The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
Julia walks along the stunning Mawddach estuary in north Wales. The area between Dolgellau and the coastal resort of Barmouth is one of the least visited parts of Snowdonia, but in the 1860s it received a great rush of holidaymakers, taking advantage of the new railway that connected the valley to the cities of England.
Documentary which looks at how developments in mathematics over the past 40 years have completely changed our understanding of the fundamental nature of the world we live in.
As we approach tipping points in both the economy and the climate, the film examines the mathematics we have been reluctant to face up to and asks if, even now, we would rather bury our heads in the sand rather than face harsh truths.
Comedy sketch show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb. The world's earliest forensic detectives believe they may be up against the perfect crime. The special secret snooker words to Lady in Red are revealed, plus what to do if offered the job of Führer of the Third Reich.
Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians Bret and Jemaine as they to try to make it big in their adopted home of New York. When Murray suggests a photoshoot Bret becomes self-conscious about his body, but David Bowie appears in his dreams with helpful advice. Featuring the songs Bowie's in Space and Bret You Got it Going On.
In 1953, the BBC made a point-of-view film from the London to Brighton train. In 1983, they did the same again. This is a film made of both runs at once, with every bridge, siding, tunnel and station running side by side in unlikely synchronisation.
Kirsty Wark presents as Daisy Goodwin and David Aaronovitch fight it out with AL Kennedy and Simon Hoggart for a place in the semi-finals of the literary panel game.
Adaptation of Joe Penhall's award-winning play. In a psychiatric hospital, a junior doctor is treating a young black man diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. The patient is having a final interview with the doctor, who has invited his mentor to sit in on the session. He is concerned that the diagnosis is inaccurate and would like the patient hospitalised for longer. The senior doctor, however, disagrees.
WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2008
WED 19:00 World News Today (b00dzyz3)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 Britain from Above (b00d4pwc)
The Land
Turning back time and drawing on previously unseen archive footage and photography to focus on the dramatic transformation of Britain's cities, landscape and industry. Focusing on the period since the Second World War, Britain from Above explores the greatest period of change in the nation in the last 200 years.
Nowhere shows the transformation that has swept the British countryside in the last 60 years more than East Anglia. Aerial photographs taken by both the RAF and the Luftwaffe before the war show an isolated rural landscape of small fields, hordes of labourers and horse drawn ploughs. But all that changed. Sparked by the war itself, East Anglia became the crucible of a land revolution as its agriculture was industrialised faster and on a larger scale than anywhere else.
Today hedgerows, horses and farm workers have all gone. While the number of people working on the land has collapsed, rural villages have grown, bursting through their old boundaries as commuters arrive. New roads and new employers such as Stansted Airport have heated up an already fast growing economy and the impact on the landscape can be clearly seen from above.
Using hitherto unseen land-use maps of the 1930s, together with wartime aerial reconnaissance photos, the programme reveals how and why East Anglia, and by extension Britain's rural landscape, has been shaped the way it has. Today we see a landscape under ever greater pressure from new housing, crowded roads and the sudden surge in food prices which makes farmland ever more valuable.
WED 20:00 Britain from Above (b00d4v3n)
Man-made Britain
Andrew Marr goes on a journey to discover how some of the greenest landscapes in the British Isles were in fact shaped and moulded by human hands down the centuries.
He looks at the ancient 'wild wood' and Iron Age forts lurking in Britain's forests to the present-day strain modern economic needs put on the countryside, and how town planners restrict urban growth through the establishment of greenbelt areas.
He also looks down on Britain's national parks to show how we go to extraordinary lengths to preserve them as beautiful but artificial playgrounds. We also see how Britain's rugged landscape is used as the ideal testing ground for the Eurofighter.
WED 21:00 Wilderness Explored (b00dzyz5)
Australia's Red Heart
Australia's stark and beautiful red centre is now seen as part of the country's national identity, with Uluru, or Ayres Rock, a national symbol. But this vast desert centre was originally seen as a place of death and silence by the first white explorers. It has taken 200 years for a new perception to emerge, one that recognises it as a place of life and creation - the way it has always been seen by the continent's original inhabitants, the Aborigines.
WED 22:00 Wild Down Under (b0074pnx)
Wild Down Under
Series exploring the wildlife and landscape of Australia. An introduction to the continent and surrounding islands, capturing the enormity of this vast and exotic land which is home to some of the most unique wildlife in the world.
WED 22:50 Wild Down Under (b0074ppm)
Desert Heart
Series exploring Australia's wildlife and landscape. This edition features the huge desert in the centre - no barren wasteland but home to a surprising diversity of flora and fauna. Nomadic budgerigars and giant red kangaroos flourish in a land battered by unpredictable cycles of drought and flood. Aborigines have lived here for thousands of years, but modern Australians are only just beginning to understand the terrain.
WED 23:40 Wilderness Explored (b00dzyz5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WED 00:40 Travellers' Century (b00crnkq)
Eric Newby
Benedict Allen follows the travels of quintessential British amateur traveller Eric Newby. Born in suburban Hammersmith between the wars, Newby was dismissed by his public school as 'not clever', and his life became a catalogue of challenges. As a teenager, he went to sea to serve as a deck hand, sailing around Cape Horn. During the WW2 he joined the Special Boat Squadron, and was captured by the enemy. After escaping from an Italian POW camp, he met his future wife Wanda.
Newby itched to discover the world and, in the mid-1950s, abandoned an unhappy career in the rag trade to head off with diplomat Hugh Carless into remotest Afghanistan and climb Mir Samir. The journey was immortalised in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
Fifty years on, Benedict Allen finds this lost corner of Afghanistan little changed - and comes away full of admiration for the author. Newby failed to reach the summit, but for all his sardonic understatement and self-deprecation, he was just a hair's breadth away. And all with the aid of a map drawn on the back of an envelope.
WED 01:40 Travellers' Century (b00cskdg)
Laurie Lee
Explorer, writer and broadcaster Benedict Allen retraces part of author Laurie Lee's journey across Spain in 1935, which became the basis for his celebrated travelogue As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
Lee thought of himself first and foremost as a poet, and the book reveals a poet's sensibility in its meticulous, distilled observations of the country and people he quickly came to love.
Allen tries to find out whether Lee's evocative prose actually works as travel writing and Lee is revealed as an enigmatic, mercurial figure in the tradition of the wandering minstrel or troubadour, with a huge array of talents and an astonishing facility to charm.
WED 02:40 Wilderness Explored (b00dzyz5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 16 OCTOBER 2008
THU 19:00 World News Today (b00dzz5t)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 Steam Days (b00f5lrr)
Going Great Western
First transmitted in 1986, Miles Kington explores the line laid from Bristol to Exeter by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and then travels through south Devon in all its glory.
Along the way Kington examines the enormous task faced by Brunel in the design and construction of the Royal Albert Bridge, which carries the Cornish Main Line railway in and out of Cornwall. Perhaps less well known is the impact of the railway line and the rail company on promoting tourism in the Edwardian golden age of British seaside resorts.
THU 20:00 Absolutely Chuffed: The Men Who Built a Steam Engine (b00dzz5y)
Documentary about the 18-year odyssey of a group of enthusiasts who set out to build a brand new mainline steam engine from scratch in 1990.
THU 20:30 Railway Walks with Julia Bradbury (b00dzz60)
The Birth of Steam
Tin and copper once made the area around Redruth the richest patch of land in the country. They inspired great engineering feats and pioneering tramways, the forebears of the rail empire. Julia Bradbury has her work cut out as she crosses an entire county, winding past Cornwall's crumbling engine houses and following a railway that has not operated for 140 years.
THU 21:00 Timeshift (b00dzzdc)
Series 8
Last Days of Steam
The surprising story of how Britain entered a new age of steam railways after the Second World War and why it quickly came to an end.
After the war, the largely destroyed railways of Europe were rebuilt to carry more modern diesel and electric trains. Britain, however, chose to build thousands of brand new steam locomotives. Did we stay with steam because coal was seen as the most reliable power source, or were the railways run by men who couldn't bear to let go of their beloved steam trains?
The new British locomotives were designed to stay in service well into the 1970s, but in some cases they were taken off the railways and scrapped within just five years. When Dr Richard Beeching took over British Railways in the 1960s the writing was on the wall, and in 1968 the last steam passenger train blew its whistle.
But while steam use declined, steam enthusiasm grew. As many steam engines lay rusting in scrapyards around Britain, enthusiasts raised funds to buy, restore and return them to their former glory. In 2008, the first brand new steam locomotive to be built in Britain in nearly 50 years rolled off the line, proving our enduring love of these machines.
THU 22:00 Oh, Mr Porter! (b007zc1b)
Comedy in which a bungling railway worker is given the job of stationmaster at a rundown station in rural Ireland, where his sidekicks are a toothless old gaffer and a portly young loudmouth. Hilarious adventures ensue, including a locomotive chase after gunrunners make off with a train.
THU 23:20 BBC Four Sessions (b0074qnh)
Gillian Welch
Series of unique concerts by musicians from around the world. This edition features acclaimed country-folk singer/songwriter Gillian Welch, accompanied by guitarist and collaborator David Rawlings. Welch draws on folk, country, bluegrass and Appalachian mountain ballads to create her own sometimes bleak American music which somehow sounds both ancient and modern.
THU 00:20 Railway Walks with Julia Bradbury (b00dzz60)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
THU 00:50 Timeshift (b00dzzdc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THU 01:50 Absolutely Chuffed: The Men Who Built a Steam Engine (b00dzz5y)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
THU 02:20 Railway Walks with Julia Bradbury (b00dzz60)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
THU 02:50 Timeshift (b00dzzdc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER 2008
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b00dzztw)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Vladimir Ashkenazy: The Vital Juices are Russian (b00dzzty)
Celebrated film-maker Christopher Nupen's 1968 profile of renowned Russian pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy charts a crucial turning point in Ashkenazy's life and career. Having lived in London for five years after leaving the Soviet Union, he and his Icelandic wife Thorunn decided to move to Iceland.
The film is a closely-observed account of one of the most demanding and rewarding of all professions and examines the talent and trials of one of classical music's greats.
FRI 20:20 Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (b00f2ksz)
Produced in 1955 and part of the British Transport Films' collection, this short film follows the heroic actions of railway workers who rescue a snowbound train in the north Pennines.
FRI 20:30 Only Connect (b00dzy8z)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 on Monday]
FRI 21:00 Les Paul: Chasing Sound (b00dzzv0)
Documentary profiling the late Les Paul, creator of the solid-body electric guitar, inventor of overdubbing and multi-track recording, king of the 50s pop charts and rock 'n' roll icon.
Les Paul tells his own classic rags-to-riches story, featuring vintage archive and original performance footage of him and his Trio, original interviews with the likes of BB King, Jeff Beck, Jose Feliciano, Tony Bennett and Bonnie Raitt and copious contributions from the genius from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who died in 2009.
Paul was the last of that self-educated, brilliantly innovative generation of musicians and media pioneers who revolutionised popular music in the last century.
FRI 22:30 Guitar Heroes at the BBC (b00dzzv2)
Part I
Concentrating on the 1970s (1969 to 1981 to be exact) and ransacking a host of BBC shows from The Old Grey Whistle Test to Sight & Sound, this compilation is designed to release the air guitarist in everyone, combining great electric guitarists like Carlos Santana, Mark Knopfler, The Edge and Peter Green with acoustic masters like John Martyn, Pentangle and Paco Pena.
FRI 23:30 imagine... (b00dzzv4)
The Story of the Guitar
Out of the Frying Pan
Alan Yentob presents a three-part series examining how the guitar became the world's favourite musical instrument.
As the guitar turns electric, music is changed for ever. The world's first electric guitar had nothing to do with jazz or blues, but Hawaiian-style music and was known as the 'frying pan'.
Yentob continues his investigation from the blues of the Mississippi to the guitar wars of the 1950s, when the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul were battling for supremacy.
FRI 00:30 The Avengers (b0074t2t)
Series 4
The 13th Hole
60s drama series. Steed and Emma's investigations into the murder of a colleague lead them to a golf club.
FRI 01:20 The Avengers (b0074t3n)
Series 4
The Quick Quick Slow Death
Steed and Emma investigate foul play when a foreign agent is involved in a road accident and the body of a man is found in the pram he was pushing.
FRI 02:10 Les Paul: Chasing Sound (b00dzzv0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 03:40 Guitar Heroes at the BBC (b00dzzv2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:30 today]