Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
There is tragedy at the rescue centre when a newly arrived baby fights for its life. Michaela hopes for the best and is encouraged when her favourite orphan Lomon finally starts to make some progress.
Steve helps out at the place where young orangutans like Grendon and Ellie learn the skills that will equip them for a life in the wild. As the school day ends there's a dramatic interruption - a female orangutan is giving birth back at the rescue centre. Qualified vet Steve rushes to help.
Timeshift charts the evolution of the British postage stamp and examines how these sticky little labels became a national obsession. Like many of us, writer and presenter Andrew Martin collected stamps when he was young, and now he returns to that lost world to unpeel the history of iconic stamps like the Penny Black and the Blue Mauritius, study famous collectors like King George V and the enigmatic Count Phillip de Ferrary, and to meet present-day philatelists at a stamp club.
With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take viewers on three cultural city breaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.
In this opening episode, they head to Amsterdam, a city that pioneered so much of modern life, from multinational trade to the way we design our homes. To find out how, Alastair and Janina take us on a fast-paced tour of the city's cultural hotspots. Picking their way through the crowds queuing to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, they also introduce us to the paintings of Jan Steen, a Dutch legend whose paintings capture the city's freewheeling lifestyle.
They take us on an entertaining tour of the canals that helped build Amsterdam and explore the city's reputation for tolerance in the oldest surviving Jewish library in the world. Along the way, Alastair and Janina discover how art and culture reflect the liberal attitudes, appetite for global trade and love of home comforts that helped shape the character of this trailblazing city.
Screen adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel, inspired by the Johannes Vermeer painting of the same name. Set in mid-17th-century Delft, Holland, 17-year-old Griet is forced into servanthood when her father suffers an accident and becomes unable to work. She is taken on at the Vermeer household, where her presence immediately provokes hostility from members of the family - particularly the artist's wife and eldest daughter - when she starts to forge an understanding with her mysterious master.
The years after the Civil War and the Restoration of Charles II marked the end of the medieval and the beginning of the modern age. These were exciting times for women and some rose to prominence like never before. Some had remarkably modern attitudes and ambitions and achieved wealth, celebrity and power that still seems outstanding even by 21st century standards. But, at the same time, they faced a world that was still predominantly male, misogynistic and positively medieval in its outlook.
In the first episode, Dr Lucy Worsley investigates the lives of women at the top - the king's mistresses at the royal court. When Charles and his entourage returned from exile, they came back with a host of continental ideas. Some of the women at court gained unprecedented political influence and independence. Amongst a fascinating cast of female characters, the most astonishing were Charles II's own mistresses - the royalist Barbara Villiers, the French spy Louise de Keroualle and the infamous Cockney actress Nell Gwynn.
Lucy examines the lives of these women, discovering how their fortunes were shaped by the Restoration and how their stories reflect the atmosphere of these extraordinary years. Along her journey, Lucy gets the full mistress make-over, takes to the dance floor and treads the corridors of power. As she discovers, these women were key Restoration players, but, as mistresses, were they truly in charge of their own destinies or were they simply part of the world's oldest profession?
What makes plants grow is a simple enough question. The answer turns out to be one of the most complicated and fascinating stories in science and took over 300 years to unravel.
Timothy Walker, director of Oxford University Botanic Garden, reveals how the breakthroughs of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, Chelsea gardener Phillip Miller and English naturalist John Ray created the science of botany. Between them, these quirky, temperamental characters unlocked the mysteries of the plant kingdom, and they began to glimpse a world where bigger, better and stronger plants could be created. Nurseryman Thomas Fairchild created the world's first artificial hybrid flower - an entirely new plant that didn't exist in nature.
Today, botanists continue the search for new flowers, better crops and improved medicines to treat life-threatening diseases.
TUESDAY 02 MAY 2017
TUE 19:00 100 Days+ (b08nydcg)
Series 1
02/05/2017
Jon Sopel in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
TUE 19:30 Orangutan Diary (b007clwt)
Series 1
Episode 4
Michaela and Steve are encouraged by the progress of Grendon, Ellie and Lomon - the orphaned baby orangutans who are being retrained for a life in the wild. In the 'Forest School' classes, even tragic Lomon, who was beaten and starved while being kept a pet, is finally making progress. Steve travels out to rescue a tiny baby orangutan that is being illegally held in a village - but the villagers have no intention of surrendering the baby.
TUE 20:00 Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World (b08kg3cg)
Series 1
Episode 2
The odyssey continues as Colin Stafford-Johnson completes his journey along Ireland's Atlantic rim. Exploring the wildlife and mountains around his home inlet of Clew Bay, Colin then heads north for Donegal - golden eagle country - before reaching the island's northern tip and turning east along the coast of Northern Ireland.
Along the way, he features the whooper swans that fly out of the north every autumn to escape an Arctic winter, the fabulously elusive pine marten, resident here since the last Ice Age, and the great ocean wanderers that are basking sharks - the second biggest fish on the planet, which turn up every summer out of the blue. Beautiful bats and heroic salmon are some of the other characters Colin comes across as he seeks out the remotest corners of Ireland's wild west.
TUE 21:00 Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (p00kjqch)
The Age of Invention
Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements.
Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments - a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.
Just under 200 years ago scientists discovered something profound, that electricity is connected to another of nature's most fundamental forces - magnetism. In the second episode, Jim discovers how harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity would completely transform the world, allowing us to generate a seemingly limitless amount of electric power which we could utilise to drive machines, communicate across continents and light our homes. This is the story of how scientists and engineers unlocked the nature of electricity in an extraordinary century of innovation and invention.
TUE 22:00 Genius of the Modern World (b07h0hg9)
Nietzsche
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most brilliant and dangerous minds of the 19th century. His uncompromising and often brutal ideas smashed the comfortable presuppositions and assumptions of religion, morality and science. His was a world not just bereft of God but almost of humanity, breathtaking in both its post-religious starkness and its originality.
Bettany Hughes goes in search of the beliefs of a man whose work is amongst the most devastatingly manipulated and misinterpreted in philosophical history. Nietzsche's dislike of systems and of seeking truths left his ideas ambiguous and sometimes incoherent. It was this that made him vulnerable to interpretation, and as a result his thoughts - which warned against the very notion of a political system like totalitarianism - were manipulated to strengthen its ideals.
Vocally opposed to anti-Semitism, his anti-Semitic sister made sure he became the poster boy for Hitler's drive for an Aryan ideal. Anti-nationalistic, he came to symbolise a regime he would have loathed. His philosophical quest led him to isolation and ultimately madness, but his ideas helped shape the intellectual landscape of the modern world.
TUE 23:00 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.
TUE 00:00 Natural World (b01nmdh3)
2012-2013
A Wolf Called Storm
Storm is an extraordinary wolf - the head of a pack in Canada's frozen north that hunts the giant buffalo herds. This pack came to fame in Frozen Planet, and now cameraman Jeff Turner spends a year with Storm and his wolf family, learning how they survive in this harsh wilderness and whether Storm can pass his hunting skills on to the new generation of wolf cubs.
TUE 01:00 Amazon Abyss (b00hhf63)
Episode 7
Mike de Gruy and Kate Humble lead an international team of scientists and divers as they search for species new to science in the Amazon River.
It is the climax of the diving expedition as the team explores a 90-metre chasm at the very bottom of the Amazon River. Scientists have no idea what lurks within. The team also explores overgrown jungle streams in search of giant caiman and electric eels - a fish that can stun you with a 600-volt shock.
As the expedition draws to a close, the divers prepare to jump into the depths of the river to confront and film the extraordinary fish that lie in the abyss.
TUE 02:00 The Story of Scottish Art (b06jdnnd)
Episode 2
The 18th century heralded the greatest blossoming of Scottish artistry in its history. The most powerful and influential figures in Britain clamoured to have their portraits painted by Allan Ramsey and Henry Raeburn and their houses designed by Robert Adam; they stood in awe at the epic Highland landscapes of Horatio McCulloch and wept at the sensitive genre paintings of David Wilkie.
Scots artist Lachlan Goudie explores how the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment and the classical influence of the continent gave these artists the confidence and the inspiration to forge a whole new artistic landscape.
From dusty storerooms of Edinburgh to the dazzling antiquities of ancient Rome this is a journey of startling contrasts - between the past and the future, between the forces of reason and romance, between Presbyterian restraint and unfettered emotion. Out of the ashes of the Reformation a new culture identity was beginning to emerge and it was built on art.
TUE 03:00 Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (p00kjqch)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 03 MAY 2017
WED 19:00 100 Days+ (b08nydcm)
Series 1
03/05/2017
Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping our world.
WED 19:30 Orangutan Diary (b007clxj)
Series 1
Episode 5
Michaela Strachan and Steve Leonard present a series featuring orphaned and rescued orangutans in Borneo. All over the island, their forest homes are being cleared to create space for palm oil plantations - sterile places where orangutans just cannot live.
Steve rescues a big female who has dislocated her ankle fleeing from her captors. Back at the centre, there is better news for Michaela when she sees her favourite little orphan Lomon finally learn to climb a tree. There is also a moving conclusion to the story of Zorro, a huge male orangutan who spent 13 years in a tiny cage before being released on to a forested island.
WED 20:00 The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver (b06kpzcv)
Episode 3
The Roman army turns its attention to an island of rich resources, powerful tribes and druids, and advanced military equipment - Britain. This episode tells the story of the Celts' last stand against the Roman army - a revolt led by another great leader, the warrior queen Boudicca.
WED 21:00 Britain's Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (b08nz0xh)
In 1957, Britain exploded its first megaton hydrogen bomb - codenamed Operation Grapple X. It was the culmination of an extraordinary scientific project, which against almost insuperable odds turned Britain into a nuclear superpower. This is the inside story of how Britain got 'the bomb'.
The BBC has been granted unprecedented access to the top-secret nuclear research facility at Aldermaston. The programme features interviews with veterans and scientists who took part in the atomic bomb programme, some speaking for the first time, and newly released footage of the British atomic bomb tests.
WED 22:00 Britain's Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield (b065x080)
Lying on the remote north west coast of England is one of the most secret places in the country - Sellafield, the most controversial nuclear facility in Britain. Now, Sellafield are letting nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili and the television cameras in to discover the real story. Inside, Jim encounters some of the most dangerous substances on earth, reveals the nature of radiation and even attempts to split the atom. He sees inside a nuclear reactor, glimpses one of the rarest elements in the world - radioactive plutonium - and even subjects living tissue to deadly radiation. Ultimately, the film reveals Britain's attempts - past, present and future - to harness the almost limitless power of the atom.
WED 23:00 Storyville (b065y1dx)
Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise
The bombing of Hiroshima showed the appalling destructive power of the atomic bomb. Mark Cousins's bold documentary looks at death in the atomic age, but life too. Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, the film shows us an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times - protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima - but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.
WED 00:10 Metalworks! (b01hdhpy)
The Knight's Tale
Art historian and curator Tobias Capwell celebrates the great age of armour. Referencing the unstoppable rise of the Royal Almain Armoury at Greenwich, he tells the forgotten story of how Henry VIII fused German high technology with Renaissance artistry in the pursuit of one aim - to become the very image of the perfect knight. Using the talents of foreign craftsmen and his court artist Hans Holbein, Henry transformed himself into a living metal sculpture. His daughter Elizabeth I further exploited that image, making her courtiers parade before her in the most innovative and richly decorated works ever commissioned in steel.
WED 01:10 Britain on Film (b02xgf58)
Series 2
The World of Work
In the 1960s, Britain's biggest film company, the Rank Organisation, produced hundreds of short colour films on almost every aspect of British life. This fascinating material had lain largely dormant in an archive until Britain on Film accessed it and reworked it into a series that offers richly informative and often surprising insights into a decisive period of modern British history.
This episode is devoted to the activity that occupies so many of our waking hours - our working lives. During a period when new technology was transforming our factories and fierce competition from overseas was forcing many employers to make far-reaching changes to production processes and patterns of working, these films hint at the enormous challenges confronting workers in Britain's increasingly fragile industrial economy.
WED 01:40 The Brits Who Built the Modern World (b03wctxm)
The Politics of Power
Series looking at how an exceptional generation of British architects, led by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, conquered the globe with their high-tech vision.
The final episode focuses on the period from the late 90s to the present day, when they were at the peak of their success - building iconic landmarks across Britain and the world - but also faced some of the biggest controversies of their careers. Rogers reveals what went wrong with the Millennium Dome, Foster recalls the wobbles of London's Millennium Bridge and Michael Hopkins explains how his new parliamentary building, Portcullis House, became the most expensive office block in Britain.
Also featured are the stories behind some of Britain's most popular modern architecture - Nicholas Grimshaw's Eden Project and Foster's 'Gherkin' - and a look at this generation's success overseas, including Terry Farrell's success in China.
WED 02:40 Britain's Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (b08nz0xh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 04 MAY 2017
THU 19:00 100 Days+ (b08nydcz)
Series 1
04/05/2017
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 (b08p2k7n)
Andy Peebles and Janice Long present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 20 October 1983. Featuring David Grant, Rocksteady Crew, Howard Jones, Freeez, Elton John, Depeche Mode, Men Without Hats and Culture Club.
THU 20:00 Timeshift (b080dvyc)
Series 16
Sailors, Ships & Stevedores: The Story of British Docks
Throughout the 20th century, Britain's docks were the heartbeat of the nation - bustling, exciting and often dangerous places where exotic goods, people and influences from across the globe ebbed and flowed and connected Britain with the wider world. Thousands of men, with jobs handed down from father to son through generations, sustained these emblems of national pride, typified by London, the hub of the British Empire.
The waterside cities within cities where they lived and worked formed the frontier of the country's postwar recovery. Communities connected to the sea grew around them, some as unique as the multicultural sailortown of Tiger Bay in Cardiff, others like Liverpool primed for a new wave of world fame thanks to the music and style being brought into the country by the city's seafarers. The 1960s heralded the arrival of new forms of technological innovation in our ports, and thanks to a simple metal box, the traditional world of dockside would be radically transformed, but not without a fierce struggle to protect the dock work that many saw as their birthright.
Today, docksides are places of cultural consumption, no longer identifiable as places that once forged Britain's global standing through goods and trade. People visit waterfronts at their leisure in bars, cafes and marinas or buy a slice of waterside living in converted warehouses and buildings built on the connection to the sea. While the business of docks has moved out of sight, over 95 per cent of national trade still passes through the container yard on ever-larger ships. However, it is still possible to glimpse the vanished dockside through the archive films and first-hand stories of those who knew it best.
Narrated by Sue Johnston.
THU 21:00 Arena (b0074prh)
Ken Dodd's Happiness
A tribute to Liverpudlian comic Ken Dodd, in which he discusses his career and the influences of his comedy style.
Features film clips of his early performances and footage of him on tour in more recent times.
THU 22:00 Bucket (b08nz2bb)
Series 1
Episode 4
Mim lets slip a crushing deception, and Fran calls an end to the trip, but it looks like time might be running out for Mim to tell Fran the biggest secret of all.
THU 22:25 The Undiscovered Peter Cook (b0830jyr)
Following the death of one of Britain's greatest satirists, Peter Cook, in 1995, his widow Lin locked the door of his house and refused all access to the media - until more than twenty years later, when she invited her friend Victor Lewis-Smith and a BBC crew inside to make a documentary about the man she knew and loved, with unprecedented access to Peter's private recordings, diaries, letters, photographs and much more.
THU 23:25 Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World (b08kg3cg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 on Tuesday]
THU 00:25 Top of the Pops (b08p2k7n)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 01:05 Sinatra: All or Nothing at All (b06tkbvh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
00:05 on Saturday]
THU 03:05 Bucket (b08nz2bb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRIDAY 05 MAY 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b08nydd4)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b08p2kdw)
Peter Powell and Mike Read present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 3 November 1983. Featuring ABC, Donna Summer, Elton John, Status Quo, Madness, Shakin' Stevens and Billy Joel.
FRI 20:00 The Good Old Days (b08nz2hn)
Leonard Sachs chairs the old-time music hall programme, originally broadcast 31 December 1978. Guests include Roy Castle, Dolores Gray, Robert White, Eira Heath, Russ Stevens, Parkano and Christina, Michel Arene and Four Lido Can Can Dancers.
FRI 21:00 Singer-Songwriters at the BBC (b015swyr)
Series 2
Episode 3
The celebration of the singing-songwriting troubadours of the 1960s and 70s continues with a further trawl through the BBC archives for timeless and classic performances.
Starting proceedings is Scots-born Sunshine Superman, Donovan, with a rare performance from Julie Felix's show in 1968. Buffy Sainte-Marie performs Cripple Creek, and buddies Carole King and James Taylor perform classic Carole King songs.
Songwriting genius Jimmy Webb performs a gem in Didn't We, while a beautiful and sensuous Rod Stewart gives an intense performance of his song about his friend in The Killing of Georgie, from a Boxing Day edition of Top of the Pops in 1976. And from 1977 the inimitable and much-loved John Martyn, with help from Danny Thompson, rounds things off with a classic performance of Couldn't Love You More.
FRI 22:00 Classic Albums (b08pg5tq)
Carly Simon: No Secrets
Carly Simon is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of her generation. The classic album that made her a global star was No Secrets, which included the enigmatic song You're So Vain. The album spent five weeks at number one in the US chart.
In this new interview Carly ties together her life and work on No Secrets - she is at her most honest, sometimes defiant, but with a wit and wisdom that comes from her rich and turbulent life. She tells of how the second single from the album, Right Thing to Do, was a refreshingly realistic love song, choosing to ignore her lover's problems. That lover was James Taylor; Carly wrote the lyrics on a plane after looking over at James and thinking 'there's nothing you can do to turn me away.'
The album's title track, We Have No Secrets, struck a chord with a generation trying to reconcile honesty in relationships with the emotional consequences that followed. Carly had a number of highly public affairs in the early 70s and her experience fed into the album's most famous song, the global hit You're So Vain. She performs the missing fourth verse on the piano, the first time she has ever sung it along with the melody.
Carly tells of how her producer made her do the vocal track on 'Vain' over and over, and how Mick Jagger ended up on backing vocals. The film has access to the master tapes and we hear Jagger's vocal track. Her producer reveals Carly was 'so turned on' after singing with Jagger that she recorded the whole vocal again - and that is the one on the album.
Finally, the film includes footage of Taylor Swift and Carly Simon performing You're So Vain together, and extracts from an interview where Swift herself talks about her love for the song.
FRI 23:00 ... Sings Bond (b01p97hr)
The BBC archive uncovers performances of some of the finest Bond theme tunes from its top secret vaults and pays a TV tribute to a classic British icon.
Prepare to be shaken and stirred by Tina Turner and her GoldenEye, Dame Shirley Bassey with her Diamonds, Tom Jones rampaging with Thunderball, Matt Monro romancing in Russia, The Fun Lovin' Criminals taking all the time in the world, Adele's sky-high contribution to 007 and much more from Sheena Easton, Garbage, A-ha and others, from all manner of BBC shows.
Sit back and marvel at our selection of the greatest Bond songs in history - a tuxedo and a dry vodka martini is optional.
FRI 00:00 Top of the Pops (b08p2kdw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
FRI 00:35 Singer-Songwriters at the BBC (b015swyr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 01:35 Classic Albums (b08pg5tq)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRI 02:35 ... Sings Bond (b01p97hr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 today]