SUNDAY 01 FEBRUARY 2009

SUN 19:00 Stephen Fry in America (b00ffvlz)
True West

The high mesas of New Mexico are the starting point for Stephen's journey through the dramatic landscapes and peoples of the South West. The physicists at the Los Alamos lab, who are unravelling the mysteries of dark matter, contrast starkly to the ecohouse dwellers living off the grid near Sante Fe.

Staying with the Navajo Indians in Monument Valley in Arizona, Stephen learns to weave a basket, before heading to the sublime beauty of Lake Powell and life aboard a luxurious houseboat. He takes a World War II Flying Fortress bomber to the 'Boneyard' in Tucson, where 3,000 military planes are eerily mothballed, before living out a fantasy by becoming a cowboy at the Old Tucson Studios.

In Nevada he meets semi-naked Mormon missionaries during their calendar shoot and is initiated into the intricacies of brothel life by madame extraordinaire Susan Austin, before heading over the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Pacific Ocean.


SUN 20:00 Folk America (b00h6xmb)
This Land is Your Land

Three-part documentary series on American folk music, tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.

In the depression of the 1930s, John Lomax found convicted murderer Leadbelly in a southern jail. Leadbelly's music was never quite as pure and untouched by pop as Lomax believed, but it set a new agenda for folk music, redefining it as the voice of protest, the voice of the outsider and the oppressed.

Dustbowl drifter Woody Guthrie fitted the mould perfectly and the two of them teamed up with Lomax's son Alan, Pete Seeger and Josh White - a group of friends who believed 'they could make a better world if they all got together and just sang about it'. Their songs and their radical politics took them to high places of influence, but brought about their downfall in the blacklisting 1950s.

Contributors include Pete Seeger, Rambling Jack Elliot, Anna Lomax, Tom Paxton, Roger McGuinn, Woody Guthrie's sister and daughter and Josh White's son.


SUN 21:00 Neil Young: Don't Be Denied (b00f815m)
Neil Young grants rare and unprecedented access to the BBC for a documentary in which he traces his musical journey in his own words.

The film was made from three hours of interview shot in New York and California, and uses previously unseen performance footage from the star's own extensive archives. It also features cohorts Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Nils Lofgren and James Taylor.

From his early transcontinental American quest for recognition, through the first flush of success with Buffalo Springfield, to the bi-polar opposites of mega-stardom with Crosby, Stills and Nash and the soulful rock of Crazy Horse, Young's career has enjoyed many guises.

Perhaps his most famous period was as a 1970s solo artist making albums that became benchmarks. After The Goldrush, recorded in his Topanga Canyon home, and Harvest, part-recorded on his northern Californian ranch, saw Young explore the confessional side of song-writing. But never one to rest on his laurels, he would continually change direction.

In the mid-seventies, two of Young's closest friends died as a result of heroin abuse. What followed was music's answer to cinema verite, with Tonight's The Night a spine-chilling wake for his dead friends.

As New Wave arrived, Young was keen to explore new ideas. A collaboration with Devo on what became his art-house epic, Human Highway, saw the genesis of Rust Never Sleeps, a requiem for the seventies.

In the eighties, Young explored different genres, from electronica to country, and in recent times he has returned to Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills and Nash, but only when it has suited him.

The film ends with Young still refusing to be denied, on tour in the USA with CSNY, playing anti-Bush songs to a Republican audience in the South.


SUN 22:00 In Concert (b0074t8p)
Neil Young

First shown in 1971 and featuring the Canadian singer-songwriter on guitar, harmonica and piano, this in-studio concert features many of what he describes as new songs that were eventually to feature on his classic album Harvest, including Heart of Gold, A Man Needs a Maid and Old Man.


SUN 22:30 Kirsty Wark Talks To (b00hd2dl)
Catherine Deneuve

Kirsty Wark talks to legendary French film actress Catherine Deneuve about her career and the directors that shaped it.

From her early success in Umbrellas of Cherbourg to her notorious roles with surrealist director Luis Bunuel, Deneuve has been a star but also an icon for the French. She talks frankly about this iconic status and her 100th film, A Christmas Tale.

She also reveals her distress about a book published in France claiming that her late father was a collaborator during World War Two.


SUN 23:00 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (b00hd15n)
Tale of self-discovery based on the true story of a young man who suddenly appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 and later claimed to have been locked away in a tower since birth.

When found, he can barely walk or speak and has no concept of social behaviour. Eventually he learns to read, write, talk, perform in society and think for himself. But he remains an outsider, a mystery to both the town and himself.


SUN 00:50 BBC Four World Cinema Awards (b00hd0jb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Saturday]


SUN 01:50 Stephen Fry in America (b00ffvlz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SUN 02:50 Folk America (b00h6xmb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]