The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
As summer comes to a close, Timothy Spall's trip around the coast of his beloved Britain reaches the halfway mark. He encounters several Scottish ports and islands, but mostly in the famous Scottish misty drizzle. Before the weather worsens he winds his way through the Scottish western islands and takes his barge Princess Matilda back to her roots by venturing up the Caledonian Canal, a short cut from the west of Scotland to the east which sets up next year's trip down the east coast and back home to London. This year Timothy and his wife Shane have travelled further than in any other of their previous six years at sea. All they need is somewhere to moor up for winter.
Marden Henge: The communal sweat lodges and feasting remains that illuminate the lost rituals of Stonehenge.
Durotriges: A glimpse into the bizarre animal sacrifice rituals offered to their gods by a mysterious Celtic tribe of the first century BC.
Trellech: An enormous lost Welsh city is discovered seven centuries after it disappeared from historical record.
Kent's Cavern: A team swaps trowels for pneumatic drills in a search for the hidden entrance of the site where Britain's earliest human remains have been found.
Jersey: Archaeologists are fighting against mother nature to find the evidence of a Stone Age hunter-gatherer campsite.
Staffordshire Hoard: Conservators painstakingly reassemble the elaborate weaponry of Anglo-Saxon warriors previously not known about.
Scandinavia - a land of extremes, on the edge of Europe. Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the extraordinary art to come out of the dark Norwegian soul, most famous for producing The Scream by Edvard Munch.
The Carpenters were one of the biggest selling pop artists of the 1970s, but what seemed on the surface as the perfect, wholesome brother and sister duo hid a destructive complex truth that was unknown to the world.
Featuring behind the scenes footage, interviews with brother Richard, family and friends, this documentary traces the story that ended in tragedy with sister Karen's untimely death aged just 32.
Alastair Sooke champions pop art as one of the most important art forms of the 20th century, peeling back pop's frothy, ironic surface to reveal an art style full of subversive wit and radical ideas.
In charting its story, Alastair brings a fresh eye to the work of pop art superstars Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and tracks down pop's pioneers, from American artists like James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Ed Ruscha to British godfathers Peter Blake and Allen Jones.
Alastair also explores how pop's fascination with celebrity, advertising and the mass media was part of a global art movement, and he travels to China to discover how a new generation of artists are reinventing pop art's satirical, political edge for the 21st century.
Michael Grade tells a tale of television skullduggery and dirty dealings in the battle to win the Saturday night ratings crown.
TUESDAY 15 MARCH 2016
TUE 19:00 World News Today (b073mckz)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
TUE 19:30 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01r6zdv)
Ruins
Presenter and Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn explores the wealth of Britain's extraordinary holy places on a pilgrimage that spans almost 2,000 years of history.
Travelling across the breadth of the UK, Ifor uncovers the stories and rich history behind many of our most famous sites, explaining the myths and legends of some of Britain's most sacred places. Over six episodes, Ifor visits crumbling ruins, tranquil healing pools, sacred caves, island refuges, towering mountain hideaways and ancient shrines to find out what these historical sites tell us about who we are today. From the divine to the unexpected, the series uncovers Britain's extraordinary variety of inspirational, surprising and half-forgotten holy places and brings to life our spiritual history.
In the first episode, Ifor explores why ruins are among the best-preserved and most-loved holy sites in Britain. He visits the famous ruins of St Andrews Cathedral, the mystical atmosphere of Wales's best-preserved Roman site, the battered remains of Coventry's iconic cathedral and the Gothic majesty of North Yorkshire's Whitby Abbey - the inspiration behind Bram Stoker's Dracula. Along the way, he asks why we're drawn to holy ruins long after their religious use is over. Is it just nostalgia or something much deeper that fuels our obsession and enduring fascination with the decaying grandeur of a ruin?
TUE 20:00 The River Taff with Will Millard (b070t48y)
Series 1
Episode 3
Writer and fisherman Will Millard reaches the end of his journey down the River Taff in south Wales. This beautiful wild river, once neglected and polluted, has now come back to life. Will goes wild swimming with a group of eccentrics trying to change the image of this forgotten river. He meets retired Somali sailors drawn to Cardiff in the city's glory days as a thriving port and tells the story of how the industrial docks have been transformed. Finally, he sets out to catch the king of fish, migratory salmon returning to the river where they were born.
TUE 20:30 The Brecon Beacons with Iolo Williams (b06wyxfx)
Series 1
Summer
It's the busy summer season. A fox family is playing below the Carmarthen Fans, lizards bask in the sun on limestone pavements in the upper Swansea valley and hundreds of dragonflies emerge from pools in the uplands near Brecon.
Iolo Williams is on the Black Mountain foothills as sheep are gathered by shepherds on horseback and a group of dedicated volunteers tries to repair a mountain.
Ancient botanical cures for ailments and old steam railways are two of many hidden histories.
TUE 21:00 The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum (b01rrld8)
Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill presents a documentary following the scientific investigation that shows what life was like in the small Roman town of Herculaneum, moments before it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption.
Just 10 miles from Pompeii, 12 vaults tell a new story about what life was like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They contain the skeletons of 340 people, 10 per cent of the local population, killed by the volcano. Amongst them are the first new skeletons to be found in the area for 30 years which are now the subject of a ground-breaking scientific investigation. The finds included a toddler holding his dog, a two-year-old girl with silver earrings and a boy embracing his mother.
Those found inside the vaults were nearly all women and children. Those found outside on the shoreline were nearly all men. Why?
It is revealed that the local population went to their deaths not as in often portrayed in Pompeii's popular myth, but more like the passengers of the Titanic, where women and children were put first.
Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill takes us to meet the scientists leading the forensic project - Luca Bondioli and Luciano Fattore - and then on a tour of the town. He uncovers houses, wooden furniture (including their beds and the only surviving baby's cradle from the Roman world), and food and human waste, preserved by a layer of ash up to five times deeper than Pompeii, as well as perfectly preserved court transcripts scratched on wooden tablets telling of slaves challenging their status in the town's courts. New scientific analysis has enabled us to unearth not just what they ate, but how they ate it, it seems they had a penchant for eating fish whole including their heads, a tradition, that has survived in Herculaneum to this day.
TUE 22:00 Storyville (b04ndsb3)
Exposed: Magicians, Psychics and Frauds
Renowned magician James 'The Amazing' Randi has been wowing audiences with his jaw-dropping illusions, escapes and sleight of hand for over 50 years. When he began seeing his cherished art form co-opted by all manner of con artists, he made it his mission to expose the simple tricks charlatans have borrowed from magicians to swindle the masses.
This entertaining film chronicles Randi's best debunkings of faith healers, fortune tellers and psychics. It documents his rivalry with famed spoon-bender Uri Geller, whom Randi eventually foiled on a high-profile television appearance. Another target was evangelist Peter Popoff, whose tent-show miracles and audience mind-reading were exposed as chicanery when Randi revealed a recording of Popoff's wife feeding him information through a radio-transmitter earpiece.
In telling Randi's strange, funny and fascinating life story, the film shows how we are all vulnerable to deception - even, in a surprising twist, 'The Amazing' Randi himself.
This documentary is part of Louis Theroux: Docs That Made Me, a collection of his favourite documentaries.
As someone who interviewed Uri Geller a number of times and came close to making a film about him, it's easy to see why this Storyville film grabbed Louis Theroux. The themes of 'fakery and quackery' and the charismatic figure of arch skeptic James Randi make this an entertaining look into how we separate fact from fiction.
Exposed: Magicians, Psychics & Frauds is the winner of multiple awards... The Audience Award (AFI Docs Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Dallas Video Festival, 2014), Best Documentary (Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2014), Jury Prize (Key West Film Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Napa Valley Film Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Newport Beach Film Festival, 2014).
TUE 23:20 Indian Hill Railways (b00qzzlm)
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway
From the Himalayas in the north to the Nilgiris in the south - for a hundred years these little trains have climbed through the clouds and into the wonderful world of Indian Hill Railways.
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is a romantic line, popular with honeymooners and driven by love and devotion as well as steam. It chugs through the south Indian jungle up to a hill station, once known as Snooty Ooty.
The current guard is Ivan. Married for twenty years, he is concerned about his friend Jenni, the ticket inspector, because he's still a bachelor - but Jenni has a secret.
In the engine shed, Shivani, the railway's first female diesel engineer, is working on a steam loco. She has to make it look its best, as in the year of filming, 1999, the railway celebrated its centenary. The high point is the Black Beauty competition to pick the best engine on the line, but rains and landslides threaten the proceedings and the tourist business. Will love win out in the end?
TUE 00:20 The Story of British Pathé (b013rl1w)
The Voice of Pathé
For more than half a century, the film and newsreel company British Pathé documented almost every aspect of life - the remarkable and the run-of-the mill, the extraordinary and the everyday.
The company's output really came into its own during the Second World War, when the distinctively clipped and relentlessly chipper commentaries by its announcer Bob Danvers-Walker provided stirring encouragement during the Blitz - and offered authoritative advice on how housewives struggling to feed their families on the ration could overcome privation and to 'make do and mend'.
As this programme reveals, for generations of cinemagoers it was the voice of British Pathé that expressed the values and the spirit of Britain.
TUE 01:20 The Prosecutors (b072wyvj)
Real Crime and Punishment
The Trial
The Crown Prosecution Service is often under scrutiny for its decision-making. Now for the first time the CPS has allowed cameras in. Filmed over 18 months with prosecutors in Merseyside, Cheshire and the South East, including the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, this groundbreaking series goes behind the scenes to reveal how our criminal justice system really works and what it takes to secure a conviction. Each episode focuses on a different part of the process, following prosecutions and those involved in the case from start to finish.
In the final episode, prosecutors in the Complex Casework units of CPS Mersey-Cheshire and CPS South-East are preparing for trials in separate historic cases.
In 1993, a few days after her 16th birthday, Claire Tiltman was murdered in an alleyway. Since Colin Ash-Smith admitted to other knife attacks in the same area, he has been the main suspect for the crime. In 1996 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for those offences. But without direct evidence, he was not charged with the murder of Claire Tiltman.
Claire's parents died before seeing her killer brought to justice and a group of her school friends took up the campaign to keep the case in the public eye. Now, using a change in the law which might allow the jury to know about Ash-Smith's other attacks and the similarities between them, prosecutor Nigel Pilkington is trying to build a circumstantial case against Colin Ash-Smith.
In Mersey-Cheshire, a non-recent sex abuse case is being prepared for trial. Keith Cavendish Coulson is facing 42 counts of indecent assault on boys in the 1970s and 80s. He says they're lying and that it never happened. The CPS's handling of non-recent sex abuse cases is often highly controversial and Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is involved in overseeing the case.
Cases committed a long time ago are charged and sentenced according to the law at the time. As Cavendish Coulson's offences were in the 1970s and 80s, they can only charge him under the old law of 1956. Historic cases also present challenges, as the memories of witnesses might have faded and evidence might no longer be available. But moving testimony from Cavendish Coulson's accusers suggests they have far from forgotten these offences.
TUE 02:20 Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made the Movies (b03b965y)
[Repeat of broadcast at
00:40 on Saturday]
TUE 03:20 Britain on Film (b01p2pd4)
Series 1
Dedicated Followers of Fashion
Throughout the 1960s, the Rank Organisation produced hundreds of short, quirky documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. Shot on high-quality colour film stock, they were screened in cinemas, but until now very little of the footage has been shown on television. This series draws on this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into a pivotal decade in modern British history.
This episode examines the films that recorded developments in one of 1960s Britain's most dynamic, innovative industries - the glamorous and fast-moving world of fashion.
WEDNESDAY 16 MARCH 2016
WED 19:00 World News Today (b073mcl4)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01r9s6j)
Water
Presenter and Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn explores the wealth of Britain's extraordinary holy places on a pilgrimage that spans almost 2,000 years of history. Travelling across the breadth of the UK, Ifor uncovers the stories and rich history behind many of our most famous sites, explaining the myths and legends of some of Britain's most sacred places.
In the second episode, Ifor explores why water crops up again and again as the essential element in many of our most holy places. Why has a yearning for pure natural water always been bound up with our spiritual beliefs?
His journey takes him to our oldest mass baptismal pool which marks the place that Scottish Picts first came into the Christian fold, the site on Loch Ness where Celtic missionaries battling the forces of paganism first encountered the legendary monster, a healing well where a young woman was reputedly brought back to life by having her severed head re-attached to her body, and a 2,000-year-old holy spring that has become a major international brand.
WED 20:00 Hidden Kingdoms (b03rmckl)
Secret Forests
This is the story of two tiny animals coming of age.
In the wild woods of North America, a young chipmunk is gathering a vital store of nuts ahead of his first winter - in his way are ruthless rivals and giant predators.
In the steaming rainforest, a young tree shrew is forced deep into the jungle to find food. She must draw on all her intelligence and agility if she is to escape the ultimate jungle predator - a reticulated python!
WED 21:00 Seven Ages of Starlight (p00yb434)
This is the epic story of the stars, and how discovering their tale has transformed our own understanding of the universe.
Once we thought the sun and stars were gods and giants. Now we know, in a way, our instincts were right. The stars do all have their own characters, histories and role in the cosmos. Not least, they played a vital part in creating us.
There are old, bloated red giants, capable of gobbling up planets in their orbit, explosive deaths - supernovae - that forge the building blocks of life and black holes, the most mysterious stellar tombstones. And, of course, stars in their prime, like our own sun.
Leading astronomers reveal how the grandest drama on tonight is the one playing above our heads.
WED 22:30 Horizon (b03tz705)
2013-2014
Swallowed by a Sinkhole
In February 2013, a hole opened up beneath a home in Florida and swallowed a man.
Jeff Bush was asleep when a sinkhole opened up beneath his bedroom. Despite the efforts of his brother to rescue him, Jeff was never seen again and his body was never recovered.
Professor Iain Stewart travels to Florida to try and understand what killed Jeff, and why the geology of this state makes it the sinkhole capital of the world.
WED 23:30 Ancient Egypt - Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings (p01538rx)
Original Series
Death
What was it like to live and die in ancient Egypt, 3,500 years ago? Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher goes on a fascinating journey in search of people like us - not the great Pharaohs but the ordinary people who built and populated this incredible ancient civilisation.
This episode reveals a strange and mysterious world - the ancient Egyptian afterlife. To them life was just a dress rehearsal for the perfect afterlife they were trying to reach. Joann clambers into rarely visited tombs, explores a treasure trove of long-buried objects and examines spectacular mummies to discover just why the Egyptians spent a fortune preparing for death - and what they hoped to find when they got there.
WED 00:30 Hidden Kingdoms (b03rmckl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WED 01:30 Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain (b038rj1b)
Making Connections
Using her skills to uncover long-forgotten and abandoned plans, architectural investigator Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner explores the fascinating and dramatic stories behind some of the grandest designs that were never built. In this episode she looks at two of the most radical civil engineering projects proposed in the last century and explores how international politics and vested interests both drove, and derailed, plans to better connect Britain to the continent.
In the early 1900s Britain was anticipating the threat of war. As concern grew about Germany expanding its naval fleet and investing in its infrastructure, there were calls to find a way for Britain's navy to be able to react swiftly to protect our waters. The solution proposed was to create a ship canal big enough for warships to cross from the Firth of Clyde on the west of Scotland to the Firth of Forth on the east. This enormous civil engineering endeavour would have completely changed the central belt of Scotland - the favoured route was through Loch Lomond, now considered one of the most treasured wilderness areas in the country.
There was huge support for the building of the canal, not least from members of parliament who recognised the potential for creating jobs and wealth in their constituencies. The debate over whether to invest £50m of the public purse in building the canal dragged on for years in both the House of Commons and Lords, with opinion split on whether it really was a strategic imperative. In the end, technology decided the fate of the canal. By 1918, all of the naval fleet was fuelled by oil rather than coal and so instead of a canal an oil pipeline was built from the mouth of the Clyde to Grangemouth on the east, and Royal Navy destroyers never did - and never will - sail up Loch Lomond.
Fifty years later, instead of seeking to protect Britain from attacks from the continent, thoughts had turned to how to connect our island to the rest of Europe. There had been talk of building a channel tunnel between England and France for centuries. In contrast with the Mid-Scotland Canal, where strategic advantages stimulated building, it was national security concerns that cut short the first proposal for a Channel Tunnel. The idea was presented to the British by Napoleon in 1802, but was rejected over concerns that the French had covert plans to invade England.
But 170 years later, the idea was to become a reality. Britain had finally joined mainland Europe through her membership of the Common Market in 1973, and both the French and British governments agreed it made sense build a tunnel together. But in 1975, construction was again abandoned because the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, had to look for economies in a financial crisis caused by dramatically rising world oil prices. Once more, the bid to connect with the continent had failed.
The idea was resurrected yet again in the early 1980s, with several competing schemes for consideration. The boldest of these, sponsored by British Steel, was a vast structure combing a double-decker bridge and tunnel, linked to an artificial island in the middle of the English Channel. The materials for the construction of this vast project would keep the steel mills of England and Scotland busy for a decade - but the politicians chose in favour of the Eurotunnel bid and British industry lost out.
Both these grandiose schemes defined how Britain saw its relationship with Europe. In an age when the headline 'Fog in Channel - Europe Isolated' made sense, a naval ship canal that would protect our island fortress from continental rivals was considered to be in the national interest. But just 60 years later, the fog had lifted and securing Britain's national interests became dependent on a physical connection with countries previously regarded as hostile. However, both plans foundered on the conflict of politics and vested interest.
WED 02:30 Soup Cans & Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World (b067ftp7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 on Monday]
THURSDAY 17 MARCH 2016
THU 19:00 World News Today (b073mcl9)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 The Sky at Night (b073rfc0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 on Sunday]
THU 20:00 Indian Hill Railways (b00r5wk7)
The Kalka-Shimla Railway
From the Himalayas in the north to the Nilgiris in the south - for a hundred years these little trains have climbed through the clouds and into the wonderful world of Indian hill railways.
Shimla was once the summer capital of the Raj. They built churches, schools, a town hall and the railway and left behind their symbols of empire and an ethos of duty, loyalty and ambition - but they also left a divided subcontinent.
Characters featured include Maqsood, a refugee and a porter from Kashmir, and John Whitmarsh-Knight, a teacher looking for a home. Sanjay the stationmaster is hoping for promotion, and his boss Bataljit is waiting for a transfer, but everybody is waiting for the snow.
THU 21:00 Digging for Britain (b073mr9r)
Series 4
East
Professor Alice Roberts explores the year's most exciting archaeological finds in the east of Britain. A team unearths a mass grave, divers search the Thames for clues to a 17th-century tragedy, and a metal detectorist makes the find of a lifetime.
THU 22:00 Timeshift (p0287mq6)
Series 14
Bullseyes and Beer: When Darts Hit Britain
Timeshift tells the story of how a traditional working-class pub game became a national obsession during the 1970s and 80s, and looks at the key role television played in elevating its larger-than-life players into household names.
Siobhan Finneran narrates a documentary which charts the game's surprising history, its cross-class and cross-gender appeal, and the star players that, for two decades, transformed a pub pastime into a sporting spectacle like no other.
Featuring legendary names such as Alan Evans and Jocky Wilson and including contributions from Eric Bristow, Bobby George, John Lowe and Phil Taylor.
THU 23:00 Sappho: Love & Life on Lesbos with Margaret Mountford (b05tc6w7)
With a PhD in papyrology, Margaret Mountford goes in search of the truth behind the legend of Sappho, the most controversial writer of the ancient world and the first authentic woman's voice in western history.
The sensational discovery of a lost papyrus containing the words to songs unheard for 1,700 years sends Margaret on a journey of exploration.
From the fragmentary documents, ruined temple architecture and surviving oriental jewellery, the programme conjures the real world of the woman, whose erotic writings gave us the words 'sapphic' and 'lesbian', after the island of Lesbos the place of her birth.
Was she indeed the first lesbian, a priestess, prostitute, a stern schoolmistress or an aristocratic lady of leisure as readers over the centuries have variously alleged. Plus how each generation's view of the archetypal liberated woman of letters tells us as much about us and our fears and concerns as it does about her.
THU 00:00 Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story (b007cllb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 on Monday]
THU 01:00 Duets at the BBC (b01c2xwt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:40 on Saturday]
THU 02:00 Pappano's Classical Voices (b06154q3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 on Sunday]
THU 03:00 Digging for Britain (b073mr9r)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 18 MARCH 2016
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b073mclg)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b073rgxz)
Peter Powell introduces the pop programme, featuring Linx, Phil Collins, Odyssey, The Specials, Imagination and Smokey Robinson, and a dance performance from Legs & Co.
FRI 20:00 John Williams at the BBC (b073mrky)
Fifty years of spellbinding performances from one of the guitar's greatest players, John Williams. Gold from the BBC's archive that takes in classical masterworks, the prog rock of Sky and comedy with Eric Sykes, as well as duets with fellow guitar maestro Julian Bream.
FRI 21:00 Arena (b073rgy1)
Loretta Lynn - Still a Mountain Girl
Legendary country music singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn is loved by fans from across the world. She has sold over 45 million albums worldwide and won more awards than any other female country music star. With affectionate and irreverent contributions from her extended family of self-confessed rednecks, now in her early eighties and still going strong, Loretta looks back at her long and extraordinary life, from being born a coal miner's daughter in Kentucky to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2013. Featuring Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Sissy Spacek and, of course, Loretta herself.
FRI 22:30 Country Queens at the BBC (p028vwnv)
Classic female country stars in action on a variety of BBC studio shows and featuring Bobbie Gentry, Anne Murray, Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Billie Jo Spears, Crystal Gayle, Taylor Swift, Lucinda Williams with Mary Chapin Carpenter and more. A chronological celebration of country queens at the BBC whether on Top of the Pops, OGWT, Later with Jools Holland, Parkinson or their own entertainment specials.
FRI 23:30 Glastonbury (b04d8xv8)
2014
Dolly Parton
From the Glastonbury Festival, the complete set by the undisputed queen of country music Dolly Parton from the Pyramid Stage in the now-traditional legends spot on Sunday afternoon. As the Somerset sunshine shone, and in front of one of the biggest and most enthusiastic crowds that the Pyramid Stage has ever seen, Dolly performed a rousing and crowd-pleasing set including self-penned classics such as Jolene, Coat of Many Colours, 9 to 5, Islands in the Stream and I Will Always Love You. A legendary moment that the Glastonbury crowd and hopefully Dolly Parton will never forget.
FRI 00:40 Top of the Pops (b073rgxz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
FRI 01:15 Arena (b073rgy1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 02:45 Country Queens at the BBC (p028vwnv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:30 today]