SATURDAY 27 MAY 2017

SAT 19:00 Saints and Sinners: Britain's Millennium of Monasteries (b053pzv1)
Episode 2

The golden age of the British monastery was during the medieval period, when monks transformed British society and rose to a position of immense power. Fighting back after centuries of defeat and neglect, a wave of new monasteries spread across the nation, with over 500 British monastic houses established by the 14th century. Far from the inward-looking recluses of legend, monks were exceptionally creative, and became pioneers in the fields of medicine, science, scholarship, industry, farming, art and music. They didn't turn their back on the medieval world, but helped transform it.

Yet as the monasteries mingled with the world outside their cloisters they began to take on its corruption. They had begun with a vow of poverty, but eventually came to own a third of the nation's land. This wealth, combined with the sins of individual monks, sealed their fate, and as the medieval period ended the monks were on the brink of a catastrophic and total collapse.

From Viking-ravaged Lindisfarne to the astonishing achievements of Durham and Peterborough cathedrals (both built for monks), from cutting-edge hospitals to the rediscovery of the oldest collection of two-part music in the world, this is a story of astonishing success and spectacular artistic achievement that proved too good to last.


SAT 20:00 Nature's Great Events (b00hq341)
The Great Salmon Run

Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive?

A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air, the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near-vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon.

Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house.

Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.

In the final ten-minute diary, Close Encounters of a Grizzly Kind, wildlife cameraman Jeff Turner, who has filmed bears for 20 years, reveals how he pioneered techniques to show for the first time how bears caught salmon underwater.


SAT 21:00 Hinterland (b08s3f2s)
Series 3 (BBC Four)

Episode 4

Tom Mathias and Mared Rhys seem to be no closer to solving the mystery of Iwan Thomas's death, when the case is officially closed by Superintendent John Powell, who claims that the circumstantial evidence all points to a verdict of suicide. However, the mystery deepens with the discovery that Thomas had been continuing his own private investigation into the children's home at Devil's Bridge with further tragic consequences.

In Welsh and English with English subtitles.


SAT 22:30 Top of the Pops (b08rc663)
John Peel and David Jensen present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 22 December 1983. Artists include Slade, Culture Club, Paul McCartney, Dennis Waterman & George Cole, Billy Joel, Howard Jones and The Flying Pickets.


SAT 23:05 Top of the Pops (b08rc78m)
Peter Powell, Tommy Vance, Richard Skinner, Gary Davies and Adrian John present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 29 December 1983. Features JoBoxers, Mike Oldfield, Thompson Twins, Tracey Ullman, The Cure, Phil Collins, The Belle Stars, Paul Young, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Spandau Ballet, Howard Jones, Rod Stewart, The Style Council and Culture Club.


SAT 00:00 The Joy of the Bee Gees (b04v8677)
Guilty pleasure or genius, misfits or mavericks, noble or naff - how do we really feel about the Bee Gees? Are the brothers Gibb a cacophony of falsettos or songwriting maestros, the soundtrack to every office party or masters of melancholy and existential rage? Are they comedy or Tragedy? How deep is our love and how deep are the Bee Gees?

With a back catalogue that includes hits like How Do You Mend a Broken Heart, Massachusetts, Islands in the Stream, Stayin' Alive, Chain Reaction, How Deep Is Your Love, Gotta Get a Message to You, Words, To Love Somebody and Night Fever, the Bee Gees are second only to the Beatles in the 20th-century songwriting pantheon, but while their pop success spans several decades, there are different Bee Gees in different eras. Is there a central glue that unites the brothers and their music and, if so, what is it?

The Joy of the Bee Gees features a rare interview with the last remaining Bee Gee brother, Barry Gibb, many of those musicians and industry figures who have worked with them closely over the years, and a surprising cast of Bee Gees aficionados including John Lydon, Ana Matronic, Guy Chambers, Mykaell Riley and Alexis Petridis, who together share their stories and their insights into the band whose music and image moved us in the 60s and defined pop culture in the mid-to-late 1970s.

The film explores how the band were iconoclasts and outsiders, brothers in the family business, who worked best when together but who grew up and played out their fraternal struggles in public. The brothers went from child stars on the Australian variety circuit to competitors with the Beatles in the UK charts in the late 60s, scoring number one hits while still only teenagers.

In the mid-70s, the former 'beat group' reimagined themselves as a close-knit soul boy trio. The Saturday Night Fever album shot them to global superstardom and every radio station played a song written, produced or sung by the Bee Gees. The saturation of their music and their iconic 'medallion man' image would ultimately elbow them out of fashion, even make them figures of fun...

But you can't keep a good band down and in the 80s they became writing guns-for-hire to stars such as Kenny & Dolly, Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross. 1987 saw the band come back yet again and hit the top of the charts. The deaths of Maurice and then Robin brought the Bee Gees' reign to an end, but Barry and their music live on.

Let's enjoy finding out why and how: welcome to The Joy of the Bee Gees.


SAT 01:00 The Bee Gees at the BBC... and Beyond (b04v8679)
Classic Bee Gees studio performances from the BBC and beyond including all the big hits, rare 60s performances from European TV, including a stunning I Started a Joke, a rarely seen Top of the Pops performance of World, the big hits of the 70s and some late performances from the 90s, with the brothers Gibb in perfect harmony.


SAT 02:00 TOTP2 (b007v15w)
Boogie Fever: A TOTP2 Disco Special

Get your dancing shoes on for a show of disco mania as Steve Wright and the TOTP2 team take you back to the dancefloor for some boogie fever. The Bee Gees are here in all their glory, along with Gloria Gaynor, Liquid Gold, Sylvester, The Village People, The Weather Girls and The Three Degrees.

There's classic dance fodder from Chic, George McCrae, Hi-Tension, Heatwave, The JALN Band, Earth Wind and Fire, Tina Charles, The Gibson Brothers and Edwin Starr, disco pop from Blondie, Yazz, Boney M and Linx, while Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Infernal bring the story up to date.

And then there's the Disco Duck. Sorry...