Series combining stunning wildlife with high-octane adventure, as a team of scientists and wildlife film-makers from the BBC's Natural History Unit explores one of the last great unspoilt jungle wildernesses on earth.
New Guinea is a rugged tropical island that is home to some of the strangest creatures on the planet. The team is based at the foot of Mount Bosavi, a giant extinct volcano covered in thick and largely unexplored rainforest. With the help of trackers from a remote tribe, they aim to search for the animals that live there - and they make amazing finds.
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan discovers the nest of the world's smallest parrot, insect expert Dr George McGavin finds a talking beetle, the scientists identify types of frog, gecko and bat that are completely new to science, and adventurer Steve Backshall has to live and sleep underground as he explores a cave system flooded with white water.
The cameras follow the team every sweaty step of the way as they search for the evidence that may help preserve this last great jungle forever.
Alastair Sooke traces how the Romans during the Republic went from being art thieves and copycats to pioneering a new artistic style - warts 'n' all realism. Roman portraits reveal what the great names from history, men like Julius Caesar and Cicero, actually looked like. Modern-day artists demonstrate the ingenious techniques used to create these true to life masterpieces in marble, bronze and paint.
We can step back into the Roman world thanks to their invention of the documentary-style marble relief and to a volcano called Vesuvius. Sooke explores the remarkable artistic legacy of Pompeii before showing how Rome's first emperor, Augustus, used the power of art to help forge an empire.
Birgitte's government has run out of steam - the internal differences are growing and only compromise legislation is being passed, which does not really satisfy anyone. Opinion polls indicate that Birgitte is likely to lose the next election. She really needs a popular cause and is therefore very tempted when the businessman Joachim Crohne draws her attention to the central African country of Kharun, on the brink of civil war. Crohne suggests that Birgitte should attempt to broker peace in the conflict, thereby gaining popularity for herself and also helping to restore Denmark's tarnished reputation after the cartoon crisis.
Danish drama series about the fight for political power and the personal sacrifices and consequences this has for those involved on and behind the political stage.
The eyes of the world are on Copenhagen and chief negotiator Birgitte Nyborg Christensen as the time draws near for peace talks between North and South Kharun to stop the bloody civil war. Everyone is working around the clock.
The Old Grey Whistle Test was launched on 21 September 1971 from a tiny studio tucked behind a lift shaft on the fourth floor of BBC Television Centre. From humble beginnings, it has gone on to provide some of the best and most treasured music archive that the BBC has to offer.
This programme takes us on a journey and celebrates the musically mixed-up decade that was the 1970s, and which is reflected in the OGWT archive. There are classic performances from the glam era by Elton John and David Bowie, an early UK TV appearance from Curtis Mayfield, the beginnings of heavy metal with Steppenwolf's iconic Born to Be Wild anthem and the early punk machinations of the 'mock rock' New York Dolls. Archive from the pinnacle year, 1973, features Roxy Music, The Wailers and Vinegar Joe. The programme's finale celebrates the advent of punk and new wave with unforgettable performances from Patti Smith, Blondie, Iggy Pop and The Jam.
Artists featured are Elton John, Lindisfarne, David Bowie, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Steppenwolf, Vinegar Joe, Brinsley Schwarz, New York Dolls, Argent, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Captain Beefheart, Johnny Winter, Dr Feelgood, Gil Scott Heron, Patti Smith, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Cher & Gregg Allman, Talking Heads, The Jam, Blondie, Iggy Pop and The Specials.
David 'Kid' Jensen introduces the weekly pop chart programme featuring performances from the Rich Kids, Althea & Donna, Gordon Giltrap, Terry Wogan, Yellow Dog, Gallagher & Lyle, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Baccara, Wings and Legs & Co.
Documentary following English folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention as they celebrate their 45th anniversary in 2012. Fairport's iconic 1969 album Liege and Lief featured some of folk music's biggest names - including singer Sandy Denny, guitarist Richard Thompson and fiddler Dave Swarbrick - and was voted by Radio 2 listeners as the most influential folk album of all time. Today, having struggled for years with numerous line-up changes (26 members to date) and shifting musical fashions, these ageing folk-rockers host their annual festival in Cropredy, Oxfordshire in front of a passionate 20,000 crowd. Comedian Frank Skinner, who played the ukulele on Fairport's 2010 album Festival Bell, narrates this tale of the rise and fall - and rise again - of the original English folk-rockers.
A concert to celebrate the 45th anniversary of folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention, filmed in March 2012 at the Union Chapel in north London, only a few miles away from the 'Fairport' house in Muswell Hill where the band was formed during the summer of 1967. Today only Simon Nicol, whose parents owned the house, is still there from the original line-up, but the wealth of incredible songs and arrangements left by former members such as Ashley Hutchings, Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson remains at the core of the band's live shows. This concert's highlights include Matty Groves from the band's landmark Liege and Lief album and Sandy Denny's Who Knows Where the Time Goes, voted 'favourite folk track of all time' by Radio 2 listeners.
SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2013
SUN 19:00 Timeshift (b016pwgw)
Series 11
Of Ice and Men
Timeshift reveals the history of the frozen continent, finding out why the most inhospitable place on the planet has exerted such a powerful hold on the imagination of explorers, scientists, writers and photographers.
Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest place on the globe. Only a handful of people have experienced its desolate beauty, with the first explorers setting foot here barely a hundred years ago.
From the logbooks of Captain Cook to the diaries of Scott and Shackleton, from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to HP Lovecraft, it is a film about real and imaginary tales of adventure, romance and tragedy that have played out against a stark white backdrop.
We relive the race to the Pole and the 'Heroic Age' of Antarctic exploration, and find out what it takes to survive the cold and the perils of 'polar madness'. We see how Herbert Ponting's photographs of the Scott expedition helped define our image of the continent and find out why the continent witnessed a remarkable thaw in Russian and American relations at the height of the Cold War.
We also look at the intriguing story of who actually owns Antarctica and how science is helping us reimagine a frozen wasteland as something far more precious.
Interviewees include Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Francis Spufford, Huw Lewis-Jones, Sara Wheeler, Henry Worsley, Prof David Walton and Martin Hartley.
SUN 20:00 Holocaust: A Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz (b0078v1v)
On the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau this memorial film reflects on the shocking fact that the Nazis used music as a psychological tool in their machine of death. Survivors who were forced to play in the orchestras set up by the SS recount their experiences and, for the first time since its liberation, permission has been given for music to be heard again in Auschwitz. Leading international musicians from around the world, including the Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov and the American pianist Emanuel Ax, come to pay tribute to the 1.5 million who died. The film includes music by Mozart, Bach, Chopin and others who have commemorated this human tragedy in sound.
SUN 21:30 Mark Knopfler: A Life in Songs (b00xz0zx)
Mark Knopfler is one of the most successful musicians in the world. During the past 30 years he has written and recorded over 300 songs including some of the most famous in popular music.
In this in-depth documentary he talks about how these songs have defined him and how they have been influenced by his own life and roots. It features previously unseen photographs from his personal collection and comprehensive footage spanning his career from a struggling musician playing in pubs in Leeds in the 1970s, to the record-breaking success with Dire Straits and his world tour as a solo artist.
Looking back over the 25 years since he wrote the iconic Brothers In Arms album, the film takes an affectionate look at how this formidable, creative man has operated as a musician for three decades and how he continues to do so as a solo artist who is as much in demand as ever.
SUN 22:30 Love Like Poison (b01f55fk)
Anna, a young teenager, comes home from her Catholic boarding school for the holidays and discovers that her father has left.
As her mother struggles to come to terms with her husband leaving, Anna spends more time with her grandfather and grows close to Pierre, a free-spirited teenager.
In French with English subtitles.
SUN 23:50 Arena (b00wbp64)
Dave Brubeck - In His Own Sweet Way
Three young men who emerged in the 1950s - Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck - not only captured the public's imagination, but in their own unique way determined the evolution of jazz as we know it today.
This Clint Eastwood co-produced documentary tells Dave Brubeck's personal story, tracing his career from his first musical experiences to the overwhelming success of the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the iconic status he and his varied forms of musical expression have achieved.
It is told with contemporary interviews, vintage performances, previously unseen archive and additional performances filmed especially for the documentary. The story is also told by Dave and Iola Brubeck, both in their own words and by musical example. Contributors include Bill Cosby, Jamie Cullum, Yo-Yo Ma, George Lucas and Eastwood himself.
In 2009 Brubeck was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, with Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen, Grace Bumbry and Mel Brooks. He played with his sons for President Obama at the White House, and 55 years ago became the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine. His classic Take Five is as familiar today as in 1959 when it was a Top 10 hit all over the world.
Brubeck has an unlikely origin for a jazz giant, growing up on a ranch in Monterey, California. Monterey resident Clint Eastwood introduced Brubeck and his Cannery Row Suite at the 2006 Monterey Jazz Festival and each were so inspired by the success of the event they agreed to move forward with this full-length documentary together.
SUN 01:20 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz (b00jf64y)
1959 was the seismic year jazz broke away from complex bebop music to new forms, allowing soloists unprecedented freedom to explore and express. It was also a pivotal year for America: the nation was finding its groove, enjoying undreamt-of freedom and wealth; social, racial and upheavals were just around the corner; and jazz was ahead of the curve.
Four major jazz albums were made, each a high watermark for the artists and a powerful reflection of the times. Each opened up dramatic new possibilities for jazz which continue to be felt: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue; Dave Brubeck, Time Out; Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um; and Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Rarely seen archive performances help vibrantly bring the era to life and explore what made these albums vital both in 1959 and the 50 years since. The programme contains interviews with Lou Reed, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Herbie Hancock, Joe Morello (Brubeck's drummer) and Jimmy Cobb (the only surviving member of Miles' band), along with a host of jazz movers and shakers from the 50s and beyond.
SUN 02:20 Omnibus (b00nnmf8)
Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz
Documentary celebrating the founding of Ronnie Scott's Jazz club in 1959. Scott, a rising young saxophone player, opened a club where he and his friends could play the music they liked. Over the following years, the club had its ups and downs, reflecting the changes in attitudes to jazz and the social life of surrounding Soho.
Now Ronnie Scott's is known throughout the world as the hearbeat of British jazz. In this tribute, Omnibus talks to some of Ronnie's greatest admirers including Mel Brooks, the Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke MP and writer Alan Plater, and features rare archive footage of some of the club's historic performances by Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
SUN 03:20 Concerto at the BBC Proms (b01k83bg)
Mozart Piano
Another chance to hear a live performance from the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall of Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23, one of his most exuberant piano works, recorded in 2006. The American pianist Richard Goode, one of today's leading interpreters of classical and Romantic music, performs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Jirí Behlohlávek.
MONDAY 28 JANUARY 2013
MON 19:00 World News Today (b01qbwld)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
MON 19:30 Great British Railway Journeys (b00xbkx0)
Series 2
Brighton to Crystal Palace
Michael Portillo takes to the tracks with a copy of George Bradshaw's Victorian Railway Guidebook. In a series of five epic journeys, Portillo travels the length and breadth of the country to see how the railways changed us, and what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
In a journey taking him coast to coast from Brighton to Cromer, Michael finds out about Brighton's Victorian aquarium, the largest in the world at the time, explores the underground quarries of Godstone and discovers the wonders of the Crystal Palace in suburban south London.
MON 20:00 Art Deco Icons (b00ntrs5)
The Orient Express
David Heathcote boards the Orient Express at London's Victoria Station and heads off for Venice, first settling into his perfectly restored sleeping cabin and then exploring the decadent charm and the extraordinary history of the train.
He meets James Sherwood, the man who bought the Orient Express in the 1970s and who decided to restore the old 1930s carriages to their Art Deco glamour. At first, his wife Shirley 'thought he was mad', but she became charmed by the challenge of restoring the Decorative art of a romantic train.
After enjoying the luxury of the dining compartment, Heathcote retires to his cabin and wakes up as the train chugs through the Alps. He is joined by Bevis Hillier, the expert who coined the phrase Art Deco and who describes the remarkable spread of the movement across the world from its origins at an exhibition in France in 1925.
However, it is not all luxury - the train has no air conditioning and the washing facilities are a bit basic. So, at the end of 32 exhilarating hours immersed in Art Deco, Heathcote steps off the train at Venice and heads for a beer and a shower.
MON 20:30 Britain on Film (b01qbz9f)
Series 1
This Sceptered Isle
In 1959, Britain's biggest cinema company, the Rank Organisation, decided to replace its newsreels with a series of short, quirky, topical documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. For the next ten years, Look at Life chronicled - on high-grade 35mm colour film - the changing face of British society, industry and culture. Britain on Film draws upon the 500 films in this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into what became a pivotal decade.
This episode examines Look at Life's quirky films that documented unusual or eccentric British customs, rituals and traditions. In an era where many Britons embraced change as never before, these revealing and highly entertaining films show that people were determined to preserve the idiosyncratic aspects of our national life.
MON 21:00 Lost Kingdoms of South America (b01qbz9k)
Lands of Gold
Through the mountains and jungles of Colombia, archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper goes in search of the truth behind one of the greatest stories ever told - the legend of El Dorado. His journey takes him from Bogota to the Caribbean coast, through territories once dominated by two cultures, the Muisca and the Tairona, who flourished for centuries before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. Dr Cooper reveals forgotten peoples who valued gold in a way the western world still struggles to understand, travelling to an astonishing lost city and meeting the last survivors of an ancient civilisation.
MON 22:00 Queen of Versailles (b01qbz9m)
First shown on BBC Storyville in January 2013, Jackie and David Siegel, a former beauty queen and her billionaire husband, are triumphantly building their dream home in Florida. Once finished, it will be the largest house in America - a 90,000 square-foot super-mansion modelled on the Palace of Versailles, replete with 30 bathrooms, 10 kitchens, sushi bar, bowling alley, skating rink, baseball park and ballroom.
But when the economic crisis hits, the rarefied world of a truly unique family is turned upside down. In the face of the worst economic crisis in decades, this rags-to-riches tale takes a tumble as Jackie, David, their eight children, maids, dogs, employees and business associates struggle to keep David's time-share business afloat and finish their dream home.
With the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy, this is the story of a couple who dared to dream big but lose, in a film that exposes the virtues and flaws of the American Dream.
MON 23:30 Carved with Love: The Genius of British Woodwork (b01q6xrv)
The Divine Craft of Carpentry
This series about the history of British woodworking concludes by looking at the Middle Ages, a golden era. Sponsored by the monarchy and the church, carvers and carpenters created wonders that still astound us today, from the magnificent roof of Westminster Hall to the Coronation Chair, last used by Elizabeth II but created 700 years ago. The film also shows how this precious legacy was nearly destroyed during the fires of the Reformation.
MON 00:30 Timeshift (b01q9vhy)
Series 12
The Joy of (Train) Sets
The Model Railway Story: From Hornby to Triang and beyond, this documentary explores how the British have been in love with model railways for more than a century. What began as an adult obsession with building fully engineered replicas became the iconic toy of 50s and 60s childhood. With unique archive and contributions from modellers such as Pete Waterman, this is a celebration of the joys of miniaturisation. Just don't call them toy trains!
MON 01:30 Britain's Most Fragile Treasure (b0161dgq)
Historian Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of a centuries-old masterpiece in glass. At 78 feet in height, the famous Great East Window at York Minster is the largest medieval stained-glass window in the country and the creative vision of a single artist, a mysterious master craftsman called John Thornton, one of the earliest named English artists.
The Great East Window has been called England's Sistine Chapel. Within its 311 stained-glass panels is the entire history of the world, from the first day to the Last Judgment, and yet it was made 100 years before Michelangelo's own masterpiece. The scale of Thornton's achievement is revealed as Dr Ramirez follows the work of a highly skilled conservation team at York Glaziers Trust. They dismantled the entire window as part of a five-year project to repair centuries of damage and restore it to its original glory.
It is a unique opportunity for Dr Ramirez to examine Thornton's greatest work at close quarters, to discover details that would normally be impossible to see and to reveal exactly how medieval artists made images of such delicacy and complexity using the simplest of tools.
The Great East Window of York Minster is far more than a work of artistic genius, it is a window into the medieval world and mind, telling us who we once were and who we still are, all preserved in the most fragile medium of all.
MON 02:30 Britain on Film (b01qbz9f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
MON 03:00 Lost Kingdoms of South America (b01qbz9k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUESDAY 29 JANUARY 2013
TUE 19:00 World News Today (b01qbwm0)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
TUE 19:30 Great British Railway Journeys (b00xblg3)
Series 2
Waterloo to Canary Wharf
In a journey taking him coast to coast from Brighton to Cromer, Michael finds out about the Stiffs' Express, a funeral service running coffins from Waterloo to Brookwood Cemetery. He discovers how London's West End became a great 19th-century shopping destination and explores the changing fortunes of London's docks.
TUE 20:00 Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures (b01b4wmr)
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 has seemed to hang 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 their neighbours. The Natural History Museum's Professor Richard Fortey discovers what allows the very few to carry on going - perhaps not forever, but certainly far beyond the life expectancy of normal species. What makes a survivor when all around drop like flies?
In the opening episode, Professor Fortey focuses on 'the great dying' - a series of cataclysms over a million-year period 250 million years ago.
TUE 21:00 Jonathan Meades: The Joy of Essex (b01qfr95)
Jonathan Meades is unleashed on the county of Essex. Contrary to its caricature as a bling-filled land of breast-enhanced footballer's wives and self-made millionaires, Meades argues that this is a county that defies definition - at once the home of picturesque villages, pre-war modernism and 19th-century social experiments.
Shaped by its closeness to London, Meades points out that this is where 19th-century do-gooders attempted to reform London's outcasts with manual labour and fresh air, from brewing magnate Frederick Charrington's Temperance Colony on Osea Island to the Christian socialist programmes run by Salvation Army founder William Booth.
Meades also discovers a land which abounds in all strains of architecture, from the modernist village created by paternalistic shoe giant Thomas Bata to Oliver Hill's masterplan to re-imagine Frinton-on-Sea and the bizarre but prescient work of Arthur Mackmurdo, whose exceptionally odd buildings were conceived in the full-blown language of the 1930s some fifty years earlier.
In a visually impressive and typically idiosyncratic programme, Meades provides a historical and architectural tour of a county that challenges everything you thought you knew and offers so much you didn't.
TUE 22:00 Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings (b01b4v8t)
Libraries Gave Us Power
Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings, and explores the medieval world they reveal. In this episode, the story of the British Library's Royal Manuscripts collection reaches its end with the last great flowering of illumination, in the magnificent courts of the Tudors. She investigates astrological texts created for Henry VII, and unwraps his will - still in its original, extravagantly decorated velvet and gold cover. She hears music written for Henry VIII, which went unperformed for centuries, and reads love notes between the king and Anne Boleyn, written in the margins of a prayer book. Nina also visits Bruges, the source of many of the greatest manuscripts, where this medieval art form collided with the artistic innovations of the Renaissance.
TUE 23:00 Bob Servant (p00wwyrl)
Independent
Launch Day
Bob Servant launches his political campaign with controversial results. A radio appearance leads to a home visit from the police and protests from local dog owners. Bob's campaign lies in tatters, but will he make a humbling on-air apology?
TUE 23:30 Borgen (b01qdjpc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Saturday]
TUE 00:30 Borgen (b01qdjpg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 on Saturday]
TUE 01:30 Colouring Light: Brian Clarke - An Artist Apart (b0162yc0)
Brian Clarke is one of Britain's hidden treasures. A painter of striking large canvases and the designer of some of the most exciting stained glass in the world today, he is better known abroad - especially in Germany and Switzerland - than in his own country and more widely recognised among critics, collectors and gallery owners than he is by the general public.
In this visually striking documentary portrait made by award-winning film-maker Mark Kidel, Clarke returns to Lancashire where he grew up as a prodigy in a working class family and charts his meteoric rise during the punk years and eventual success as a stained glass artist working with some of the world's great architects, including Norman Foster and Arata Isozaki - and producing spectacular work in Japan, Brazil, the USA and Europe.
Contributors include his close friend and architect Zaha Hadid, architect Peter Cook and art historian Martin Harrison.
TUE 02:30 Art Deco Icons (b00ntrs5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 on Monday]
TUE 03:00 Jonathan Meades: The Joy of Essex (b01qfr95)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2013
WED 19:00 World News Today (b01qbwm5)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 Great British Railway Journeys (b00xbll7)
Series 2
Enfield to Cambridge
Michael Portillo takes to the tracks with a copy of George Bradshaw's Victorian Railway Guidebook. In a series of five epic journeys, Portillo travels the length and breadth of the country to see how the railways changed us, and what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
On a journey taking him coast to coast from Brighton to Cromer, Michael visits the government arms factory at Enfield (the largest machine shop in Europe in Bradshaw's day), discovers how the trains transformed Newmarket's races and finds out why Cambridge could be considered the birthplace of modern football.
WED 20:00 Sissinghurst (b00hyjld)
Episode 2
Documentary series about the attempts of writer Adam Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven to bring farming back into the heart of the estate and garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, their historic home which is owned by the National Trust and was moulded into its present form by Nicolson's grandmother Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson back in the 1930s.
The property manager at Sissinghurst wants Adam to come up with a plan to change the area at the front of the house. Adam seizes the opportunity to alter first impressions of Sissinghurst so that it looks more like a farm than just another visitor attraction. It's a watershed moment, the first time the National Trust have asked him for any input and things seem to be moving in the right direction.
For Sarah, though, there is increasing resistance from the restaurant staff, in particular head chef Steve who is feeling uneasy about having a consultant in his kitchen.
Adam and his sister Juliet trace their grandmother Vita's aristocratic roots and return to her impressive ancestral home of Knole in Kent.
Sissinghurst opens its gates to hordes of loyal pilgrims eager to worship at the shrine of Vita on the first day of the garden-opening season.
WED 20:30 Nature's Microworlds (b01qchb0)
Great Barrier Reef
Steve Backshall goes beneath the surface of Australia's Great Barrier Reef to discover the crucial conditions that allowed a tiny coral building block to create the largest living structure on the planet. He unravels the complex mosaic of reef environments to reveal the key to the microworld's success, but discovers that life on this coast is not always easy. Nutrient-poor water, enormous storms and rising seas should make it impossible for such a vibrant ecosystem to exist here, so what allows the Great Barrier Reef to not only survive but flourish as the largest reef on Earth?
WED 21:00 Timeshift (b01q6xh6)
Series 12
Eyes Down! The Story of Bingo
It is one of Britain's most popular leisure pursuits, but high street bingo came about almost by accident as the result of a loophole in an obscure piece of gambling legislation. Almost overnight, in January 1961 what had been a quiet parlour game or occasional seaside flutter was turned into a brash multimillion-pound business.
As Timeshift affectionately recalls in this documentary, soon nearly a quarter of the population were playing and becoming fluent in the rhyming slang of 'bingo lingo' - from 'Legs Eleven' to 'Clickety Click, Sixty Six'. This explosion of interest quickly led to a moral panic about the dangers of easy prize money, but bingo was defiantly here to stay - and not just as the preserve of older women, as today's mega-halls full of hen night parties show.
WED 22:00 Bob Servant (b01qchb2)
Independent
A Local Man
The by-election favourite, Nick Edwards, arrives in town and Bob is determined to derail him. From the pubs of Broughty Ferry to a glittering high society dinner, Bob chaotically attempts to gather support for his 'Local Man' campaign.
WED 22:30 The Review Show (b01plpw1)
The Review Show with Billy Connolly
Kirsty Wark spoke to Glasgow's famous son just before his 70th birthday to discuss his latest acting role in Quartet, Dustin Hoffman's first film as a director. The ever-candid Connolly also talks about his troubled relationship with his father and reveals his provocative views on Scottish independence. Age has not mellowed the Big Yin, as demonstrated by his unflattering verdict on Tolkien fans and his unexpected take on method acting - flirting with Dame Judi Dench.
WED 23:15 Mark Knopfler: A Life in Songs (b00xz0zx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:30 on Sunday]
WED 00:15 Timeshift (b00v3z0f)
Series 10
When Britain Went Wild
Timeshift explores the untold story of how Britain 'went wild' in the 1960s. It shows how the British people fell in love with animals and how, by the end of the decade, wildlife protection had become an intrinsic part of our culture. Before that time people knew very little about endangered species or the natural world - the very word 'environment' was hardly recognised. But the 1960s saw a sea change.
The film discovers how early television wildlife programmes with David Attenborough, writers such as Gerald Durrell and Gavin Maxwell and pioneers of conservation such as Peter Scott contributed to that transformation.
WED 01:45 Nature's Microworlds (b01qchb0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
WED 02:15 Bob Servant (b01qchb2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
WED 02:45 Timeshift (b01q6xh6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 31 JANUARY 2013
THU 19:00 World News Today (b01qbwmf)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b01qchgs)
02/02/78
Tony Blackburn introduces the weekly pop chart programme featuring performances from Scott Fitzgerald & Yvonne Keeley, Brotherhood of Man, Smokie, Darts, Sweet, Rose Royce, Rod Stewart, Althea & Donna and Legs & Co.
THU 20:00 Horizon (b01llnb2)
2012-2013
Mission to Mars
Horizon goes behind the scenes at Nasa as they count down to the landing of a 2.5 billion-dollar rover on the surface of Mars. The nuclear-powered vehicle, the size of a car, will be winched down onto the surface of the red planet from a rocket-powered crane. That's if things go according to plan; Mars has become known as the Bermuda Triangle of space because so many missions there have ended in failure. The Curiosity mission is the most audacious, and expensive, attempt to answer the question of whether there is life on Mars.
THU 21:00 Climbing Everest with a Mountain on My Back: The Sherpa's Story (b01qchgv)
Every year, over a thousand climbers try to reach the summit of Mount Everest, with the annual record for successful attempts currently standing at 633. But of that number, nearly half were Sherpas - the mountain's unsung heroes. Yet the Sherpa community has remained secretive about their nation, culture and experiences living in the shadow of the world's highest mountain. Now, for the first time, they open the door into their world.
Without the expertise of the Sherpas, only the hardiest and most skilful climbers would succeed. Every day they risk their lives for the safety of others, yet they seek neither glory nor reward, preferring to stay in the background. Following the stories of four such Sherpas - Phurba, Ngima, Ngima Tenji and Gelu - this film reveals the reality of their daily lives, not just up the mountain, but with their families after they return home.
THU 22:00 Lost Kingdoms of South America (b01qbz9k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Monday]
THU 23:00 The Eiger: Wall of Death (b00tlwj3)
A history of one of the world's most challenging mountains, the Eiger, and its infamous north face. The film gets to the heart of one of Europe's most notorious peaks, exploring its character and its impact on the people who climb it and live in its awesome shadow.
THU 00:00 The Mountain That Had to Be Painted (b01173rm)
Documentary about the painters Augustus John and James Dickson Innes who, in 1911, left London for the wild Arenig Valley in north Wales. Over three years, they created a body of work to rival the visionary landscapes of Matisse.
THU 01:00 Top of the Pops (b01qchgs)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 01:30 This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting (b01173pk)
400 years of art history in 90 minutes? This film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life, including artists, critics and academics, out into the countryside to take a look at how we have depicted our landscape in art, discovering how the genre carried British painting to its highest eminence and won a place in the nation's heart.
From Flemish beginnings in the court of Charles I to the digital thumbstrokes of David Hockney's iPad, the paintings reveal as much about the nation's past as they do the patrons and artists who created them. Famous names sit alongside lesser-known works, covering everything from the refined sensibilities of 18th-century Classicism to the abstract forms of the war-torn 20th century with a bit of love, loss, rivalry and rioting thrown in.
Contributions come from a cast as diverse as the works themselves, including filmmaker Nic Roeg, historian Dan Snow and novelist Will Self, who offer a refreshingly wide range of perspectives on a genre of art which we have made very much our own.
THU 03:00 Climbing Everest with a Mountain on My Back: The Sherpa's Story (b01qchgv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 01 FEBRUARY 2013
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b01qbwmn)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma (b01j0yys)
The composer Frederick Delius is often pictured as the blind, paralysed and caustic old man he eventually became, but in his youth he was tall, handsome, charming and energetic - not Frederick at all for most of his life, but Fritz. He was a contemporary of Elgar and Mahler, yet forged his own musical language, with which he always tried to capture the pleasure of the moment.
Using evidence from his friend, the Australian composer Percy Grainger, who reported that Delius 'practised immorality with puritanical stubbornness', this film by John Bridcut explores the multiple contradictions of his colourful life. Delius has long been renowned for his depiction of the natural environment, with pieces such as On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, yet his music is usually steeped in the sensuality and eroticism that he himself experienced.
The documentary features specially-filmed performances by the widely-acclaimed Danish interpreters of Delius, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bo Holten, as well as the chamber choir, Schola Cantorum of Oxford.
FRI 21:00 Love Me Do: The Beatles '62 (b01nfbt2)
On October 5th 1962 the Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do. It was a moment that changed music history and popular culture forever. It was also an extraordinary year in social and cultural history, not just for Liverpool but for the world, with the Cuban missile crisis, John Glenn in space and beer at a shilling a pint.
Stuart Maconie explores how the Beatles changed from leather and slicked back hair to suits and Beatle mops, and how their fashion set the pace for the sixties to follow. Pop artist Sir Peter Blake, Bob Harris and former Beatles drummer Pete Best join friends to reflect on how the Beatles evolved into John, Paul, George and Ringo - the most famous band in the world.
FRI 22:00 Ravi Shankar: Between Two Worlds (b0074mys)
Filmed over two years in India and the USA, Mark Kidel's award-winning documentary brings together archive footage spanning seven decades of Ravi Shankar's performing life, and provides a definitive account of the late sitar maestro's unique musical career.
FRI 23:00 A Concert for Bangladesh Revisited (b0074rtc)
Documentary which tells the story of the first major charity rock concert, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh organised by former Beatle George Harrison at Madison Square Garden in New York. In response to the political crisis in Bangladesh and attempting to raise money, medicine and supplies for the refugees, Harrison responded to Ravi Shankar's plea and came out of semi-retirement to organise and play this show. He also drew contribitions from a number of his famous friends who had also finished the 60s shellshocked and exhausted, notably Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Harrison, Dylan and Clapton hadn't played in public for several years.
FRI 23:45 ... Sings The Beatles (b00ml7p5)
Recorded for the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road, The Beatles' final album, a journey through the classic and curious covers in the BBC archives.
Featuring Sandie Shaw singing a sassy Day Tripper, Shirley Bassey belting out Something, a close-harmony Carpenters cover of Help!, Joe Cocker's chart-topping With a Little Help from My Friends, Oasis reinventing the Walrus and a little Lady Madonna from Macca himself.
Plus a few 'magical' moments from Candy Flip, The Korean Kittens and Su Pollard.
FRI 00:45 Love Me Do: The Beatles '62 (b01nfbt2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 01:45 Ravi Shankar: Between Two Worlds (b0074mys)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRI 02:45 A Concert for Bangladesh Revisited (b0074rtc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 today]
FRI 03:30 Concerto at the BBC Proms (b01k763t)
Mozart Clarinet
Another chance to hear a live performance from the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, considered by some to be his finest work, recorded at the BBC Proms in 2006.
Gifted English clarinet soloist Julian Bliss, at the time only 17 years old, performs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Jirí Behlohlávek.