The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
The amateur naturalists are hot on the trail of cold-blooded animals. Reptiles and amphibians are often thought of as slimy and creepy. They're hard to keep a watch over because they're hard to see. But for the dedicated few, it's well worth the effort. One enthusiast has turned his garden into a lizard empire, all with the aim of helping sand lizards back from the brink. Another has turned sleuth, keeping an eye over her local woodland for Britain's most feared wild animal, the adder. One couple have transformed the landscape to create a home fit for the king of newts. And one man stalks the dank marshes at night to hear the melodic chorus of his own population of toads.
The naturalists' passion for these elusive wild animals gives a window onto a hidden world. This programme shows why it's surprisingly easy to get hot under the collar about cold-blooded creatures.
Final programme in this series following wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan as he spends a year with a family of wild black bears.
Gordon returns to Minnesota in early autumn to discover that the life of abandoned bear cub Hope has taken an unexpected turn for the better: Hope is back together with her mother Lily. But the bears are in danger when hunters move into the forest. Gordon's role changes from cameraman to bodyguard as he walks with the bears to try to keep them safe. Will Lily and Hope survive hunting season to den safely for the winter?
Luxury isn't just a question of expensive and the beautiful objects for the rich and the powerful. It has always been much more important than that, especially in the ancient and medieval worlds.
This second episode follows the clash between luxury and Christianity which convulsed medieval Europe. Luxury was a roadblock on the road to heaven, so the church was quick to condemn the jewellery, gorgeous weapons and pattern-welded swords of the early medieval world. Yet the church also had its own form of luxury, in the form of spectacular manuscripts designed to do the work of God through astonishment and display. And to some extent it worked, as by 1200 medieval boys' toys like warhorses and tournaments came to be suffused with Christian ideas of chivalry and gentility.
But by that time the growth of trade had brought new luxuries to Europe, condemned in turn by the church, like exotic spices from the East. Spicy food led to spicy conduct, said the preachers, and to the sin of lechery. But soon the Black Death paradoxically liberated luxury from the church by initiating a new world of relative luxury and consumerism - the luxury world we inhabit today.
Documentary which tells the story of a dream of happy families on wheels that the Ford Motor Company brought from Detroit to Dagenham, then sold to Britain.
From the 1950s onwards Ford revolutionised the cars we drove, producing dream cars for the average British family. In the 60s and 70s Ford sold dreams to boy racers too, but it came at a price. The mass production of motor cars required an army of assembly line workers who did jobs that were infamous for their soul-destroying monotony.
At its peak Dagenham was producing more than 3,000 cars every day and its most popular dream car, the Cortina, sold around five million in Britain alone. But the assembly line workers had a love-hate relationship with the cars they made and for some the dream became a nightmare.
Illustrated with powerful first person testimony and rare archive, this is the story of the rise and fall of Ford's Dagenham dream.
Timeshift invites you to make a reservation in the world of hotels for the super rich. The Savoy, the Ritz, the Dorchester - the very names of Britain's grand hotels spell luxury around the world. The film charts how luxury hotels have met the needs of new forms of wealth, from aristocrats to rock stars and beyond, with comfort, innovation and, above all, service.
Spangler declares the tanker attack in Galveston Bay to be a massive intelligence failure and urges his staff to come back with the truth about the perpetrators. Katherine phones Will and asks if he knew someone named David. Will instructs her to meet him in Central Park. Spangler, knowing that Will has discovered the truth about the operation, promotes Grant to team leader, much to Tanya and Miles's disgust.
TUESDAY 05 JULY 2011
TUE 19:00 World News Today (b012cnnq)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
TUE 19:30 Art Deco Icons (b00nqc3l)
Casa Del Rio
David Heathcote goes to spend the weekend at Casa Del Rio - a remarkable Art Deco fantasy house hidden away in rural Devon. He uncovers the story of Walter Price, a baker from Devon who went to visit California in the 1930s and who was so impressed by Pickfair - the glamorous residence of Hollywood stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - that he decided to create his own Deco mansion back in the Devon countryside, complete with marble staircase built to look like a piano keyboard.
Heathcote explores the house that was the perfect glamorous weekend retreat for Price and his friends and plays with some of the many Deco gadgets that brought glamour into so many people's lives in the 1930s - a perfect toaster, a Bakelite radio and even a cocktail shaker.
The original Pickfair mansion in California was demolished, so Casa Del Rio remains as a rare British example of a Deco fantasy house, built at time when Britain was in love with Hollywood, Art Deco and its glamour.
TUE 20:00 Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with English National Ballet (b00zs817)
Episode 3
The final episode offers a raw and revealing insight into English National Ballet, one of the world's premier ballet companies, at the climax of one of its most demanding years. From injury and pain to success and elation, the series exposes the storm behind the calm of big ballet productions.
Wayne Eagling has a highly demanding job as the artistic director of English National Ballet, looking after the 64 dancers that produce eight ballets a year. He has also decided to put his neck on the line by creating his first full length ballet for the company - The Nutcracker. As the company's crucial and lucrative Christmas production, there is no room for error and Wayne must complete the two hour ballet on an extremely tight schedule.
The film follows the creative processes of a choreographer under pressure and a new production fighting against time. With an important audience of critics, donors and government officials expected on opening night, the show must be finished. But with rehearsals running late and severe snow disrupting the making of the sets, it seems the dancers, costume-makers and technical staff are all fighting for stage time right up until the curtain rises.
TUE 21:00 Perfume (b012cnns)
Bottling the Memory
Perfumers are molecular chemists and sensual creatives who seek to trigger pleasurable memories and associations through our most primitive sense. We follow three different types of perfumer - or nose - to find out how they do it and what it takes to become one.
Jean Claude Ellena is in-house nose at French brand Hermes. We spend time with him in his studio in the woods, musing, sniffing and then creating a fragrance inspired by a secret garden. American Christopher Brosius is the Proust of perfume, a punk star with a mission to create scents that that can speak to us of times past - whether through the smell of tomato leaves or musty books. Jean Guichard is the principal of the Parisian school for noses. There are more astronauts than there are perfumers - so how does he spot the right stuff in students who may not be aware they have it?
TUE 22:00 Glamour's Golden Age (b00nk9m5)
Beautiful and Damned
The story of 1920s London's Bright Young People is a tale of sex, drink, drugs and a gossip-hungry press. Beautiful and Damned traces the growth of 1920s London's bright young party set whose antics were enjoyed and scorned in equal measures by a watching nation. And the more artistic of the merry band - Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford among them - saw their work make the characters and attitudes of the era both legend and fable.
Contributors include Philip Hoare, DJ Taylor, Selina Hastings, Lucy Moore and Adrian Bingham.
TUE 23:00 Feasts (b00kv0k6)
Mexico
Series in which food writer and presenter Stefan Gates immerses himself in some of the most extraordinary feasts and festivals on earth. By joining ordinary people in these strange and wonderful distillations of their culture and beliefs, he hopes to gain a revelatory insight into how the world thinks and feels.
Stefan goes on a wild emotional and spiritual rollercoaster ride, starting with a teenage girl's bizarre coming-of-age ceremony and ending with the Day of the Dead, a cacophonous cross-cultural festival of the senses during which Mexicans truly believe that their loved ones come back from the dead for three days every year to spend the day with them.
In Oaxaca, he is dressed up as a dead woman and made to dance like a lunatic at the head of a procession as it makes its way through town. He is turned into an emotional wreck at the moment the dead return, bursting into tears as Dias de los Muertos makes him experience grief and loss for the first time.
But then in the next breath, the family Stefan is living with teach him to celebrate and laugh at death. They turn his views on their head, allowing him to embrace and conquer his fear of death through an extraordinary sensual onslaught of food, flowers, songs and smells. The sight of the graveyards overflowing with flowers and mescal-drinking revellers is a truly life-changing experience.
TUE 00:00 Perfume (b012cnns)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUE 01:00 Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with English National Ballet (b00zs817)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
TUE 02:00 Glamour's Golden Age (b00nk9m5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
TUE 03:00 Perfume (b012cnns)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 06 JULY 2011
WED 19:00 World News Today (b012cnwt)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 The Beauty of Maps (b00s64f4)
Atlas Maps - Thinking Big
Documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps.
The Dutch Golden Age saw map-making reach a fever pitch of creative and commercial ambition. This was the era of the first ever atlases - elaborate, lavish and beautiful. This was the great age of discovery and marked an unprecedented opportunity for mapmakers, who sought to record and categorise the newly acquired knowledge of the world. Rising above the many mapmakers in this period was Gerard Mercator, inventor of the Mercator projection, who changed mapmaking forever when he published his collection of world maps in 1598 and coined the term 'atlas'.
The programme looks at some of the largest and most elaborate maps ever produced, from the vast maps on the floor of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, to the 24-volume atlas covering just the Netherlands, to the largest atlas in the world, The Klencke Atlas. It was made for Charles II to mark his restoration in 1660. But whilst being one of the British Library's most important items, it is also one of its most fragile, so hardly ever opened. This is a unique opportunity to see inside this enormous and lavish work, and see the world through the eyes of a king.
WED 20:00 Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (b00s96gn)
Mapping the World
In the last of a three-part series about the extraordinary stories behind maps, Professor Jerry Brotton uncovers how maps are snapshots of a moment in history and offer visions of distant lands, tempting explorers to plunder and conquer.
However, adventurers first had to tackle the great challenge of mapping the globe onto a flat surface. There is no perfect solution, but the father of geography, Claudius Ptolemy, had some clever ideas.
Explorers like Christopher Columbus sailed into the unknown in search of riches and discovered a whole new continent that would become the most powerful on earth, while Amerigo Vespucci gave it his name.
Sir Walter Raleigh's treasure map of El Dorado in South America ultimately lost him his head. But the myth of El Dorado lived on, sending hundreds of men to their death in fruitless attempts to find the golden city.
As navigation became easier, maps enabled nations and enterprises like the Dutch East India Company to plunder far-off territories for spices, natural resources and gold. Even today, a project to map the North Pole is the flashpoint for the so-called 'Cold Rush' - the dash to exploit oil, gas and mineral reserves as the Arctic ice melts.
WED 21:00 The Perfect Suit (b012cnww)
A witty exploration of the evolution of the gentleman's suit. Alastair Sooke only owns one suit, but he is fascinated by how the matching jacket and trousers has become a uniform for men. Over the last 100 years the suit has evolved from working man's Sunday best to the casual wear of royalty.
For many 'the suit' is synonymous with all that is dull. But tailor Charlie Allen, Top Man chief designer Gordon Richardson and Sir Paul Smith show Alastair that the suit can be a cutting-edge fashion item and 'armour' to face the world.
WED 22:00 Nurse Jackie (b00yvtfq)
Series 2
Care Giver
Jackie's hard stance towards Eddie softens after an argument with Kevin. Gloria posts a security guard by the Pill-O-Matix and approaches Coop about being the public face of All Saints. Details about O'Hara's famous girlfriend and Zoe's pregnancy come to light. An elderly patient has been neglected by her care giver.
WED 22:30 Syrian School (b00qpl7w)
Changing Schools
Five-part series following a year in the life of four schools in Damascus, a high pressure crossroads in the Middle East.
It concentrates on some remarkable characters finding their way in a country that has never before opened ordinary life up to the cameras in this way, challenges the usual cliches of Arab life and charts the highs and lows of the school year.
Mrs Amal Hassan is the larger-than-life headteacher of Zaki Al Arsouzi Girls' School, intent on teaching her girls to stick up for themselves and 'be free'. She has a new girl at school, Dua'a, who comes from a devout Muslim family. Until now Dua'a has been educated at a conservative Islamic school, but this term she has moved to the more liberal Zaki Al-Arsouzi School. How will she get on with the big ideas of her new headteacher?
Across town at Jaramana Boys' School, Yusif is football mad. He's an Iraqi refugee who lived through the bombs of Baghdad. Now, in the relative calm of Syria, he must start to overcome his deep-seated fear of loud bangs.
WED 23:30 Wallander (b00scpsw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Saturday]
WED 01:00 Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (b00s96gn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WED 02:00 Syrian School (b00qpl7w)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:30 today]
WED 03:00 The Perfect Suit (b012cnww)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 07 JULY 2011
THU 19:00 World News Today (b012cpvm)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 The Sky at Night (b07mz2xg)
The Stars Indoors
Sir Patrick Moore visits the South Downs Planetarium and discovers how the stars appeared to the ancient Egyptians, whilst Pete Lawrence explains what to look out for in the summer night sky.
THU 20:00 Horizon: 40 Years on the Moon (b00llgs8)
Professor Brian Cox takes a look through nearly 50 years of BBC archive at the story of man's relationship with the moon.
From the BBC's space fanatic James Burke testing out the latest Nasa equipment to 1960s interviews about the bacon-flavoured crystals that astronauts can survive on in space, to the iconic images of man's first steps on the moon and the dramatic story of Apollo 13, Horizon and the BBC have covered it all.
But since President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s was reached, no-one has succeeded in reigniting the public's enthusiasm for space travel and lunar voyages. Why?
On his journey through the ages, Professor Cox explores the role that international competition played in getting man to the moon and asks if, with America no longer the world's only superpower, we are at the dawn of a bright new space age.
THU 21:00 High Flyers: How Britain Took to the Air (b00nnlz3)
Documentary which tells the story of the golden age of British aviation and of how the original 'jet set' shaped air travel for generations to come. In Britain in the 1920s and '30s a revolution took place that would change forever our perspective on the world. While the country was in the grip of recession, dashing pilots and daring socialites took to the air, pushed back boundaries and forged new links across the globe. The era of commercial air travel was born.
THU 22:00 Storyville (b00spgkb)
Valentino - The Last Emperor
Film which travels inside the singular world of one of Italy's most famous fashion designers, Valentino Garavani, documenting the colourful and dramatic closing act of his celebrated career and capturing the end of an era in global fashion.
However, at the heart of the film is a love story - the unique relationship between Valentino and his business partner and companion of 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti. Capturing intimate moments in the lives of two of Italy's richest and most famous men, the film lifts the curtain on the final act of a nearly 50-year reign at the top of the glamorous and fiercely competitive world of fashion.
THU 23:30 Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in... (b012cnkx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Monday]
THU 00:30 Ford's Dagenham Dream (b00j0gnm)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 on Monday]
THU 01:30 Horizon: 40 Years on the Moon (b00llgs8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
THU 02:30 The Sky at Night (b07mz2xg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 03:00 High Flyers: How Britain Took to the Air (b00nnlz3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 08 JULY 2011
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b012cr33)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:25 DEC East Africa Crisis Appeal (b012rydz)
Lenny Henry presents an appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee for the crisis in East Africa.
FRI 19:30 Summer Night Concert from Vienna (b012cr35)
2011
Katie Derham introduces the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performing its Summer Evening Concert in the uniquely magnificent gardens of the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. The celebrated conductor Valery Gergiev presents music by Mussorgsky, Liszt, Sibelius and Paganini, with virtuoso violin soloist Benjamin Schmid. Dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet illustrate colourful scenes from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The concert finishes in rousing fashion with music by the waltz king Johann Strauss.
FRI 21:00 Troubadours: The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter (b012cr37)
Morgan Neville's full-length documentary is James Taylor and Carole King's first-hand account of the genesis and blossoming of the 1970s singer-songwriter culture in LA, focusing on the backgrounds and emerging collaboration between Taylor, King and the Troubadour, the famed West Hollywood club that nurtured a community of gifted young artists and singer-songwriters.
Taylor and King first performed together at the Troubadour in November 1970, and the film explores their coming together and the growth of a new, personal voice in songwriting pioneered by a small group of fledgling artists around the club. Contributors include Taylor, King, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson, JD Souther, Peter Asher, Cheech & Chong, Steve Martin and Elton John.
FRI 22:25 Carole King and James Taylor: Live at the Troubadour (b00sftvw)
Carole King and James Taylor reunited at the intimate Hollywood venue in concert in 2007 to play their era-defining hits, nearly four decades after they first performed at the Troubadour in November 1970, a year before their Tapestry and Sweet Baby James' albums stormed the American charts. King and Taylor are backed by the Section, the same band that propelled those albums into homes around the world.
James Taylor had released his first album on the Beatles' Apple label, Carole King was struggling to forge a new solo career after being one half of Goffin-King, one of the great Brill Building songwriting partnerships of the early 60s. Their musical friendship blossomed with Taylor's support for King and his cover of her song You've Got a Friend. The Troubadour became the centre of a new singer-songwriter culture that also featured the likes of Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and many more.
FRI 23:20 Hotel California: LA from the Byrds to the Eagles (b0074t87)
Documentary looking at the music and mythology of a golden era in Californian culture, and telling the story of how Los Angeles changed from a kooky backwater in the early 1960s to become the artistic and industrial hub of the American music industry by the end of the 1970s.
Alongside extensive and never before seen archive footage, the programme features comprehensive first-hand accounts of the key figures including musicians (David Crosby, Graham Nash, J. D. Souther, Bernie Leadon and Bonnie Raitt, music industry bosses (David Geffen, Jac Holzman, Ron Stone and Peter Asher) and legendary LA scenesters including Henry Diltz, Pamela Des Barres and Ned Doheny.
The film explores how the socially-conscious folk rock of young hippies with acoustic guitars was transformed into the coked-out stadium excess of the late 1970s and the biggest selling album of all time.
FRI 00:50 The Old Grey Whistle Test (b0074t8q)
California Comes to the Whistle Test
A compilation of BBC performances by artists who lived and worked in California in the 1970s. Featuring Jackson Browne, Little Feat, Ry Cooder, Judee Sill, Bonnie Raitt and a rare duet between James Taylor and Carly Simon.
FRI 01:50 Troubadours: The Rise of the Singer-Songwriter (b012cr37)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 03:15 Carole King and James Taylor: Live at the Troubadour (b00sftvw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:25 today]