SUNDAY 03 AUGUST 2014

SUN 19:00 BBC Proms (b04crs49)
2014

The Sunday Prom: Richard Strauss Celebration

From the Royal Albert Hall, Katie Derham presents a 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Richard Strauss. The acclaimed Danish soprano Inger Dam-Jensen sings the composer's exquisite Four Last Songs in a prom which also showcases two of Strauss's rarely heard works - his majestic Festival Prelude and his Deutsche Motette for choir and four solo voices.

The mood of late-romantic nostalgia continues with a performance of Elgar's Second Symphony. Vasily Petrenko conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Singers.


SUN 21:05 Genghis Khan (b007930p)
He was a man who combined the savagery of a real-life Conan the Barbarian with the sheer tactical genius of Napoleon, a man from the outermost reaches of Asia whose armies ultimately stood poised to conquer Europe. His name was Genghis Khan.

Today the name of Genghis Khan is synonymous with dark evil yet in his lifetime he was a heroic figure, a supreme strategist capable of eliciting total devotion from his warriors.

He grew up in poverty on the harsh unforgiving steppe of Mongolia. From the murder of his father, the kidnap of his wife and the execution of his closest friend, he learned the lessons of life the hard way.

So how did this outcast come to conquer an empire larger than the Roman Empire? And was Genghis Khan the brutal monster who ruthlessly slaughtered millions in his quest for power, or was he a brilliant visionary who transformed a rabble of warring tribes into a nation capable of world domination?

Filmed entirely on location in Mongolia, the film tells the truth behind the legend that is Genghis Khan.


SUN 22:05 Storyville (b03tj0n0)
Mad Dog: Gaddafi's Secret World

Colonel Gaddafi was called 'mad dog' by Ronald Reagan. His income from oil was a billion dollars a week. He washed his hands in deer's blood. No other dictator had such sex appeal and no other so cannily combined oil and the implied threat of terror to turn western powers into cowed appeasers.

When he went abroad - bedecked in fake medals from unfought wars - a bulletproof tent was flown ahead, along with camels that would be tethered outside. His sons lived a Dolce & Gabbana lifestyle - one kept white tigers, while another commissioned a $500 million cruise liner with a shark pool.

Like other tyrants, Gaddafi used torture and murder to silence opposition, but what made his rule especially terrifying was that death came so casually. A man who complained that Gaddafi had an affair with his wife was allegedly tied between two cars and torn in half. On visits to schools and orphanages Gaddafi would tap underage girls on the head to show his henchmen which ones he wanted. They would be taken to his palace and abused. Young boys were held in tunnels under the palace.

Yet because of his vast oil lake there seemed no limit to western generosity. British intelligence trapped one of his enemies overseas and sent him to Libya as a gift. The same week, Tony Blair arrived in Libya and a huge energy deal was announced.

Filmed in Cuba, the Pacific, Brazil, the US, South Africa, Libya and Australia, the cast of this documentary consists of palace insiders and those who gave shape to Gaddafi's dark dreams. They include a fugitive from the FBI who helped kill his enemies worldwide; the widow of the Libyan foreign minister whose body Gaddafi kept in a freezer; and a female bodyguard who adored him until she saw teenagers executed.

Gaddafi was a dictator like no other; their stories are stranger than fiction.


SUN 23:30 Boycotts and Broken Dreams: The Story of the 1986 Commonwealth Games (b049fn89)
In 1986, Edinburgh hosted the Commonwealth Games for a second time. There were sporting triumphs from athletes who were to become household names such as Steve Cram, Daley Thompson, Tessa Sanderson and Scotland's own, Liz McColgan, winner of the 10,000m gold medal. But these were Games when sport locked horns with politics over the issue of sanctions against the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa. The boycott of more than half the Commonwealth nations brought the Games to its knees. The drama which unfolded placed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Queen and flamboyant newspaper mogul Robert Maxwell centre stage in a story that attracted worldwide attention.


SUN 00:30 Elvis: That's Alright Mama 60 Years On (b04c3l7g)
Actor and musician Sam Palladio hosts a musical tribute to Elvis Presley, 60 years to the day from when he recorded his first single, That's All Right, at Sun Studio in Memphis on 5 July 1954. Sam traces Elvis's story from childhood poverty in Mississippi, where he had to make do with a broom for a guitar, to the moment when, by accident, he ended up recording the song that changed the history of popular music. There are performances of the finest Elvis tracks from the likes of soul legend Candi Staton, LA duo The Pierces and country star Laura Bell Bundy.


SUN 01:30 Kings of Rock and Roll (b007c95q)
A journey back to the 1950s for a look at the wildest pop music of all time in a film that tells the stories of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, giants from an era when pop music really was mad, bad and dangerous to know.

The programme features the artists themselves, alongside people like Bill Haley's original Comets, The Crickets, Buddy Holly's widow Maria Elena, Jerry Lee Lewis's former wife Myra Gail and his sister, Chuck Berry's son and many more, including June Juanico, Elvis's first serious girlfriend.

Other contributors include Tom Jones, Jamie Callum, Paul McCartney, Cliff Richard, Joe Brown, Marty Wilde, Green Day, Minnie Driver, Jack White of The White Stripes, The Mavericks, Jools Holland, Hank Marvin, Fontella Bass, John Waters and more.

Elvis's pelvis was just the start. Who had to change the lyrics to their biggest hit because the originals were too obscene? Who married their 13-year-old cousin? Who used lard to get their hair just right? And what happened on the day the music died?


SUN 02:30 50s Britannia (b01sgbw2)
Rock 'n' Roll Britannia

Long before the Beatles there was British rock 'n' roll. Between 1956 and 1960 British youth created a unique copy of a distant and scarce American original whilst most parents, professional jazz men and even the BBC did their level best to snuff it out.

From its first faltering steps as a facsimile of Bill Haley's swing style to the sophistication of self-penned landmarks such as Shakin' All Over and The Sound of Fury, this is the story of how the likes of Lord Rockingham's XI, Vince Taylor and Cliff Richard and The Shadows laid the foundations for an enduring 50-year culture of rock 'n' roll.

Now well into their seventies, the flame still burns strong in the hearts of the original young ones. Featuring Sir Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Bruce Welch, Cherry Wainer and The Quarrymen.


SUN 03:30 Sounds of the 70s 2 (b01glwkz)
Arthouse Glam - Get in the Swing

Performances from The Kinks, Roxy Music, Elton John, New York Dolls, Queen, Sparks, Rod Stewart and the rediscovered David Bowie performance of The Jean Genie from January 1973.

Welcome to gender-bending, boys getting in the swing and girls who would be boys and boys who would be girls in this mixed-up, shook-up 70s world.