SUNDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2009

SUN 19:00 Stephen Fry in America (b00flx59)
Pacific

Starting in San Francisco where he meets up with Apple's design guru Jony Ive, Stephen explores the Pacific Northwest. He travels up the coast to Mendocino to take part in a drug bust, before joining tree-sitters and Big Foot believers in the Oregon giant redwood forests.

Dope smoking students and edgy cabaret in Seattle give way to the stark wilderness of Alaska and an unsuccessful whale hunt with Eskimos in Barrow, the northernmost city of the USA.

On the islands of Hawaii, he meets a real life Magnum PI , goes swimming with sharks and paddles with surfers. He then sees the death of stars with astrophysicist Alex Filippenko and the birth of new land as lava flows into the sea, creating yet more America.


SUN 20:00 Seasick Steve: Bringing It All Back Home (b00gvk8x)
Documentary which joins former hobo and festival favourite bluesman Seasick Steve on a trip back to his old stomping grounds in America's Deep South. Filmed in Mississippi and Tennessee, the programme follows the musician into his natural habitat of run-down juke joints, roadside diners and freight-train yards, as he reflects on his past life and recent rise to fame.

In addition to Steve's raw, stomping tunes, the soundtrack features Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, RL Burnside and BB King.


SUN 20:30 Seasick Steve at Reading 2008 (b00gvk8z)
Seasick Steve and his band bring their unique brand of 'Hill Country' delta blues to the young audience at Reading festival in August 2008.


SUN 21:00 The History Man (b00hq287)
Episode 1

Malcolm Bradbury's satirical novel of 1970's greybrick campus life adapted by Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher Hampton stars a moustachioed Antony Sher as Howard Kirk, Marxist sociologist, womaniser and bully.


SUN 22:35 Mark Lawson Talks To... (b00hq289)
Sir Antony Sher

Antony Sher is a renowned actor, writer and artist. He chats to Mark Lawson about growing up as a white South African, working with his partner Gregory Doran, and failing drama school auditions.


SUN 23:35 Home with Antony Sher (b0074pkc)
Adapted from JG Ballard's short story The Enormous Space, a drama which reveals what happens to a man once he chooses to shut himself off from the outside world and descends into emotional and physical meltdown.


SUN 00:35 Citizen Smith (b0090b8b)
Corby

Writer Michael Smith takes on the guise of a contemporary Citizen Smith, scouring the country in search of a modern day definition of nationality. In the final part, Smith attacks the English lack of national pride. After viewing a pitiful turnout for St George's Day celebrations at Trafalgar Square, he travels to Corby in Northamptonshire, a town flooded by Scottish steel workers in the 1970s. He compares the Scots who he believes still define themselves by national identity to his English countrymen who do not.


SUN 01:05 Why Reading Matters (b00hk7w3)
Science writer Rita Carter tells the story of how modern neuroscience has revealed that reading, something most of us take for granted, unlocks remarkable powers. Carter explains how the classic novel Wuthering Heights allows us to step inside other minds and understand the world from different points of view, and she wonders whether the new digital revolution could threaten the values of classic reading.


SUN 02:05 How Reading Made Us Modern (b00hk7mx)
English literature professor John Mullan explores the dramatic increase in reading which took place in 18th-century Britain, as it went from being the preserve of the rich to the national pastime it is today.

In 1695 a tiny amendment to the British constitution allowed for a flood of publications, without which Britain would be almost unrecognisable. This was the era that gave us the first ever magazines, newspapers and perhaps most vitally, the novel.

Mullan takes us from raucous, politically-charged coffee houses to the circulating library, the social space of the late 1700s. There is a glimpse inside an 18th century lady's closet where she hid with her novel, and Mullan also celebrates the hero of the reading revolution, Dr Samuel Johnson.


SUN 03:05 Mark Lawson Talks To... (b00hq289)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:35 today]