SATURDAY 04 MARCH 2017
SAT 19:00 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.
SAT 20:00 She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (b01bgpm7)
Matilda and Eleanor
In the medieval and Tudor world there was no question in people's minds about the order of God's creation - men ruled and women didn't. A king was a warrior who literally fought to win power then battled to keep it. Yet despite everything that stood in their way, a handful of extraordinary women did attempt to rule medieval and Tudor England. In this series, historian Dr Helen Castor explores seven queens who challenged male power, the fierce reactions they provoked and whether the term 'she wolves' was deserved.
Eight hundred years ago, Matilda came within a hair's breadth of being the first woman to be crowned queen of England in her own right. Castor explores how Matilda reached this point and why her bid for the throne ultimately failed. Her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Aquitaine was an equally formidable woman. Despite being remembered as the queen of courtly love, in reality during her long life she divorced one king and married another, only to lead a rebellion against him. She only finally achieved the power she craved in her seventies.
SAT 21:00 Follow the Money (b089xq1y)
Series 2
Episode 1
Mads and Alf at the fraud squad have not forgotten the crimes committed by Energreen and are still looking for a chance to arrest the CEO, Sander, who is missing. When a desperate man complains that his small carpentry business was forced into bankruptcy, the fraud squad delve into the practices of a major bank and uncover more than they expected. Claudia, a young lawyer, paid dearly for her involvement in Energreen. After serving 18 months in prison she's finally released - but to what? Ex-convict-turned-mechanic Nicky and his hapless friend Bimse now run their own garage, but Nicky has also been taken under the wing of the Swedish fixer, which comes at a high price.
In Danish with English subtitles.
SAT 22:00 Follow the Money (b08bmgsl)
Series 2
Episode 2
The police have to give a statement about the dramatic events at Nova Bank, and Mads investigates the bank's involvement in the carpenter's bankruptcy. Meanwhile, he has unexpected news at home. Claudia starts her new job at Absalon Bank, but struggles with the long-distance relationship with her son. Tensions arise at the garage as Nicky spends more and more time on assignments for the Swede, and less time helping Bimse with their business.
In Danish with English subtitles.
SAT 23:00 Top of the Pops (b08gk6z6)
Gary Davies and Andy Peebles present another edition of the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 14 April 1983. Featuring Sweet Dreams, Eurythmics, Bauhaus, Kissing the Pink, Sunfire, Kajagoogoo and David Bowie.
SAT 23:30 Top of the Pops (b08gk7wl)
Richard Skinner and Janice Long present another edition of the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 21 April 1983. Featuring Culture Club, The Human League, FR David, Heaven 17, Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet and David Bowie.
SAT 00:05 The Secret Science of Pop (b08gk664)
Evolutionary biologist Professor Armand Leroi believes data science can transform the pop world. He gathers a team of scientists and researchers to analyse over 50 years of UK chart music. Can algorithms find the secret to pop success?
When the results are in, Armand teams up with hit producer Trevor Horn. Using machine-learning techniques, Armand and Trevor try to take a song by unsigned artist Nike Jemiyo and turn it into a potential chart-topper.
Armand also takes a scientific look at pop evolution. He hunts for the major revolutions in his historic chart data, looking for those artists who transformed the musical landscape. The outcomes are fascinating and surprising, though fans of the Fab Four may not be pleased with the results. As Armand puts it, the hallmark of The Beatles is 'average'.
Finally, by teaming up with BBC research and development, Armand finds out if his algorithms can discover the stars of the future. Can he predict which of thousands of demo tracks uploaded to BBC Introducing is most likely to be a hit without listening to a note?
This is a clash of science and culture and a unique experiment with no guarantee of success. How will the artists react to the scientist intruding on their turf? And will Armand succeed in finding a secret science of pop?
SAT 01:05 Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue (b0755ms6)
This extraordinary documentary brings to life the paradox of Janis Joplin - both insecure and brazen - with interviews from old band members, unseen audio and video, plus readings from Janis's letters home to her parents. It offers new understanding of a bright, complex woman whose surprising rise and sudden demise changed music forever.
Janis Joplin is one of the most revered singers of all time. She thrilled millions of listeners with her powerful, soulful voice and blazed new creative trails before her death in 1971 at the age of 27. The film includes some of her most iconic performances which embodied the musical and cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Yet her onstage bravado and uninhibited sexual persona hid hurt and insecurity stemming from her childhood in conservative Texas. On relocating to San Francisco and discovering the blues, Janis found an outlet for her loneliness and fell into a community that would embrace and celebrate her talent.
SAT 02:35 Queens of Soul (b05nhjsx)
The sisters are truly doing it for themselves in this celebration of the legendary female singers whose raw emotional vocal styles touched the hearts of followers worldwide. Featuring the effortless sounds of Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, Randy Crawford, Angie Stone, Mary J Blige and Beyonce, to name a few.
The Queens of Soul presents the critically acclaimed and influential female singers who, decade by decade, changed the world one note at a time.
SUNDAY 05 MARCH 2017
SUN 19:00 Sound of Song (b050rbz8)
Mix It Up and Start Again
Composer and musician Neil Brand's series exploring the alchemy that creates great songs reaches the modern era, when a revolution in how they were made took place. From the synthesisers of symphonic rock to the mixes of disco and the samplings of hip hop, music was transformed by the arrival of digital technology and the computer, which gave some songwriters more power but others much less. Along the way Neil talks synths with Rick Wakeman from Yes, samples with Public Enemy's Hank Shocklee, uncovers the surprising lo-fi origins of Bruce Springsteen's stadium-busting Born in the USA, and finds out how Cher changed the sound of her voice on the smash hit Believe.
SUN 20:00 Kiri Te Kanawa at the BBC (b08h918x)
The charismatic New Zealand soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa looks back at her life in song through forty years of classic performances from the BBC archives, from her first TV performance on The Harry Secombe Show in 1971 to her appearances on Top of the Pops to sing the rugby anthem World in Union in 1991, plus performances from the Last Night of the Proms and Terry Wogan's chat show.
Dame Kiri's dramatic and operatic skills are captured in the Royal Opera's production of Puccini's Manon, she describes working with Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti and on Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, and she recalls the royal wedding in 1981 at which she sang Handel's Let the Bright Seraphim to a global TV audience of 700 million.
There's documentary footage of the house where Kiri grew up in New Zealand (now a car park), she vividly evokes the East End of London, where she studied as a student when she first came to London, and we see her goofing around on the golf course with Placido Domingo.
As Dame Kiri says in her candid new interview for this programme in which she reflects on her BBC appearances, "If I look back what you have is snippets of my life, I suppose.".
SUN 21:00 The Hunt (b03jjbmw)
A man working at a nursery school in a Danish countryside town is wrongly accused of child abuse. Despite his innocence, the community quickly turns against him and his life starts to unravel.
In Danish and English, with English subtitles.
SUN 22:50 Sound Waves: The Symphony of Physics (b08h06tq)
Series 1
Making Sound
Dr Helen Czerski investigates the extraordinary science behind the sounds we're familiar with and the sounds that we normally can't hear.
She begins by exploring the simplest of ideas: what is a sound? At the Palace of Westminster, Helen teams up with scientists from the University of Leicester to carry out state-of-the-art measurements using lasers to reveal how the most famous bell in the world - Big Ben - vibrates to create pressure waves in the air at particular frequencies. This is how Big Ben produces its distinct sound. It's the first time that these laser measurements have been done on Big Ben.
With soprano singer Lesley Garrett CBE, Helen explores the science of the singing voice - revealing in intimate detail its inner workings and how it produces sound. Lesley undergoes a laryngoscopy to show the vocal folds of her larynx. At University College London, Lesley sings I Dreamed a Dream inside an MRI scanner to reveal how her vocal tract acts as a 'resonator', amplifying and shaping the sound from her larynx.
Having explored the world of sounds with which we are familiar, Helen discovers the hidden world of sounds that lie beyond the range of human hearing. At the summit of Stromboli, one of Europe's most active volcanoes, Helen and volcanologist Dr Jeffrey Johnson use a special microphone to record the extraordinary deep tone produced by the volcano as it explodes - a frequency far too low for the human ear to detect. Helen reveals how the volcano produces sound in a similar way to a musical instrument - with the volcano vent acting as a 'sound resonator'.
Finally, at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, Helen meets a scientist who has discovered evidence of sound waves in space, created by a giant black hole. These sounds are one million billion times lower than the limit of human hearing and could be the key in figuring out how galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe, grow.
SUN 23:50 Every Breath We Take: Understanding Our Atmosphere (b04bdqsz)
The air around us is not just empty space; it is an integral part of the chemistry of life. Plants are made from carbon dioxide, nitrogen nourishes the soil and oxygen gives us the energy we need to keep our hearts pumping and our brains alive. But how did we come to understand what air is made of? How did we come to know that this invisible stuff around us contains anything at all?
Gabrielle Walker tells the remarkable story of the quest to understand the air. It's a tale of heroes and underdogs, chance encounters and sheer blind luck that spans the entire history of science. It began as a simple desire to further our knowledge of the natural world, but it ended up uncovering raw materials that have shaped our modern world, unravelling the secrets of our own physiology and revealing why we are here at all.
SUN 00:50 Timeshift (b03p7jh9)
Series 13
Hurricanes and Heatwaves: The Highs and Lows of British Weather
A glorious national obsession is explored in this archive-rich look at the evolution of the weather forecast from print via radio to TV and beyond - and at the changing weather itself. It shows how the Met Office and the BBC have always used the latest technology to bring the holy grail of accurate forecasting that much closer - even if the odd messenger like TV weatherman Michael Fish has been shot along the way.
Yet as hand-drawn maps have been replaced by weather apps, the bigger drama of global warming has been playing itself out as if to prove that we were right all along to obsess about the weather. Featuring a very special rendition of the shipping forecast by a Cornish fishermen's choir.
SUN 01:45 Mumbai High: The Musical (p02z82jn)
A dizzying and unique musical extravaganza. Set in a school in Dharavi, Mumbai - the biggest slum in Asia - it combines observational footage of the children's daily lives, with songs reflecting their hopes and dreams.
Fourteen-year-old Mary lives with her parents and two sisters on the pavement of a busy road. They have a rudimentary shelter and they all sleep on the floor, sometimes with rats running over them. Mary and the other characters have their dreams and ambitions and believe they can achieve them through education. They are clever, bright, motivated and they sing!
This is no ordinary documentary, this is the very first Bollywood-style documentary musical. Mixed in with the traditional observational footage of the school are specially composed and choreographed song and dance numbers which the children (and teachers!) perform with incredible skill and charm.
No film has ever been made like this, it's a perfect way to capture the unbreakable optimism and exuberance of youth. But this is not a depressing examination of extreme poverty, it's an uplifting celebration of human spirit and endeavour, and it sets out to tell a wider tale of India.
SUN 02:50 Kiri Te Kanawa at the BBC (b08h918x)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
MONDAY 06 MARCH 2017
MON 19:00 100 Days (b08h8d4k)
Series 1
06/03/2017
As President Trump takes office, Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
MON 19:30 Reel History of Britain (p00jwr9w)
Long to Reign Over Us
Melvyn Bragg, accompanied by a vintage mobile cinema, travels across the country to show incredible footage preserved by the British Film Institute and other national and regional film archives, telling the history of modern Britain.
Melvyn visits London's Horse Guards Parade to look back to the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and remember an event when the nation celebrated and television took off.
Lady Jane Rayne shares her memories of being one of the six young women chosen to carry the royal train. Sandra Reekie is transported back to coronation day, when she watched the event live on television with 20 people crammed into the same room. And Ron Bygate recounts his memories of being one of the thousands of military troops lining the parade route as the Queen passed by.
MON 20:00 The Big Painting Challenge (b08h92d5)
Series 1
Portraiture
With the competition hotting up, our seven remaining amateur artists head to the world-famous National Portrait Gallery in London and face two portraiture challenges as they fight for their place in next week's semi-final. Portraits are notoriously difficult as everyone can tell if the human face looks right or wrong, so there is nowhere to hide if they want to secure their place in the competition.
They first have to produce a self-portrait that is not only a realistic representation but also conveys some of their character and emotions. For some, unsurprisingly, their main emotion appears to be fear, particularly as judge Daphne Todd OBE is a world-renowned portrait artist herself. The mentors, Pascal and Diana, are on hand to guide their teams and help keep the nerves under control.
The pressure is then ramped up another few notches as they are presented with undoubtedly their hardest challenge so far. The artists are given just five hours to produce a portrait of a celebrity sitter, something that an established artist would take weeks, if not months, over. Pascal's team must paint the inimitable Angela Rippon OBE, and Diana's artists have to capture the indomitable Baroness Floella Benjamin. The tension in both rooms is palpable as the artists struggle to translate such familiar faces, and many very nearly crumble.
Who will be saved by the public panel, and who will the judges take through to next week's semi-final?
With Mariella Frostrup and Rev Richard Coles.
MON 21:00 Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (b08h95jk)
Series 1
Episode 1
Series in which Eamonn McCabe celebrates Britain's greatest photographers, sees how science allowed their art to develop, and explores how they have captured our changing lives and country.
In the first of three programmes, Eamonn goes back to the 19th century to trace the astonishingly rapid rise of the photograph in British life. Eamonn explores the science behind early photography, and shows how innovative photographic techniques made possible the careers of pioneers like Roger Fenton and Julia Margaret Cameron. He sees how great figures of the age such as Queen Victoria and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were captured on camera, and revisits the Victorians' sense of wonder about the 'natural magic' of photography and the role it played in their lives.
MON 22:00 Timewatch (b00f6m71)
2008-2009
Young Victoria
Kate Williams tells the story of how an unassuming little girl rose to be the most powerful woman in the world. At her birth few believed Princess Victoria would ascend the throne, but a number of untimely deaths and the failure of her uncles to father any children meant that Victoria became heiress to the British throne. The battle between her and her mother the Duchess of Kent, however, was to become a fierce maternal struggle, as the duchess schemed to share in the power and riches that would one day be Victoria's.
MON 22:50 The Attack: Terror in the UK (b08h1ft5)
With a mass-casualty terror attack in the UK seen as almost inevitable, this drama documentary dramatises what terrorism experts fear is the most likely scenario for Britain's next major terror attack. Counterterrorism police believe that the greatest threat to our security comes from Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attacks (MTFA), which can result in dozens of fatalities even if armed police respond within minutes. There are more than a thousand high-priority terrorism suspects in the UK, but there are only enough surveillance officers to monitor a fraction of these at any time.
Based on extensive research, The Attack: Terror in the UK tells the story of an Islamic State-inspired terrorist group planning a firearms attack and follows the ongoing police investigation. It focuses on Joseph, a young man who, while in prison for drug and firearms charges, is recruited, converted and radicalised by Islamic extremists - highlighting the fear that links are being forged between jihadists and street gangs with access to automatic weapons.
MON 23:50 Oceans (b00ftbl1)
Red Sea
The team explores the remote and unexplored Southern Red Sea, teeming with marine life and home to some of the warmest waters on the planet.
With unique access, expedition leader Paul Rose, environmentalist Philippe Cousteau Jr, maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy Blue and marine biologist and oceanographer Tooni Mahto investigate whether the vibrant coral here can help other coral reefs threatened by global warming.
They dive in one of only two places on Earth you can see a new ocean being born; they explore the wreck of an Italian ship, to find her top secret, deadly cargo; and they uncover archaeological evidence of one of early man's first encounters with the sea.
And Philippe Cousteau Jr has an emotional journey to the remains of an ambitious underwater village established by his grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, in 1963 to discover whether humans could live beneath the waves.
MON 00:50 Art of China (b04cryjg)
Episode 2
Andrew Graham-Dixon travels to the Yellow mountains in southern China to understand the power of Chinese landscape painting. The period from the 10th to the 15th centuries - from the Song to the Ming dynasties - was the golden age of art in China. Andrew discovers an emperor so in love with art and beauty that he neglected to rule his country and scholar artists who fled the Mongol invasion to immerse themselves in nature, combining wondrous landscape painting and calligraphy. While Europe was still in the Dark Ages, Chinese art was being reborn.
MON 01:50 Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth (b039fpnk)
Democrats
Classicist Dr Michael Scott journeys to Athens to explore how drama first began. He discovers that from the very start it was about more than just entertainment - it was a reaction to real events, it was a driving force in history and it was deeply connected to Athenian democracy. In fact, the story of theatre is the story of Athens.
MON 02:50 Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (b08h95jk)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUESDAY 07 MARCH 2017
TUE 19:00 100 Days (b08h8d4s)
Series 1
07/03/2017
As President Trump takes office, Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
TUE 19:30 Weird Nature (b0078hh5)
Fantastic Feeding
Series exploring strange animal behaviour which reveals the many inventive ways animals catch prey. Discover a creature that employs glue-guns as weapons, a fish that slashes with a chainsaw and a spider that lassos its prey with a swinging blob of glue. Meet a fish that targets its prey using its mouth as a water pistol, a shrimp that stuns its prey with sound and a lemur with an ET-like finger that taps for a meal. Plus a frogfish whose mouth moves faster than its prey can see, a snake with a tail that acts as a maggot-like lure and an eagle that has found a novel way to break into prey. There is even a mantis shrimp with a knockout punch that reaches the speed of a racing bullet and a stoat that uses hypnosis.
TUE 20:00 Tales from the Royal Wardrobe with Lucy Worsley (b048wss8)
Today, few people's clothes attract as much attention as the royal family, but this is not a modern-day Hello magazine-inspired obsession. As Dr Lucy Worsley reveals, it has always been this way. Exploring the royal wardrobes of our kings and queens over the last 400 years, Lucy shows this isn't just a public preoccupation but our monarchs' as well.
From Elizabeth I to our present Queen, Lucy believes that the royal wardrobe's significance goes way beyond the cut and colour of the clothing and that royal fashion is, and has always been, regarded as their personal statement to their people. So most monarchs have carefully choreographed every aspect of their wardrobe and, for those who have not, there have sometimes been calamitous consequences.
TUE 21:00 Planet Earth II (b0861m8b)
Cities
Cities are growing at a faster rate than any other habitat on Earth. They may seem an unlikely place for animals to thrive, but they can be a world of surprising opportunity. Leopards prowl the streets of Mumbai, peregrine falcons hunt amongst New York's skyscrapers, and a million starlings perform spectacular aerial dances over Rome.
In Jodhpur, langurs are revered as religious deities and in Harar, locals live in harmony with wild hyenas. Many animals, however, struggle to cope in the urban jungle. As the architects of this environment, can humans choose to build cities that are homes for both them and wildlife?
TUE 22:00 Storyville (b08h92d7)
Killing for Love
Documentary about a compelling murder mystery, fuelled by a passionate young love affair. It all looked clear-cut when German student Jens Soering confessed to the brutal murder of his girlfriend's parents. But all was not as it seemed - by the time it came to trial, Jens was claiming he confessed to the murders to protect his beloved girlfriend, the beautiful Elizabeth Haysom - and that she had actually been the killer. Through access to the dramatic trials, love letters and new evidence, Killing for Love attempts to get to the truth of what happened on that fateful night.
The 20-year-old Elizabeth Haysom was widely admired at the University of Virginia for her wild past. Jens Soering, the son of a German diplomat, was a first-year Jefferson Scholar and had just turned 18 when he met her. He was instantly entranced and they embarked on an intense, obsessive relationship. Three months into their affair, on 30 March 1985, Elizabeth's parents were brutally murdered in their Virginia home and the couple fled. Crisscrossing Asia and Europe they were eventually arrested in London, where Jens confessed to the murder in what he later claimed was an act of love.
TUE 23:55 Indian Hill Railways (b00r5wk7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
TUE 00:55 What a Performance! Pioneers of Popular Entertainment (b06s5zw9)
Variety Finds a New Home
In the third programme of this insightful and entertaining series about the history of popular entertainment, comedian Frank Skinner and music presenter Suzy Klein examine what happened to British popular entertainment - its stars and its audiences - during the Second World War and beyond.
They explore how it braved challenges from an American invasion called rock and roll, a whole lot of nudity and how, in the 50s, it faced its biggest threat as a new form of entertainment appeared in our living rooms. They bring the period wonderfully alive by studying the lives and acts of some of the major stars of popular entertainment of the day, and recreate in a final performance an act close to their hearts. For Suzy, this means attempting to replicate the formidably powerful sound of American supergroup the Andrews Sisters - an act she has loved since she a child. Frank takes on an act a little closer to home - Max Miller was a legendary British comic, who went on to influence generations of stand-ups, Frank included.
TUE 01:55 Alexander Armstrong's Real Ripping Yarns (b03zqgk1)
Our dashing hero Alexander Armstrong explores the literature that inspired Michael Palin and Terry Jones's classic TV comedy Ripping Yarns, a loving parody of the Boys' Own books and magazines of their childhood. Featuring clips from Ripping Yarns, archive and interviews with experts, modern-day adventurers and Palin and Jones's own memories. In this affectionate and entertaining film Armstrong celebrates a long-lost slice of Britishness.
TUE 02:55 Planet Earth II (b0861m8b)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 08 MARCH 2017
WED 19:00 100 Days (b08h8d58)
Series 1
08/03/2017
As President Trump takes office, Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
WED 19:30 Reel History of Britain (p00jwrcn)
Streets in the Sky
Melvyn Bragg, accompanied by a vintage mobile cinema, travels across the country to show incredible footage preserved by the British Film Institute and other national and regional film archives, to tell the history of modern Britain.
Melvyn visits Park Hill in Sheffield to look back to the 1960s and a time when high-rise housing promised a better way of living.
Architect and historian Charlie Luxton explains how urban planners tackled the housing problem they faced after the Second World War. Anne Kimuyu shares her own experiences of high-rise living in Nottingham's Hyson Green estate, as the flats failed to fulfil their promise of a better way of living. And former Park Hill resident Charlie Lindley comes face to face with his family when they were filmed by the BBC in 1966 soon after moving into their new flat.
WED 20:00 Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies (b01m9vjl)
The Shape of Things to Come
In the heady years following World War II, Britain was a nation in love with aviation. Having developed the jet engine in wartime, British engineers were now harnessing its power to propel the world's first passenger jets. By 1960 the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world, with routes stretching to the furthest-flung remnants of Empire.
And the aircraft carrying these New Elizabethans around the globe were also British - the Vickers Viscount, the Bristol Britannia and the world's first pure jet-liner, the sleek, silver De Havilland Comet, which could fly twice as high and twice as fast as its American competitors. It seemed the entire nation was reaching for the skies to create the shape of things to come for air travel worldwide. But would their reach exceed their grasp?
WED 21:00 The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun (b08h99sb)
Margaret Mountford travels to Egypt's Valley of the Kings to discover the story of an unsung hero of British photography - Harry Burton, the man whose images of the Tutankhamun excavation created a global sensation in the 1920s.
As she explores the spectacular locations where Burton worked, including Tutankhamun's tomb, she investigates how his photographs inspired a craze for Egyptian designs and made the archaeologist Howard Carter an international celebrity. She discovers why Burton's images are still studied today by Egyptologists around the world. And she works with a present-day photographer, Harry Cory Wright, to find out how Burton pushed the boundaries of photographic art to create his extraordinary and influential pictures of the world's most famous archaeological discovery.
WED 22:00 Wild China (b00bz1cf)
Beyond the Great Wall
A look at the dazzling array of mysterious and wonderful creatures that live in China's most beautiful landscapes.
The extreme landscapes north of the Great Wall have shaped some of China's most colourful people and wildlife. From nomadic tribes hunting with eagles to camel trains crossing the Silk Road, from frozen Siberian wastes to baking deserts of central Asia, life in northern China is always on the edge.
WED 23:00 imagine... (b062mp6k)
Summer 2015
Toni Morrison Remembers
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is America's first lady of literature. Her books encompass black American history but live and breathe in the present, rich in vivid characters, haunted by ghosts. Born poor in Ohio in 1931, she now lives in New York.
In a film first shown in 2015, she tells Alan Yentob how her father hated whites so much he wouldn't let them in the house. Her masterpiece, Beloved, shows the horrors of slavery perhaps better than any other artwork. She talks as she writes - with warmth and wit. Contributors include Angela Davis (whose biography she edited) and singer Jessye Norman.
WED 00:05 Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (b08h95jk)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Monday]
WED 01:05 Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss (b01nmsw7)
Actor and writer Mark Gatiss embarks on a chilling voyage through European horror cinema. From the silent nightmares of German Expressionism in the wake of World War I to lesbian vampires in 1970s Belgium, from the black-gloved killers of Italy's bloody giallo thrillers to the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War, Mark reveals how Europe's turbulent 20th century forged its ground-breaking horror tradition. On a journey that spans the continent from Ostend to Slovakia, Mark explores classic filming locations and talks to the genre's leading talents, including directors Dario Argento and Guillermo del Toro.
WED 02:35 The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun (b08h99sb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 09 MARCH 2017
THU 19:00 100 Days (b08h8d5m)
Series 1
09/03/2017
As President Trump takes office, Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b08h9ct9)
John Peel and David Jensen present another edition of the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 28 April 1983. Featuring Galaxy, The Creatures, Tears for Fears, Kissing the Pink and Spandau Ballet.
THU 20:00 Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise (b08bg31f)
The Mysterious North
Northern Thailand is dominated by mountains and cloaked in forest. It hides ancient creatures and surprising partnerships. To survive here, both the wildlife and people rely on maintaining the natural harmony of the mysterious north.
THU 21:00 Sound Waves: The Symphony of Physics (b08h9ctd)
Series 1
Using Sound
Dr Helen Czerski examines the extraordinary messages sound waves carry and how they help us understand the world around us.
Visiting a hidden location buried beneath the hills of Scotland, Helen experiences some of the most extreme acoustics in the world. Here she learns just how much information can be carried by sound. She discovers how sound has driven the evolution of truly incredible biological systems and complex relationships between creatures that exploit sound for hunting - and escaping from predators. Helen demonstrates how sound waves diffract (bend around objects) and in doing so help us sense danger and locate it.
Through the story of a cochlea implant patient Helen explores the complicated way our ears can translate sound waves - a physical vibration in the air - into an electrical signal our brain can understand.
Helen explains how we are not limited to passively detecting sound waves, we can also use them to actively probe the world. From detecting submarines to uncovering the secrets of our planet, sound waves are instrumental in revealing things hidden from the world of light. On the cold North Sea, Helen investigates how marine archaeologists are using sound waves to uncover the remarkable human stories buried beneath the sea. Yet we are not limited to using sound waves here on Earth, as Helen explains how sound has been used to better understand distant, alien worlds in the outer solar system.
THU 22:00 Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur (p03dwy5z)
David Attenborough tells the story of the discovery and reconstruction in Argentina of the world's largest-known dinosaur, a brand new species of titanosaur. Measuring 37m long - close to four London buses put end to end - and weighing 70 metric tons, it now holds the record as the biggest animal ever to walk the earth.
In 2014, a shepherd spotted the tip of a gigantic fossil bone sticking out of a rock in La Flecha Farm in the Chubut Province in the Argentinian desert. Palaeontologists soon uncovered a massive 2.4m long thigh bone (femur), the largest ever found. By the end of the dig they had uncovered more than 220 bones. As the programme reveals, these all belong to a new species of the giant plant-eating titanosaur.
Filmed over the next two years, the documentary follows the twists and turns of this forensic investigation. Attenborough witnesses the uncovering and examination of these stupendous fossils and the dramatic construction of the complete skeleton. And using state-of-the-art graphics, the film also reveals the internal secrets of this dinosaur and what it means to be a giant.
THU 23:00 Nazis: A Warning from History (b0074kr5)
Fighting to the End
After the Battle of Stalingrad in the autumn of 1942 and the winter of 1943, the German people experienced nothing but disaster. So why, when the war seemed lost, did the Nazis fight on?
This programme examines why Germany had to suffer so much, and in her suffering inflict destruction on countless others. Between July 1944 and May 1945 more Germans would perish than in the previous four years of the war put together.
The film shows how fear and hatred of Bolshevism drove many Germans to fight to the bitter end. The extent to which Germany had also become a dramatically racist country also played a part. A former member of the Hitler Youth reveals why he approved of the brutal treatment of Polish forced workers in Geramny, and a former slave worker at the IG Farben concentration camp at Auschwitz tells his dramatic story.
Germans who lived in the former Eastern bloc also talk openly about the whirlwind of death and destruction unleashed by the collapse of the Nazi regime. Their stories include a dramatic eye-witness account of when more than 900 inhabitants of a German village committed suicide by drowning rather than risk facing the occupying Soviet army.
THU 23:50 A Timewatch Guide (b071gx2c)
Series 2
World War Two
Professor Saul David uses the BBC archive to chart the history of the world's most destructive war, by chronicling how the story of the battle has changed. As new information has come to light, and forgotten stories are remembered, the history of World War Two evolves. The BBC has followed that evolution, and this programme examines the most important stories, and how our understanding of them has been re-defined since the war ended over 70 years ago.
THU 00:50 Top of the Pops (b08h9ct9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 01:25 Sounds of the Eighties (b0074sk2)
Episode 3
Musical memories from the BBC archives. This edition concentrates on the soul and funk artists who found success in the British charts of the 1980s, with performances from Kool and the Gang, The Pointer Sisters, Grace Jones, Cameo, Bobby Womack, Sade, Alexander O'Neal and Whitney Houston.
THU 01:55 Sound of Song (b050rbz8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Sunday]
THU 02:55 Sound Waves: The Symphony of Physics (b08h9ctd)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 10 MARCH 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b08h8d5v)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b08h9j0j)
Mike Read and Tommy Vance present another edition of the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 12 May 1983. Featuring Modern Romance, Hall & Oates, Hot Chocolate, Galaxy, The Creatures, Men at Work and Spandau Ballet.
FRI 20:00 The Good Old Days (b08h9j0l)
Leonard Sachs presents the old-time entertainment show, first broadcast on 21 February 1978. Features Ron Moody, Hinge & Bracket, Duggie Brown, Rita Morris, Alan Randall, Peter Gale, Les Missiles, Albert Aldred and Bernard Hermann.
FRI 21:00 The People's History of Pop (b08h9j0n)
1997-2010 Closer Than Close
Sara Cox looks at the time when the internet opened up new worlds for music fans and brought them closer to their musical heroes than ever before.
It starts in the years leading up to the year 2000 - a time when information overload and uncertainty about new technologies was creating an anxiety about the future.
We hear from fans who loved a band that were tackling this millennial angst head-on with a new album - Radiohead with their 1997 album OK Computer.
As this new technology enters our lives, we meet people who are starting to change the relationship between fans and bands - a fan who saves his favourite band Travis from the bad press reviews of their second album with a letter written to Melody Maker in 1999 and a chart pop fan who manages to meet his favourite pop heroes with an ingenious, homemade piece of memorabilia.
From the same period, we get an insight into the new clubbing trends - from the outfits, photos and magazine articles saved by a pioneer of a new, fan-powered tribe on the dancefloor - the Crasher Kids - who become the identity of Sheffield club Gatecrasher, to a fan whose flyers chart the rise of grassroots sound UK garage, which went from the airwaves of pirate radio and Sunday night clubs scene in London to the top of the charts.
In the 2000s, fans could now decide who their pop stars were going to be and we meet a mother and daughter whose lives were changed by Will Young, who in turn change his life by voting for him in Pop Idol.
With the arrival of file sharing in the early 2000s, a fan recounts how the unconventional rise of The Arctic Monkeys was all thanks to fans sharing music on online forums and Myspace. And as technology develops, we see how a fan's canny use of YouTube opened up the grime scene of east London to the world.
Along the way we hear the remarkable stories behind photos and signed set-lists from Amy Winehouse, the one-off fan club magazine from The Libertines and footage of a gig in Pete Doherty's flat, and footage of the moment when Adele gave her stage over to two very surprised fans.
FRI 22:00 Classic Albums (b010v8kh)
Primal Scream: Screamadelica
Primal Scream's seminal album Screamadelica was released in 1991, and synthesized the band's rock 'n' roll roots with the dance culture of that time; for many, the album's sound and imagery came to be regarded as quintessential symbols of the acid house era, perfectly catching the spirit and mood of the early 90s.
Using rare archive footage and special performances, this film tells the story of Screamadelica and its hit singles and dance anthems Loaded, Movin' On Up, Come Together and Don't Fight It, Feel It. From the formation of the band in Glasgow to winning the first-ever Mercury prize, the band members explain the record's inception with insights from main producer Andrew Weatherall, Creation Records founder Alan McGee and many others involved with or inspired by this joyful record.
Screamadelica both defines a generation and transcends its time, and is a true Classic Album.
FRI 23:00 Unfinished: The Making of Massive Attack (b07thrcg)
The story of how Bristol found its musical identity and tracing the creation of the city's most famous band. The documentary looks at the emergence of the 'Bristol Sound' in the 1980s culminating in the release of Massive Attack's first album. Narrated by actor Paul McGann - who was a part of Bristol's creative scene throughout this period - it traces the history of the scene. From the sound system culture that arrived in the city with the immigrants from the Caribbean, and how that mixed with the existing punk and new wave scene in Bristol, to hip-hop which arrived in Bristol from New York before any other city in Britain was aware of it.
It explores how this clash of cultures and musical styles gave the city a musical identity which to that point it lacked, unlike other industrial cities in Britain such as Liverpool and Manchester. Featuring contributions from key influencers of the creative scene including Milo Johnson of The Wild Bunch, Mark Stewart of The Pop Group, DJ and Producer Roni Size, and Neil Davidge - producer of Massive Attack's later work.
FRI 23:30 Amy Winehouse In Her Own Words (p02ty1n4)
A portrait of Amy Winehouse the artist threaded together from extracts from interviews she gave to the BBC for a variety of documentary projects including the Jazz and Soul Britannia series on FOUR, much of which material is previously unbroadcast, blended with performances from across her career, including some which are also previously unbroadcast and unseen.
Winehouse had a strong relationship with many parts of the BBC from when she launched herself as an artist back in 2004. In her short musical career, the north London native changed the landscape of modern pop culture, won countless awards, achieved critical acclaim and garnered global success before tragically dying at the tender age of 27.
On the eve of the release of Asif Kapadia's Amy documentary film which explores Winehouse's life and death, here is an exploration of her music and her influences in her own words.
Consisting of performances and interviews entirely from the BBC archives, this film celebrates Amy's music, her influences, her challenges as an artist and her eternal brutal honesty in her own words. Featuring exclusive unseen and rarely seen songs from her triple platinum selling album Frank and revered Grammy-winning album Back to Black, the programme pays homage to the tattooed rebellious rock 'n' roll-spirited songstress who wrote smart, sad, soulful and original pop songs that became instant classics and inspired a generation.
FRI 23:55 Britpop at the BBC (b0409s91)
In the mid-90s, Britpop stamped its presence onto the British music scene and made boys wearing eyeliner cool again. What better reason to raid the BBC archives for a rich treasure trove of the joy and the time that was Britpop?
Featuring the girls (Elastica, Sleeper) and the boys (Suede, Menswear) and many of the other bright young things that contributed to five years of Cool Britannia, Blur v Oasis and Camden being the centre of the universe. Britpop at the BBC reminds us all why we were all so proud to be British again in the 1990s.
FRI 00:55 Top of the Pops (b08h9j0j)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
FRI 01:30 The People's History of Pop (b08h9j0n)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 02:30 Classic Albums (b010v8kh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRI 03:30 Unfinished: The Making of Massive Attack (b07thrcg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 today]