tambo escapes into exile, embarking on what will become a 30-year journey to engage the world in the struggle to bring democracy to South Africa. With resistance inside South Africa effectively crushed by the brutal apartheid regime, the fate of the liberation struggle is in Tambo's hands.
_________________________________________________________
Wednesday 25th January
Factual; Science and Nature
Natural World: Jungle Gremlins of Java
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm
The slow loris is the real-life gremlin, extremely cute but with a venom that can kill. Now it's also a YouTube superstar with millions of hits. Dr Anna Nekaris travels to the jungles of Java to solve the riddle of its toxic bite, but a shocking discovery awaits.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media
Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil
BBC2, 11:00pm-12:00am
Following the recent death of Ken Russell, Alan Yentob looks back over the career of the flamboyant film director responsible for Women In Love, Tommy and The Devils. Friends and admirers - including Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey - recall a pioneering documentary-maker, talented photographer and fearless film director.
When at the BBC in the Sixties, Russell first established his name with brilliant documentaries on Elgar, Delius and Debussy. Not only did he bring alive their music with inspiring images, he also humanised them by using actors, something unthinkable in factual film-making at the time. His unfettered imagination soon led to feature films. Women In Love earned Glenda Jackson an Oscar and notoriety for a nude wrestling scene featuring Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Although infamy dogged him with The Devils, he enjoyed considerable commercial success with The Boyfriend and his extravagant take on The Who's Tommy. Furiously creative to the end, Russell showed himself determined to pursue his original ideas, sometimes regardless of the personal cost.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 26th January
Factual; Archaeology
Saxon Hoard: A Golden Discovery
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm
Historian Dan Snow uncovers the secrets of one of Britain's most significant discoveries - the Staffordshire Hoard. Found by an amateur metal detecting enthusiast in 2009, the cache of 3,500 items offers an array of new clues into the Dark Ages, and the presenter pieces together the lives of the people who lived in these kingdoms.
Arts, Culture and the Media; Drama documentary
We'll Take Manhattan
BBC4, 9:00-10:30pm
We’ll Take Manhattan explores the explosive love affair between Sixties supermodel, Jean Shrimpton, and photographer, David Bailey.
Focusing on a wild and unpredictable 1962 Vogue photo shoot in New York, the drama brings to life the story of two young people falling in love, misbehaving and inadvertently defining the style of the Sixties along the way.
Set predominantly in 1962 but also exploring the story of how Bailey and Shrimpton first met, this one-off drama reveals how a young, visionary photographer refused to conform. He insisted on using the unconventional model Jean Shrimpton on an important photo shoot for British Vogue and, over the course of a freezing week in Manhattan, went against the wishes of fashion editor, Lady Clare Rendlesham, and made startling, original photographs.
We’ll Take Manhattan is the story of that wild week, of Bailey and Jean’s love affair, and of how two young people accidentally changed the world for ever.
Biography; Documentary
David Bailey: Four Beats To The Bar and No Cheating
BBC4, 10:30-11:35pm
From Vogue magazine fashion photographer to filmmaker, painter and sculptor, David Bailey is a cultural icon who has been at the cutting edge of contemporary art for 50 years. A working-class Londoner, he befriended the stars, married his muses and still captures the spirit and elegance of his times with his refreshingly simple approach and razor-sharp eye. Approaching his 73rd year, Bailey is showing no sign of slowing up. In his London studio and his country home in Devon, he continues to create one of the most varied and pertinent collections of any modern artist. Featuring interviews with art critic Martin Harrison, former wife Catherine Deneuve, current wife Catherine Dyer and close friend Jerry Hall, this is a portrait of a private man who bared the soul of the swinging sixties and seventies with his photographs and films. Grounded, honest, open and ferociously creative, Bailey makes art the way Count Basie played jazz - four beats to the bar and no cheating.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Off-air recordings for week 14-20 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.
___________________________________________________________
Saturday 14th January
Factual; Documentaries
Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking
BBC4, 11:00-pm-12:00am, series 11
Timeshift digs into the archive to discover the unwritten rules that have governed the way we drink in Britain. In the pubs and working men's clubs of the forties and fifties there were strict customs governing who stood where. To be invited to sup at the bar was a rite of passage for many young men, and it took years for women to be accepted into these bastions of masculinity. As the country prospered and foreign travel became widely available, so new drinking habits were introduced as we discovered wine and, even more exotically, cocktails.
People began to drink at home as well as at work, where journalists typified a tradition of the liquid lunch. Advertising played its part as lager was first sold as a woman's drink and then the drink of choice for young men with a bit of disposable income. The rules changed and changed again, but they were always there - unwritten and unspoken, yet underwriting our complicated relationship with drinking.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 16th January
Factual; Documentaries
Secrets of the Shoplifters
Channel 4, 10:00-11.05pm
Britain is the shoplifting capital of Europe - the crime has increased by over 12% in the last year. This film heads to the front line of the battle between shops and robbers, revealing the cunning and clever up-to-date tactics employed by both sides.
The summer riots highlighted that Brits are prepared to break the law and steal to get what they want. Whilet store detectives are refusing to give up the fight, shoplifters are equally determined to outwit them. It's a surreal world of cat and mouse - detectives scour Facebook while lifters use a range of complex tricks to try to disable those seemingly unmovable tags.
The recession is dramatically changing the goods that are being stolen - the theft of clothing is being replaced by a huge rise in meat stealing. With shoplifters becoming smarter and more presentable in appearance, security staff have to become experts in body language to stay one step ahead.
These committed detectives are putting their necks on the line, often without handcuffs or stab vests, while they try and detain people who, when caught, can sometimes turn violent.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 17th January
Drama. Classic and Period
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
BBC1, 1:25-2:25am, part 1 (part 2 tomorrow)
A two-part period drama adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens.
Opium addict and choirmaster John Jasper has vivid dreams of killing his beloved nephew Edwin Drood and stealing his fiancee Rosa. When two exotic strangers arrive in town, Jasper's dark desires take shape and his life will never be the same again.
With Edwin Drood feared dead, Jasper tries desperately to remember events of the night before. He pursues Rosa with an intensity that pushes him to the edge of sanity, while a trail of evidence points ominously to the cathedral crypt.
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Horizon: Playing God
BBC2, 9:30-10:30pm
Adam Rutherford meets a new creature created by American scientists, the spider-goat. It is part goat, part spider, and its milk can be used to create artificial spider's web.
It is part of a new field of research, synthetic biology, with a radical aim: to break down nature into spare parts so that we can rebuild it however we please.
This technology is already being used to make bio-diesel to power cars. Other researchers are looking at how we might, one day, control human emotions by sending 'biological machines' into our brains.
____________________________________________________________
Wednesday 18th January
Factual; History
Illuminations: The Private Life of Medieval Kings
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, Second of three part series (part 1 already recorded)
Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of medieval illuminated manuscripts and shows how they gave power to the king and united the kingdom in an age of plague, warfare and rebellion. She discovers that Edward III used the manuscripts he read as a boy to prepare him for his great victory at the battle of Crecy and reveals how a vigorous new national identity bloomed during the 100 Years War with France (1340-1453).
In the British Library's Royal Manuscripts collection she finds out that magnificent manuscripts like the Bedford Hours, taken as war booty from the French royal family, were adapted for the education of English princes. Dr Ramirez also explores how knowledge spread through a new form of book - the encyclopaedia.
Factual; History
The Crusades
BBC2, 9:30-10:30pm, 1/3 Holy War
The story of the Crusades is remembered as a tale of religious fanaticism and unspeakable brutality, of medieval knights and jihadi warriors; of castles and kings; of heroism, betrayal and sacrifice.
But now, using fresh evidence, eye-witness testimonies and contemporary accounts - from both the Christian and Islamic worlds - Dr Thomas Asbridge re-examines this epic medieval tale. Retracing the steps of the crusaders from a small town in France to the magnificent cities of the Holy Land, he brings to life the human experience of the Crusades, and sheds new light on how it was that two of the world's great religions waged war in the name of God; why hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims answered the call to crusade and jihad.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 19th January
News; Documentaries
Putin, Russia and the West
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4, Taking Control
Vladimir Putin, after eight years as President of Russia and four more as Prime Minister, is stubbornly holding onto power. He has announced his intention to return as President and declared his United Russia party the winner in parliamentary elections that have widely been seen as fraudulent, causing mass protests in Moscow and elsewhere with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets.
But just how did this consummate political operator with a background in the KGB become a valued ally of the West? And when did his policies start to provoke deep concern in Washington and London? Putin, Russia & the West tells the inside story, with contributions from Putin’s top colleagues and the Western statesmen who have clashed with him.
This is a four-part series from Norma Percy and the team at Brook Lapping behind the multi-award-winning documentaries The Death of Yugoslavia, The Second Russian Revolution and Iran & the West.
The first film, Taking Control, starts with George W Bush meeting Putin in June 2001 and declaring how he looked Putin in the eye and ‘got a sense of his soul’. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice recall their reactions to the discussions that happened behind closed doors, with Putin delivering a prophetic warning about Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban. Three months later, 9/11 happened.
Following the terrorist attacks, Putin quickly aligned Russia with the West, to the surprise of many in the Kremlin. The US and Russia had opposed each other for decades, but the world had now changed. Sergei Ivanov, Russian’s Defence Minister, tells how offers from Taliban to join forces with Russia against America were rejected with strong language.
But at home Putin was becoming increasingly authoritarian. Mikhail Kasyanov, then Russia’s Prime Minister, recalls a meeting with Putin and the country’s top businessmen, where ‘all the oligarchs present almost hid under the table in fear.' The film also tells the story of how Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, challenged Putin and ended up in prison.
Documentaries
True Stories: Gypsy Blood
More4, 10:00-11:35pm
Filmed over two years by award-winning photographer Leo Maguire, Gypsy Blood examines the violent culture that some gypsy and traveller fathers hand on to their sons.
The film is an intimate portrait of two gypsy families, their fight for respect and the price they pay in cycles of revenge that can erupt into sudden and terrifying violence.
The Dohertys are Irish Traveller royalty. While Hughie Doherty, 27, becomes embroiled in a fight to defend his family's name, his seven-year-old son Francie is caught between two worlds, learning to read at primary school while learning to fight with his fists at home.
Fred Butcher is Romany but torn between the gypsy fighting tradition and his love as a father. His nine-year-old son, Freddy Cole, is terrified his father will be badly hurt in a fight. The film follows the story of how Fred nearly dies in a machete attack as a day of drinking and sparring goes terribly wrong.
Gypsy Blood is a haunting study of masculinity, violence and the uneasy relationship gypsy and traveller men have with their bare-knuckle traditions, and an insight into people living amongst a wider society but sometimes with values that are a world apart.
_________________________________________________________
Friday 20th January
Documentary; Historical
Pugin: God's Own Architect
BBC4, 1:35-2:35am
Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin is far from being a household name, yet he designed the iconic clock tower of Big Ben as well as much of the Palace of Westminster. The 19th century Gothic Revival that Pugin inspired, with its medieval influences and soaring church spires, established an image of Britain which still defines the nation. Presenter Richard Taylor charts Pugin's extraordinary life story and discovers how his work continues to influence Britain today
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media
Fig Leaf: The Biggest Cover-up in History
BBC4, 3:35-4:35am
Writer and broadcaster Stephen Smith uncovers the secret history of the humble fig leaf, opening a window onto 2,000 years of Western art and ethics.
He tells how the work of Michelangelo, known to his contemporaries as 'the maker of pork things', fuelled the infamous 'fig leaf campaign', the greatest cover-up in art history; how Bernini turned censorship into a new form of erotica by replacing the fig leaf with the slipping gauze; and how the ingenious machinations of Rodin brought nudity back to the public eye.
In telling this story, Smith turns many of our deepest prejudices upside down, showing how the Victorians had a far more sophisticated and mature attitude to sexuality than we do today. He ends with an impassioned plea for the widespread return of the fig leaf to redeem modern art from cheap sensation and innuendo.
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
___________________________________________________________
Saturday 14th January
Factual; Documentaries
Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking
BBC4, 11:00-pm-12:00am, series 11
Timeshift digs into the archive to discover the unwritten rules that have governed the way we drink in Britain. In the pubs and working men's clubs of the forties and fifties there were strict customs governing who stood where. To be invited to sup at the bar was a rite of passage for many young men, and it took years for women to be accepted into these bastions of masculinity. As the country prospered and foreign travel became widely available, so new drinking habits were introduced as we discovered wine and, even more exotically, cocktails.
People began to drink at home as well as at work, where journalists typified a tradition of the liquid lunch. Advertising played its part as lager was first sold as a woman's drink and then the drink of choice for young men with a bit of disposable income. The rules changed and changed again, but they were always there - unwritten and unspoken, yet underwriting our complicated relationship with drinking.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 16th January
Factual; Documentaries
Secrets of the Shoplifters
Channel 4, 10:00-11.05pm
Britain is the shoplifting capital of Europe - the crime has increased by over 12% in the last year. This film heads to the front line of the battle between shops and robbers, revealing the cunning and clever up-to-date tactics employed by both sides.
The summer riots highlighted that Brits are prepared to break the law and steal to get what they want. Whilet store detectives are refusing to give up the fight, shoplifters are equally determined to outwit them. It's a surreal world of cat and mouse - detectives scour Facebook while lifters use a range of complex tricks to try to disable those seemingly unmovable tags.
The recession is dramatically changing the goods that are being stolen - the theft of clothing is being replaced by a huge rise in meat stealing. With shoplifters becoming smarter and more presentable in appearance, security staff have to become experts in body language to stay one step ahead.
These committed detectives are putting their necks on the line, often without handcuffs or stab vests, while they try and detain people who, when caught, can sometimes turn violent.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 17th January
Drama. Classic and Period
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
BBC1, 1:25-2:25am, part 1 (part 2 tomorrow)
A two-part period drama adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens.
Opium addict and choirmaster John Jasper has vivid dreams of killing his beloved nephew Edwin Drood and stealing his fiancee Rosa. When two exotic strangers arrive in town, Jasper's dark desires take shape and his life will never be the same again.
With Edwin Drood feared dead, Jasper tries desperately to remember events of the night before. He pursues Rosa with an intensity that pushes him to the edge of sanity, while a trail of evidence points ominously to the cathedral crypt.
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Horizon: Playing God
BBC2, 9:30-10:30pm
Adam Rutherford meets a new creature created by American scientists, the spider-goat. It is part goat, part spider, and its milk can be used to create artificial spider's web.
It is part of a new field of research, synthetic biology, with a radical aim: to break down nature into spare parts so that we can rebuild it however we please.
This technology is already being used to make bio-diesel to power cars. Other researchers are looking at how we might, one day, control human emotions by sending 'biological machines' into our brains.
____________________________________________________________
Wednesday 18th January
Factual; History
Illuminations: The Private Life of Medieval Kings
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, Second of three part series (part 1 already recorded)
Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of medieval illuminated manuscripts and shows how they gave power to the king and united the kingdom in an age of plague, warfare and rebellion. She discovers that Edward III used the manuscripts he read as a boy to prepare him for his great victory at the battle of Crecy and reveals how a vigorous new national identity bloomed during the 100 Years War with France (1340-1453).
In the British Library's Royal Manuscripts collection she finds out that magnificent manuscripts like the Bedford Hours, taken as war booty from the French royal family, were adapted for the education of English princes. Dr Ramirez also explores how knowledge spread through a new form of book - the encyclopaedia.
Factual; History
The Crusades
BBC2, 9:30-10:30pm, 1/3 Holy War
The story of the Crusades is remembered as a tale of religious fanaticism and unspeakable brutality, of medieval knights and jihadi warriors; of castles and kings; of heroism, betrayal and sacrifice.
But now, using fresh evidence, eye-witness testimonies and contemporary accounts - from both the Christian and Islamic worlds - Dr Thomas Asbridge re-examines this epic medieval tale. Retracing the steps of the crusaders from a small town in France to the magnificent cities of the Holy Land, he brings to life the human experience of the Crusades, and sheds new light on how it was that two of the world's great religions waged war in the name of God; why hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims answered the call to crusade and jihad.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 19th January
News; Documentaries
Putin, Russia and the West
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4, Taking Control
Vladimir Putin, after eight years as President of Russia and four more as Prime Minister, is stubbornly holding onto power. He has announced his intention to return as President and declared his United Russia party the winner in parliamentary elections that have widely been seen as fraudulent, causing mass protests in Moscow and elsewhere with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets.
But just how did this consummate political operator with a background in the KGB become a valued ally of the West? And when did his policies start to provoke deep concern in Washington and London? Putin, Russia & the West tells the inside story, with contributions from Putin’s top colleagues and the Western statesmen who have clashed with him.
This is a four-part series from Norma Percy and the team at Brook Lapping behind the multi-award-winning documentaries The Death of Yugoslavia, The Second Russian Revolution and Iran & the West.
The first film, Taking Control, starts with George W Bush meeting Putin in June 2001 and declaring how he looked Putin in the eye and ‘got a sense of his soul’. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice recall their reactions to the discussions that happened behind closed doors, with Putin delivering a prophetic warning about Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban. Three months later, 9/11 happened.
Following the terrorist attacks, Putin quickly aligned Russia with the West, to the surprise of many in the Kremlin. The US and Russia had opposed each other for decades, but the world had now changed. Sergei Ivanov, Russian’s Defence Minister, tells how offers from Taliban to join forces with Russia against America were rejected with strong language.
But at home Putin was becoming increasingly authoritarian. Mikhail Kasyanov, then Russia’s Prime Minister, recalls a meeting with Putin and the country’s top businessmen, where ‘all the oligarchs present almost hid under the table in fear.' The film also tells the story of how Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, challenged Putin and ended up in prison.
Documentaries
True Stories: Gypsy Blood
More4, 10:00-11:35pm
Filmed over two years by award-winning photographer Leo Maguire, Gypsy Blood examines the violent culture that some gypsy and traveller fathers hand on to their sons.
The film is an intimate portrait of two gypsy families, their fight for respect and the price they pay in cycles of revenge that can erupt into sudden and terrifying violence.
The Dohertys are Irish Traveller royalty. While Hughie Doherty, 27, becomes embroiled in a fight to defend his family's name, his seven-year-old son Francie is caught between two worlds, learning to read at primary school while learning to fight with his fists at home.
Fred Butcher is Romany but torn between the gypsy fighting tradition and his love as a father. His nine-year-old son, Freddy Cole, is terrified his father will be badly hurt in a fight. The film follows the story of how Fred nearly dies in a machete attack as a day of drinking and sparring goes terribly wrong.
Gypsy Blood is a haunting study of masculinity, violence and the uneasy relationship gypsy and traveller men have with their bare-knuckle traditions, and an insight into people living amongst a wider society but sometimes with values that are a world apart.
_________________________________________________________
Friday 20th January
Documentary; Historical
Pugin: God's Own Architect
BBC4, 1:35-2:35am
Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin is far from being a household name, yet he designed the iconic clock tower of Big Ben as well as much of the Palace of Westminster. The 19th century Gothic Revival that Pugin inspired, with its medieval influences and soaring church spires, established an image of Britain which still defines the nation. Presenter Richard Taylor charts Pugin's extraordinary life story and discovers how his work continues to influence Britain today
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media
Fig Leaf: The Biggest Cover-up in History
BBC4, 3:35-4:35am
Writer and broadcaster Stephen Smith uncovers the secret history of the humble fig leaf, opening a window onto 2,000 years of Western art and ethics.
He tells how the work of Michelangelo, known to his contemporaries as 'the maker of pork things', fuelled the infamous 'fig leaf campaign', the greatest cover-up in art history; how Bernini turned censorship into a new form of erotica by replacing the fig leaf with the slipping gauze; and how the ingenious machinations of Rodin brought nudity back to the public eye.
In telling this story, Smith turns many of our deepest prejudices upside down, showing how the Victorians had a far more sophisticated and mature attitude to sexuality than we do today. He ends with an impassioned plea for the widespread return of the fig leaf to redeem modern art from cheap sensation and innuendo.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Off-air recordings for weeks 17-30 December 2011
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 19th December
Documentaries
The Year The Earth Went Wild
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
With a record-breaking cold winter, the tsunami in Japan, the extraordinary killer American tornado season, the floods in Australia and a hurricane in New York, 2011 has seen an onslaught of epic-scale climate and geological events across the world, all caught on camera in the most spectacular fashion.
Using eye-witness footage, interviews with survivors and rescuers and analysis from geological and weather specialists, this documentary charts the incredible natural events of a year where almost every month was affected by a natural disaster.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 21st December
Documentaries
Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
In a pretty English village in the Surrey stockbroker belt lives the infamous Mr Wallace, whose hoarding habits have spread across a million pounds-worth of property that used to belong to his parents. His detached bungalow, four-bedroom semi-detached house and separate double garage are all stuffed from floor to ceiling with newspapers and other household items. Cutting Edge is given unique access into his intriguing home, where no one else has ever ventured. Mr Wallace is arguably the UK's most extreme hoarder and his house has become a death trap. It is so packed that he has to crawl over mountains of papers and magazines simply to move from room to room; it takes 40 minutes to get to his front door from the chair he eats and sleeps in. The garden also acts as a dumping ground for tonnes of refuse so old that it is overgrown by foliage and trees. The council has tried to force Richard Wallace to clear his garden but he fought them to the Crown Court, representing himself and winning. A year on, things are coming to a head as the picturesque village is competing to win Britain in Bloom and Richard's home is once again the source of contention. But with the hoarding now affecting his ability to function, Richard is entrenched to the point where his health is suffering, his safety is increasingly at risk and he is living in a physical and mental prison.
This time, the village's sense of community is truly tested and Richard faces the most significant challenge yet to his isolating way of life.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 22nd December
Art, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Art of Night
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Waldemar Januszczak explores a selection of paintings created at night, including pieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Velazquez, Hopper and Magritte. He discovers why the nocturnal world has inspired artists throughout history to create challenging and dramatic images, and explores the difficulties that arise when painters work after dark.
_________________________________________________________
Friday 23rd December
Documentaries
The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Waldemar Januszczak explores a selection of paintings created at night, including pieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Velazquez, Hopper and Magritte. He discovers why the nocturnal world has inspired artists throughout history to create challenging and dramatic images, and explores the difficulties that arise when painters work after dark.
__________________________________________________________
Monday 26th December
Arts, Culture and The Media
Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In this one-off special Martha Kearney follows a British academic’s search to find out whether an unusual drawn portrait really does capture the face of the well-loved author. Will the picture stand up to forensic analysis and scrutiny by art historians and Austen experts? And if it does, how might it change our perception of one of Britain’s most revered writers. Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait follows the investigation behind one of the literary world’s most exciting art works.
Janice Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two: “Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait? will sit at the heart of our Christmas schedule and will be a fascinating chance for the BBC Two audience to delve deeper into the life of one of Britain’s best-loved authors.” Jane Austen is one of the most celebrated writers of all time but with only a rough sketch by her sister we have just an inkling of what she may have looked like. Austen academic and biographer Dr Paula Byrne thinks that this may be about to change. She believes that she’s discovered a portrait of the author that has been lost for nearly two centuries and may offer fascinating new insight into how Jane once lived and portrayed herself to the world. Martha follows Paula’s search to gather as much evidence as possible in her quest to prove that she really may hold one of the rarest literary portraits of all-time. From eighteenth century costume experts to the editor of Jane Austen’s letters, Paula must interrogate as many experts as possible to build a case for why this really might be Jane. After months of research, she presents the portrait to three of the world’s most prominent Austen experts. Will she be able to convince them that it really is as authentic as it seems?
_________________________________________________________
Tuesday 27th December
Science; Lectures
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, Meet Your Brain, 3 parts on successive days
Inside each and every one of us it the most marvellous structure in the known universe - the human brain. Our brain makes us who we are and yet the way it works has been a mystery for much of human civilization. We all know that we think but not how we think. Deep inside every brain is a vast hidden world of complexity that defies description. Yet science has made important discoveries in recent years that begin to uncover the workings of this remarkable organ.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 29th December
Factual; Arts
Earth Flight
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/6
BBC One is to capture some of the world's greatest wildlife phenomena and natural wonders through the eyes of birds in a new natural history series. In Earth Flight, amazing sights from five continents will be revealed in a whole new light as the five-part series joins the journeys of snow geese, cranes, falcons, albatross, eagles and other birds. Using cutting edge new filming techniques to show everything in exquisite detail, viewers have a uniquely privileged perspective flying 9,000 metres high over the sands of the Sahara or skimming metres over the Great Wall of China. The birds are shown up-close in flight and interacting with other animals down below, from barnacle geese encountering herds of migrating reindeer, to pelicans plunging into hundreds of nurse sharks. Spycams film right in the heart of the flock with microlights, hang-gliders and wirecams making up the aerial filming arsenal. Slow-motion techniques reveal extraordinary detail such as a swallow plucking a fly from the air while new satellite technology enables a seamless transition from views of entire continents to moving aerial images of the animals that live there. Sequences include flamingoes flying over the soda lakes of Africa and becoming prey for hunting baboons, flocks of waders landing in an invasion of horseshore crabs and Hummingbirds darting through the Grand Canyon.
*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 19th December
Documentaries
The Year The Earth Went Wild
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
With a record-breaking cold winter, the tsunami in Japan, the extraordinary killer American tornado season, the floods in Australia and a hurricane in New York, 2011 has seen an onslaught of epic-scale climate and geological events across the world, all caught on camera in the most spectacular fashion.
Using eye-witness footage, interviews with survivors and rescuers and analysis from geological and weather specialists, this documentary charts the incredible natural events of a year where almost every month was affected by a natural disaster.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 21st December
Documentaries
Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
In a pretty English village in the Surrey stockbroker belt lives the infamous Mr Wallace, whose hoarding habits have spread across a million pounds-worth of property that used to belong to his parents. His detached bungalow, four-bedroom semi-detached house and separate double garage are all stuffed from floor to ceiling with newspapers and other household items. Cutting Edge is given unique access into his intriguing home, where no one else has ever ventured. Mr Wallace is arguably the UK's most extreme hoarder and his house has become a death trap. It is so packed that he has to crawl over mountains of papers and magazines simply to move from room to room; it takes 40 minutes to get to his front door from the chair he eats and sleeps in. The garden also acts as a dumping ground for tonnes of refuse so old that it is overgrown by foliage and trees. The council has tried to force Richard Wallace to clear his garden but he fought them to the Crown Court, representing himself and winning. A year on, things are coming to a head as the picturesque village is competing to win Britain in Bloom and Richard's home is once again the source of contention. But with the hoarding now affecting his ability to function, Richard is entrenched to the point where his health is suffering, his safety is increasingly at risk and he is living in a physical and mental prison.
This time, the village's sense of community is truly tested and Richard faces the most significant challenge yet to his isolating way of life.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 22nd December
Art, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Art of Night
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Waldemar Januszczak explores a selection of paintings created at night, including pieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Velazquez, Hopper and Magritte. He discovers why the nocturnal world has inspired artists throughout history to create challenging and dramatic images, and explores the difficulties that arise when painters work after dark.
_________________________________________________________
Friday 23rd December
Documentaries
The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Waldemar Januszczak explores a selection of paintings created at night, including pieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Velazquez, Hopper and Magritte. He discovers why the nocturnal world has inspired artists throughout history to create challenging and dramatic images, and explores the difficulties that arise when painters work after dark.
__________________________________________________________
Monday 26th December
Arts, Culture and The Media
Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In this one-off special Martha Kearney follows a British academic’s search to find out whether an unusual drawn portrait really does capture the face of the well-loved author. Will the picture stand up to forensic analysis and scrutiny by art historians and Austen experts? And if it does, how might it change our perception of one of Britain’s most revered writers. Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait follows the investigation behind one of the literary world’s most exciting art works.
Janice Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two: “Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait? will sit at the heart of our Christmas schedule and will be a fascinating chance for the BBC Two audience to delve deeper into the life of one of Britain’s best-loved authors.” Jane Austen is one of the most celebrated writers of all time but with only a rough sketch by her sister we have just an inkling of what she may have looked like. Austen academic and biographer Dr Paula Byrne thinks that this may be about to change. She believes that she’s discovered a portrait of the author that has been lost for nearly two centuries and may offer fascinating new insight into how Jane once lived and portrayed herself to the world. Martha follows Paula’s search to gather as much evidence as possible in her quest to prove that she really may hold one of the rarest literary portraits of all-time. From eighteenth century costume experts to the editor of Jane Austen’s letters, Paula must interrogate as many experts as possible to build a case for why this really might be Jane. After months of research, she presents the portrait to three of the world’s most prominent Austen experts. Will she be able to convince them that it really is as authentic as it seems?
_________________________________________________________
Tuesday 27th December
Science; Lectures
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, Meet Your Brain, 3 parts on successive days
Inside each and every one of us it the most marvellous structure in the known universe - the human brain. Our brain makes us who we are and yet the way it works has been a mystery for much of human civilization. We all know that we think but not how we think. Deep inside every brain is a vast hidden world of complexity that defies description. Yet science has made important discoveries in recent years that begin to uncover the workings of this remarkable organ.
_________________________________________________________
Thursday 29th December
Factual; Arts
Earth Flight
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/6
BBC One is to capture some of the world's greatest wildlife phenomena and natural wonders through the eyes of birds in a new natural history series. In Earth Flight, amazing sights from five continents will be revealed in a whole new light as the five-part series joins the journeys of snow geese, cranes, falcons, albatross, eagles and other birds. Using cutting edge new filming techniques to show everything in exquisite detail, viewers have a uniquely privileged perspective flying 9,000 metres high over the sands of the Sahara or skimming metres over the Great Wall of China. The birds are shown up-close in flight and interacting with other animals down below, from barnacle geese encountering herds of migrating reindeer, to pelicans plunging into hundreds of nurse sharks. Spycams film right in the heart of the flock with microlights, hang-gliders and wirecams making up the aerial filming arsenal. Slow-motion techniques reveal extraordinary detail such as a swallow plucking a fly from the air while new satellite technology enables a seamless transition from views of entire continents to moving aerial images of the animals that live there. Sequences include flamingoes flying over the soda lakes of Africa and becoming prey for hunting baboons, flocks of waders landing in an invasion of horseshore crabs and Hummingbirds darting through the Grand Canyon.
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Off-air recordings for week 10-16 December 2011
Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
_________________________________________________________
Saturday 10th December
Factual; Documentaries; Politics
Iron Ladies of Liberia
BBC4, 11:55pm-12:50am
When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first ever elected female head of state, filmmakers Siatta Scott-Johnson and Daniel Junge were there to follow her. It was the start of an extraordinary year they spent with the Liberian president as she struggled to take control of a country devastated by years of civil war.
Together with her 'iron ladies' (the finance minister and police chief are also formidable females), she takes a firm hold on the government, trying to root out corruption and spend the tiny annual budget carefully. But it's not an easy task, and everything seems to be against her - even her presidential mansion burns down.
____________________________________________________________
Sunday 11th December
Documentaries
Japan Tsunami: Caught on Camera
Channel 4, 8:15-9:30pm
Japan's Tsunami: Caught on Camera captures the impact of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in April 2011, using amateur footage filmed by those caught up in the disaster.
Featuring never-before-seen footage, the programme gives accounts from eyewitnesses, amateur photographers and video enthusiasts, whose initial desire to record the tsunami was quickly overtaken by the cataclysmic events that unfolded in front of them.
But they kept on filming, many while only narrowly escaping with their lives.
The eyewitness film captures some apocalyptic images of the wave's destructive power: Takayuki Saijo only just made it up a hill in time to see the town of Kamaishi destroyed beneath him; Kenichi Murakami had to run for his life, climbing a high-school fire escape while filming the carnage below; and Yu Muroga narrowly escaped death as his car (with its on-board camera) was swept away in the torrential current and then sank.
Beyond the immediate horror of the tsunami, the film, made seven months after the event, also grapples with the aftermath: the loss, uncertainty and long-term trauma faced by individuals and towns struggling to come to terms with whether they can or should rebuild their shattered communities.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Rosslyn Chapel: A Treasure In Stone
BBC4, 7:30-8:30pm
The exquisite Rosslyn Chapel is a masterpiece in stone. It used to be one of Scotland's best kept secrets, but it became world-famous when it was featured in Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code.
Art historian Helen Rosslyn, whose husband's ancestor built the chapel over 500 years ago, is the guide on a journey of discovery around this perfect gem of a building. Extraordinary carvings of green men, inverted angels and mysterious masonic marks beg the questions of where these images come from and who were the stonemasons that created them? Helen's search leads her across Scotland and to Normandy in search of the creators of this medieval masterpiece.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 12th December
Factual; News
This World: Return of the Lost Boys of Sudan
BBC1, 7:00-8:00pm
When South Sudan became independent this summer, it brought the return of many who had fled the long civil war. Among them were some of the 'Lost Boys' - the name given to more than 20,000 child refugees, some as young as seven, who walked more than a thousand miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia. More than half fell victim to war, disease and starvation along the way. Many of the survivors were recruited as child soldiers in the rebel army; others were exiled abroad.
Now some of the Lost Boys are coming home. For some it's a chance to trace lost relatives and come to terms with childhood trauma, for others an opportunity to help build the new nation and their own careers.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 13th December
Documentaries
My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
Christmas is a time for family, a time for peace and harmony - but it is also a time to celebrate. This film follows the celebrations and traditions of members of the Irish traveller community at Christmas, as well as two of the most jaw dropping weddings ever shown. Filmed last year, the programme follows a mass-Yuletide First Communion ceremony. It also follows some of the unique traveller preparations that go on in the run up to Christmas, and spends Christmas Day itself with Paddy and Roseanne at their home on a traveller site in Salford. This warm and joy-filled film offers a window into the close-knit and fiercely private community. It explores some of the age-old traveller traditions - and some of the newer ones too.
Factual; Arts, Media and Culture; Documenataries
Imagine... Books - The Last Chapter?
BBC1, 10:35-11:40pm, 6/8
With the rise of electronic books, is the final chapter about to be written in the long love story between books and their readers? Will the app take the place of the traditional book?
Alan Yentob discusses the subject with writers Alan Bennett, Douglas Coupland, Ewan Morrison and Gary Shteyngart, publisher Gail Rebuck, agent Ed Victor and librarian Rachael Morrison. They also smell books, making precise notes about the distinctive aroma of each.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 14th December
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Donated to Science
BBC4, 1:55-2:50am
In 2006, a New Zealand television company interviewed several people who planned to donate their bodies to the Otago Medical School for students to dissect. They were asked about their lives and their loves, their hopes, their fears and, of course, their bodies. The school is one of the last in the world whose students still do significant human dissection, and both they and the donors gave permission to be followed through the whole process. By intercutting the donors' interviews with their own bodies being dissected and the students' reactions for the first time on film, there is the chance to share the amazing journey of the students, the donors and their families.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 15th December
News; Documentaries
Up In Flames: Mr Reeves and the Riots
BBC1, 10:45-11:30pm
Documentary following one shop owner in the aftermath of the riots of August 2011. When the riots struck there was no-one more taken by surprise than Maurice Reeves, 80-year-old owner of Croydon's Reeves Furniture store, who had to watch his 144-year-old family business go up in flames. This film follows him in the aftermath of that night, trying to work out how the town he had always thought so safe could descend into arson and looting, and whether he should ever open up shop again in the midst of a community that could spiral out of control so drastically. In the weeks that follow he meets other victims of the riots, comes face to face with disaffected Croydon young people, and takes on local politicIans - becoming more and more Churchillian by the week, a steadfast octogenarian rebuttal to riot and violence.
____________________________________________________________
Friday 16th December
Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Andy Hamilton's Search for Satan
BBC4, 2:25-3:25am
Just how did the Devil get inside our heads? And who put him there? For Halloween, award-winning comedy writer and performer Andy Hamilton (creator and star of Radio 4's acclaimed infernal comedy Old Harry's Game) explores just who the devil Satan is, where he comes from and what he's been up to all this time.
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
_________________________________________________________
Saturday 10th December
Factual; Documentaries; Politics
Iron Ladies of Liberia
BBC4, 11:55pm-12:50am
When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first ever elected female head of state, filmmakers Siatta Scott-Johnson and Daniel Junge were there to follow her. It was the start of an extraordinary year they spent with the Liberian president as she struggled to take control of a country devastated by years of civil war.
Together with her 'iron ladies' (the finance minister and police chief are also formidable females), she takes a firm hold on the government, trying to root out corruption and spend the tiny annual budget carefully. But it's not an easy task, and everything seems to be against her - even her presidential mansion burns down.
____________________________________________________________
Sunday 11th December
Documentaries
Japan Tsunami: Caught on Camera
Channel 4, 8:15-9:30pm
Japan's Tsunami: Caught on Camera captures the impact of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in April 2011, using amateur footage filmed by those caught up in the disaster.
Featuring never-before-seen footage, the programme gives accounts from eyewitnesses, amateur photographers and video enthusiasts, whose initial desire to record the tsunami was quickly overtaken by the cataclysmic events that unfolded in front of them.
But they kept on filming, many while only narrowly escaping with their lives.
The eyewitness film captures some apocalyptic images of the wave's destructive power: Takayuki Saijo only just made it up a hill in time to see the town of Kamaishi destroyed beneath him; Kenichi Murakami had to run for his life, climbing a high-school fire escape while filming the carnage below; and Yu Muroga narrowly escaped death as his car (with its on-board camera) was swept away in the torrential current and then sank.
Beyond the immediate horror of the tsunami, the film, made seven months after the event, also grapples with the aftermath: the loss, uncertainty and long-term trauma faced by individuals and towns struggling to come to terms with whether they can or should rebuild their shattered communities.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Rosslyn Chapel: A Treasure In Stone
BBC4, 7:30-8:30pm
The exquisite Rosslyn Chapel is a masterpiece in stone. It used to be one of Scotland's best kept secrets, but it became world-famous when it was featured in Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code.
Art historian Helen Rosslyn, whose husband's ancestor built the chapel over 500 years ago, is the guide on a journey of discovery around this perfect gem of a building. Extraordinary carvings of green men, inverted angels and mysterious masonic marks beg the questions of where these images come from and who were the stonemasons that created them? Helen's search leads her across Scotland and to Normandy in search of the creators of this medieval masterpiece.
___________________________________________________________
Monday 12th December
Factual; News
This World: Return of the Lost Boys of Sudan
BBC1, 7:00-8:00pm
When South Sudan became independent this summer, it brought the return of many who had fled the long civil war. Among them were some of the 'Lost Boys' - the name given to more than 20,000 child refugees, some as young as seven, who walked more than a thousand miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia. More than half fell victim to war, disease and starvation along the way. Many of the survivors were recruited as child soldiers in the rebel army; others were exiled abroad.
Now some of the Lost Boys are coming home. For some it's a chance to trace lost relatives and come to terms with childhood trauma, for others an opportunity to help build the new nation and their own careers.
___________________________________________________________
Tuesday 13th December
Documentaries
My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
Christmas is a time for family, a time for peace and harmony - but it is also a time to celebrate. This film follows the celebrations and traditions of members of the Irish traveller community at Christmas, as well as two of the most jaw dropping weddings ever shown. Filmed last year, the programme follows a mass-Yuletide First Communion ceremony. It also follows some of the unique traveller preparations that go on in the run up to Christmas, and spends Christmas Day itself with Paddy and Roseanne at their home on a traveller site in Salford. This warm and joy-filled film offers a window into the close-knit and fiercely private community. It explores some of the age-old traveller traditions - and some of the newer ones too.
Factual; Arts, Media and Culture; Documenataries
Imagine... Books - The Last Chapter?
BBC1, 10:35-11:40pm, 6/8
With the rise of electronic books, is the final chapter about to be written in the long love story between books and their readers? Will the app take the place of the traditional book?
Alan Yentob discusses the subject with writers Alan Bennett, Douglas Coupland, Ewan Morrison and Gary Shteyngart, publisher Gail Rebuck, agent Ed Victor and librarian Rachael Morrison. They also smell books, making precise notes about the distinctive aroma of each.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 14th December
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Donated to Science
BBC4, 1:55-2:50am
In 2006, a New Zealand television company interviewed several people who planned to donate their bodies to the Otago Medical School for students to dissect. They were asked about their lives and their loves, their hopes, their fears and, of course, their bodies. The school is one of the last in the world whose students still do significant human dissection, and both they and the donors gave permission to be followed through the whole process. By intercutting the donors' interviews with their own bodies being dissected and the students' reactions for the first time on film, there is the chance to share the amazing journey of the students, the donors and their families.
___________________________________________________________
Thursday 15th December
News; Documentaries
Up In Flames: Mr Reeves and the Riots
BBC1, 10:45-11:30pm
Documentary following one shop owner in the aftermath of the riots of August 2011. When the riots struck there was no-one more taken by surprise than Maurice Reeves, 80-year-old owner of Croydon's Reeves Furniture store, who had to watch his 144-year-old family business go up in flames. This film follows him in the aftermath of that night, trying to work out how the town he had always thought so safe could descend into arson and looting, and whether he should ever open up shop again in the midst of a community that could spiral out of control so drastically. In the weeks that follow he meets other victims of the riots, comes face to face with disaffected Croydon young people, and takes on local politicIans - becoming more and more Churchillian by the week, a steadfast octogenarian rebuttal to riot and violence.
____________________________________________________________
Friday 16th December
Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries
Andy Hamilton's Search for Satan
BBC4, 2:25-3:25am
Just how did the Devil get inside our heads? And who put him there? For Halloween, award-winning comedy writer and performer Andy Hamilton (creator and star of Radio 4's acclaimed infernal comedy Old Harry's Game) explores just who the devil Satan is, where he comes from and what he's been up to all this time.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Off-air recordings for week 3-9 December 2011
Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
_________________________________________________________
Saturday 3rd December
Documentaries
Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/2 Evil Spirits
Featuring dramatic reconstructions, the opening programme examines our fascination with and terror of dead bodies.
People in the past believed that even in death a body retained some vital force, and that the dead could rise from the grave to cause havoc among the living. Why did they believe this? What powers did they believe the dead had? And what did they do about it?
Tony's journey takes him on a fascinating and sometimes humorous tour of some of the darkest recesses of the ancient mind, and brings him face to face with a plague-breathing zombie, a dead body that seems alive three weeks after it died, and the English monarchs who ate the bodies of their subjects.
__________________________________________________________
Sunday 4th December
Factual; Money; Documentaries
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 800 million users, and a possible value of $100 billion. His idea to 'make the world more open and connected' has sparked a revolution in communication, and now looks set to have a huge impact on business too.
Emily Maitlis reports on life inside Facebook. Featuring a rare interview with Zuckerberg himself, the film tells the story of Facebook's creation, looks at the accuracy of The Social Network movie, and examines Facebook's plans to use the personal information it has collected to power a new kind of online advertising.
__________________________________________________________
Monday 5th December
Documentaries; News, Current Affairs and Politics
Dispatches: Landlords from Hell
Channel 4, 8:30-9:00pm
In this undercover investigation, Jon Snow reports on the return of the slum landlord in 21st-century Britain. At a time when more people than ever are having to rent privately, unable to get on the property ladder, Dispatches reveals the shocking conditions in which tenants are forced to live.
Dispatches sends an undercover reporter to work for a rogue property empire in the north of England. He reveals a world of forced evictions, slum properties in dangerous condition, and routine bullying of tenants. Jon confronts the man raking in millions while his tenants suffer.
Dispatches also exposes an extraordinary new phenomenon: thousands of people living in illegal sheds, transforming parts of London into slums. A second undercover reporter lives in a squalid, illegal shed in London, paying £40 a week rent to another rogue landlord.
Dispatches lifts the lid on a world where unscrupulous landlords are exploiting the most vulnerable people in society and getting away with it.
August 2011:
Since the programme has gone out, the Charity Commission has opened an inquiry into housing charity, the Meridian Foundation, exposed in a recent Channel 4 Dispatches undercover investigation.
Meridian's property empire extends across greater Manchester and the north west of England. It has a turnover of hundreds of thousands of pounds with much of that money from the taxpayer in the form of Housing Benefit.
A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission confirmed it had received 25 complaints about the charity after the programme was broadcast.
Documentaries
The Great British Property Scandal
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 (part 2 on Tuesday)
Almost two million British families are currently on the waiting lists for social housing, and thousands live in unsuitable temporary accommodation or are struggling with soaring rent payments. Cutbacks and the recession also mean that homelessness has become a very real threat to thousands across the whole social spectrum who are increasingly struggling to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, one million properties lie empty across the UK, even though many cost huge amounts to keep secure - a bill often footed by taxpayers. In some areas whole streets of houses stand deserted, damaging the local community as well as neighbourhood businesses. In others, empty stranded houses are a blight on the local landscape attracting vermin and vandals, and depressing surrounding property prices.
For The Great British Property Scandal season, Channel 4 investigates some of the issues that have contributed to the housing crisis and speak to a broad range of the people affected by it.
_________________________________________________________
Tuesday 6th December
Documentaries
My Child's Not Perfect
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2
Children struggling with problems which drastically affect their behaviour and profoundly impact on their families’ lives are the focus of this brand new ITV1 series.
Among the children featured are a six-year-old girl who, despite being talkative at home, becomes mute as soon as she passes through the school gates each day, a 16 year old boy with Tourette’s Syndrome, whose condition appeared suddenly following a seizure, and a ten-year-old boy whose family have spent almost his entire life desperately searching for a clear, satisfactory diagnosis to help them understand why something ‘is not right’ with him.
Produced by Maverick Television, 2x60 documentary series, My Child’s Not Perfect, focuses on each family’s efforts to understand more about their child’s behaviour and ways to cope with the challenge of raising young people with a range of behavioural, emotional or clinical problems. In each programme, the children and their families, drawn from across the country and from a range of backgrounds, are shown dealing with the emotional demands and practical difficulties of searching for and testing methods of combating and managing each condition.
And, as the series will show, for some a significant part of their struggle is finding an adequate diagnosis for their condition in the first place.
Working with mental health professionals from established institutions including The Maudsley Hospital, The Anna Freud Centre and The Priory Hospital, My Child’s Not Perfect sets out to provide an insight into issues faced by many families today.
Episode 1
In episode one we meet Katherine, a lively little six year old who is the life and soul of the family at home. However, as soon as she passes through the school gates each day, she becomes mute. Unable to speak a word for eight hours a day, her family embarks on a course of intensive speech therapy to get to the cause of her resistance to talk.
For 16 year old Henry, the problem isn’t talking, it’s what he says: Henry has Tourette’s Syndrome. Diagnosed just over a year ago, following a sudden seizure, Henry and his family’s lives were turned upside down in an instant. Unable to control either physical movement or vocal expression, he’s coming to terms with the impact of this incurable condition and seeking alternative therapies to manage it, while studying for his GCSEs.
The programme also features Charlotte, who has been searching for a diagnosis to explain her ten year old son Adam’s behaviour. Convinced that something just ‘wasn’t right’ since he was a baby, she has come to the mental health unit of the Priory in Cheadle, near Stockport, to meet Dr Faeza Khan. She assesses Adam and diagnoses him with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which comes as a relief to his mother, who has spent his life searching for a diagnosis which will hopefully enable the family to access services and support to formulate a long-term care package for him.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 7th December
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
After Life: The Strange Science of Decay
BBC4, 4:00-5:30am
Ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away, and everything inside was left to rot? The answer is revealed in this fascinating programme, which explores the strange and surprising science of decay.
For two months in summer 2011, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, presenter Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old.
Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by. But as the programme shows, it's a process that's vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty.
__________________________________________________________
Thursday 8th December
Documentaries
Jerusalem: The Making of a Holy City
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Author and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore presents a three-part series that illuminates the history of the sacred, and peerlessly beautiful city - Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world. For the Jewish faith, it is the site of the Western Wall, the last remnant of the second Jewish Temple. For Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Muslims, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest Sanctuary of Islam.
In episode one Simon Sebag Montefiore will delve into the past to explore how this unique city came into being, explaining how it became of such major importance to the three Abrahamic faiths; and how these faiths emerged from the Biblical tradition of the Israelites.
Starting with the Canaanites, Simon goes on a chronological journey to trace the rise of the city as a holy place and discusses the evidence for it becoming a Jewish city under King David. The programme explores the construction of the First Temple by Solomon through to the life and death of Jesus Christ and the eventual expulsion of the Jews by the Romans, concluding in the 7th Century AD, on the eve of the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslim Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab.
__________________________________________________________
Friday 9th December
News, Current Affairs and Politics
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00, 10/10, Australia's Hidden Valley
Unreported World investigates the effect of controversial emergency legislation on Australia's Aboriginal population. The government has used this legislation to take control of many Aboriginal settlements. It said this was help to end violence and child abuse, and combat the alcohol abuse that ravages many Aboriginal communities.
Reporter Oliver Steeds and director Ed Braman begin their journey in Alice Springs - visited by tens of thousands of Britons every year for its aboriginal art galleries and tourist sites - where alcohol addiction is still ravaging the lives of the country's original inhabitants, many of whom live in desolate squatter camps on the outskirts of town.
The team joins a regular night patrol, staffed by volunteers who search the streets for Aboriginal people incapacitated by alcohol. Many of them live in townships or settlements outside the town: a legacy from 1928 when they weren't allowed to live in the town itself.
Steeds and Braman visit a settlement called Hidden Valley. At the entrance is a sign warning that, under emergency legislation, alcohol is illegal. Despite this, the ground is littered with bottles and cans.
They give one resident, Beverley, a lift to the largest supermarket in the centre of Alice Springs. Since the emergency legislation, which required the suspension of Australia's race discrimination act, her welfare payments are ring-fenced to help prevent the purchase of alcohol.
Aboriginal people are five times more likely to die of alcohol-related causes than other Australians. However, the legislation, and the knowledge of the harm alcohol is doing, does little to stop her - or her friends - from buying it.
__________________________________________________________
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
_________________________________________________________
Saturday 3rd December
Documentaries
Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/2 Evil Spirits
Featuring dramatic reconstructions, the opening programme examines our fascination with and terror of dead bodies.
People in the past believed that even in death a body retained some vital force, and that the dead could rise from the grave to cause havoc among the living. Why did they believe this? What powers did they believe the dead had? And what did they do about it?
Tony's journey takes him on a fascinating and sometimes humorous tour of some of the darkest recesses of the ancient mind, and brings him face to face with a plague-breathing zombie, a dead body that seems alive three weeks after it died, and the English monarchs who ate the bodies of their subjects.
__________________________________________________________
Sunday 4th December
Factual; Money; Documentaries
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 800 million users, and a possible value of $100 billion. His idea to 'make the world more open and connected' has sparked a revolution in communication, and now looks set to have a huge impact on business too.
Emily Maitlis reports on life inside Facebook. Featuring a rare interview with Zuckerberg himself, the film tells the story of Facebook's creation, looks at the accuracy of The Social Network movie, and examines Facebook's plans to use the personal information it has collected to power a new kind of online advertising.
__________________________________________________________
Monday 5th December
Documentaries; News, Current Affairs and Politics
Dispatches: Landlords from Hell
Channel 4, 8:30-9:00pm
In this undercover investigation, Jon Snow reports on the return of the slum landlord in 21st-century Britain. At a time when more people than ever are having to rent privately, unable to get on the property ladder, Dispatches reveals the shocking conditions in which tenants are forced to live.
Dispatches sends an undercover reporter to work for a rogue property empire in the north of England. He reveals a world of forced evictions, slum properties in dangerous condition, and routine bullying of tenants. Jon confronts the man raking in millions while his tenants suffer.
Dispatches also exposes an extraordinary new phenomenon: thousands of people living in illegal sheds, transforming parts of London into slums. A second undercover reporter lives in a squalid, illegal shed in London, paying £40 a week rent to another rogue landlord.
Dispatches lifts the lid on a world where unscrupulous landlords are exploiting the most vulnerable people in society and getting away with it.
August 2011:
Since the programme has gone out, the Charity Commission has opened an inquiry into housing charity, the Meridian Foundation, exposed in a recent Channel 4 Dispatches undercover investigation.
Meridian's property empire extends across greater Manchester and the north west of England. It has a turnover of hundreds of thousands of pounds with much of that money from the taxpayer in the form of Housing Benefit.
A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission confirmed it had received 25 complaints about the charity after the programme was broadcast.
Documentaries
The Great British Property Scandal
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 (part 2 on Tuesday)
Almost two million British families are currently on the waiting lists for social housing, and thousands live in unsuitable temporary accommodation or are struggling with soaring rent payments. Cutbacks and the recession also mean that homelessness has become a very real threat to thousands across the whole social spectrum who are increasingly struggling to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, one million properties lie empty across the UK, even though many cost huge amounts to keep secure - a bill often footed by taxpayers. In some areas whole streets of houses stand deserted, damaging the local community as well as neighbourhood businesses. In others, empty stranded houses are a blight on the local landscape attracting vermin and vandals, and depressing surrounding property prices.
For The Great British Property Scandal season, Channel 4 investigates some of the issues that have contributed to the housing crisis and speak to a broad range of the people affected by it.
_________________________________________________________
Tuesday 6th December
Documentaries
My Child's Not Perfect
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2
Children struggling with problems which drastically affect their behaviour and profoundly impact on their families’ lives are the focus of this brand new ITV1 series.
Among the children featured are a six-year-old girl who, despite being talkative at home, becomes mute as soon as she passes through the school gates each day, a 16 year old boy with Tourette’s Syndrome, whose condition appeared suddenly following a seizure, and a ten-year-old boy whose family have spent almost his entire life desperately searching for a clear, satisfactory diagnosis to help them understand why something ‘is not right’ with him.
Produced by Maverick Television, 2x60 documentary series, My Child’s Not Perfect, focuses on each family’s efforts to understand more about their child’s behaviour and ways to cope with the challenge of raising young people with a range of behavioural, emotional or clinical problems. In each programme, the children and their families, drawn from across the country and from a range of backgrounds, are shown dealing with the emotional demands and practical difficulties of searching for and testing methods of combating and managing each condition.
And, as the series will show, for some a significant part of their struggle is finding an adequate diagnosis for their condition in the first place.
Working with mental health professionals from established institutions including The Maudsley Hospital, The Anna Freud Centre and The Priory Hospital, My Child’s Not Perfect sets out to provide an insight into issues faced by many families today.
Episode 1
In episode one we meet Katherine, a lively little six year old who is the life and soul of the family at home. However, as soon as she passes through the school gates each day, she becomes mute. Unable to speak a word for eight hours a day, her family embarks on a course of intensive speech therapy to get to the cause of her resistance to talk.
For 16 year old Henry, the problem isn’t talking, it’s what he says: Henry has Tourette’s Syndrome. Diagnosed just over a year ago, following a sudden seizure, Henry and his family’s lives were turned upside down in an instant. Unable to control either physical movement or vocal expression, he’s coming to terms with the impact of this incurable condition and seeking alternative therapies to manage it, while studying for his GCSEs.
The programme also features Charlotte, who has been searching for a diagnosis to explain her ten year old son Adam’s behaviour. Convinced that something just ‘wasn’t right’ since he was a baby, she has come to the mental health unit of the Priory in Cheadle, near Stockport, to meet Dr Faeza Khan. She assesses Adam and diagnoses him with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which comes as a relief to his mother, who has spent his life searching for a diagnosis which will hopefully enable the family to access services and support to formulate a long-term care package for him.
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday 7th December
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries
After Life: The Strange Science of Decay
BBC4, 4:00-5:30am
Ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away, and everything inside was left to rot? The answer is revealed in this fascinating programme, which explores the strange and surprising science of decay.
For two months in summer 2011, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, presenter Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old.
Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by. But as the programme shows, it's a process that's vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty.
__________________________________________________________
Thursday 8th December
Documentaries
Jerusalem: The Making of a Holy City
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Author and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore presents a three-part series that illuminates the history of the sacred, and peerlessly beautiful city - Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world. For the Jewish faith, it is the site of the Western Wall, the last remnant of the second Jewish Temple. For Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the site of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Muslims, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest Sanctuary of Islam.
In episode one Simon Sebag Montefiore will delve into the past to explore how this unique city came into being, explaining how it became of such major importance to the three Abrahamic faiths; and how these faiths emerged from the Biblical tradition of the Israelites.
Starting with the Canaanites, Simon goes on a chronological journey to trace the rise of the city as a holy place and discusses the evidence for it becoming a Jewish city under King David. The programme explores the construction of the First Temple by Solomon through to the life and death of Jesus Christ and the eventual expulsion of the Jews by the Romans, concluding in the 7th Century AD, on the eve of the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslim Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab.
__________________________________________________________
Friday 9th December
News, Current Affairs and Politics
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00, 10/10, Australia's Hidden Valley
Unreported World investigates the effect of controversial emergency legislation on Australia's Aboriginal population. The government has used this legislation to take control of many Aboriginal settlements. It said this was help to end violence and child abuse, and combat the alcohol abuse that ravages many Aboriginal communities.
Reporter Oliver Steeds and director Ed Braman begin their journey in Alice Springs - visited by tens of thousands of Britons every year for its aboriginal art galleries and tourist sites - where alcohol addiction is still ravaging the lives of the country's original inhabitants, many of whom live in desolate squatter camps on the outskirts of town.
The team joins a regular night patrol, staffed by volunteers who search the streets for Aboriginal people incapacitated by alcohol. Many of them live in townships or settlements outside the town: a legacy from 1928 when they weren't allowed to live in the town itself.
Steeds and Braman visit a settlement called Hidden Valley. At the entrance is a sign warning that, under emergency legislation, alcohol is illegal. Despite this, the ground is littered with bottles and cans.
They give one resident, Beverley, a lift to the largest supermarket in the centre of Alice Springs. Since the emergency legislation, which required the suspension of Australia's race discrimination act, her welfare payments are ring-fenced to help prevent the purchase of alcohol.
Aboriginal people are five times more likely to die of alcohol-related causes than other Australians. However, the legislation, and the knowledge of the harm alcohol is doing, does little to stop her - or her friends - from buying it.
__________________________________________________________
*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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
