The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
HMS Pickle is the unsung hero of the British navy. In 1805 Britain had just won the most significant sea battle in history, Trafalgar. But how to get the message home to an expectant nation? Enter the Pickle, the smallest ship in the fleet, a little boat with a revolutionary new design that beat her bigger rivals back to Britain to deliver the news. Sailor and writer Tom Cunliffe sets out in the Pickle and tells the story of a boat that, against all the odds, delivered the most important news in Britain's maritime history.
Iain Stewart journeys across the oceans to explore the most powerful giant waves in history, with ten remarkable stories about tsunamis.
These massive waves can be taller than the biggest skyscraper, travel at the speed of a jet plane and when they reach land, rear up and turn into a terrifying wall of water that destroys everything in its path. These unstoppable, uncontrollable forces of nature caused the ruin of an entire ancient civilization, may have played a small part in the demise of the dinosaurs, and in World War II were used as a weapon. Yet astonishingly, two men who surfed the tallest wave in history - half a kilometre high - survived.
For centuries the story of exploration has been packed with incredible tales of adventure, but the last fifty years has seen a dramatic shift in our attitude towards explorers.
To find out how television has reflected this, Prof Fara Dabhoiwala delves into the BBC television archives, revealing that the pace of this change was faster than you would imagine. In the 1960s the BBC was still making programmes showing Christopher Columbus as an uncomplicated conquering hero. Barely a decade later, it made a documentary that delved into museum storerooms packed with artefacts brought back to Britain by Captain Cook, focusing on the perspective of the explored rather than the explorer.
As the story of exploration became as much about social calamity as conquest, television has been forced to find new ways to portray explorers. By the 21st century this included everything from focusing on adventurers like Ernest Shackleton, famous not for conquest but for saving the lives of his men, to using new technology to demystify exploration by making programmes from material shot by the explorers themselves.
Actors can easily feel typecast. But it's 1987, and with AIDS hitting the headlines a promising new part looks like a game-changer for Phil.
Alice and her husband share a secret, but with the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957 it may not need to be a secret anymore.
Ben Fogle joins an expedition across Antarctica to find Captain Scott's hut, frozen in time for a century. The hut was built to support Scott's 1911 attempt to be first to the South Pole, and was later abandoned together with 10,000 personal, everyday and scientific items.
Ben uncovers the hut and its contents, finding new information about his hero Scott and his famously tragic expedition. Scott's diaries are read by Kenneth Branagh.
For the first time, the inner secrets of the gunpowder plotters are dramatised using the actual words of their most senior captured leader Thomas Wintour, Guy Fawkes and state interrogators investigating the 18-month conspiracy in which a family circle of militant Catholic gentlemen tried to blow up king and parliament.
Wintour's insider account of this epic tale of faith, fanaticism, persecution and betrayal is told in detail, from his recruitment of both Fawkes and his own brother to his capture in a dramatic siege and bloody shoot-out on 8 November.
The hopes, fears and plans for a Midlands rebellion, royal kidnap, the plotters' penetration of the king's bodyguard and Fawkes's attendance, sword in hand, at a wedding attended by the king in December 1604 are shown, as well as a dramatisation of the thrilling, forgotten story of the final days after 5/11 as the conspirators are hunted down and then face the terrible punishments reserved for traitors.
Dr Helen Czerski looks at the anatomy of an avalanche. From shocking eyewitness footage from within an avalanche to detailed CT scans showing the microscopic changes that cause them, we can now capture exactly what happens as snow transforms into a deadly and unpredictable danger.
WEDNESDAY 02 AUGUST 2017
WED 19:00 World News Today (b08zmpqf)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 The Boats That Built Britain (b00scqb3)
The Phoenix
The square rigger is arguably the most important vehicle in history. In the 19th century these boats transported finished goods and raw materials all over the world, transforming Britain from a second-rate European power into the richest and most powerful nation on earth.
Sailor and writer Tom Cunliffe sets out on the Phoenix, a plank-perfect square rigger, to discover just how these incredible boats changed Britain and the world forever.
WED 20:00 Inside Einstein's Mind: The Enigma of Space and Time (b06s75vs)
The story of the most elegant and powerful theory in science - Albert Einstein's general relativity.
When Einstein presented his formidable theory in November 1915, it turned our understanding of gravity, space and time completely on its head. Over the last 100 years, general relativity has enabled us to trace the origins of the universe to the Big Bang and to appreciate the enormous power of black holes.
To mark the 100th anniversary of general relativity, this film takes us inside the head of Einstein to witness how his idea evolved, giving new insights into the birth of a masterpiece that has become a cornerstone of modern science. This is not as daunting as it sounds - because Einstein liked to think in pictures. The film is a magical visual journey that begins in Einstein's young mind, follows the thought experiments that gave him stunning insights about the physical world, and ultimately reaches the extremes of modern physics.
WED 21:00 Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots (b08zn62b)
Series 1
Episode 2
Professor Danielle George MBE, an electronics engineer from Manchester University and a robot supporter, and Dr Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist from Anglia Ruskin University and robo-sceptic, uncover whether the rise of the robots will enhance the progress of humanity or ultimately threaten the survival of the human race.
With extraordinary access to the world's leading robot-makers, they meet the trailblazing machines who pioneered key evolutionary leaps for robot-kind, and their most advanced descendants - to uncover just how far we've really come.
In this episode, Danielle and Ben investigate whether robots will ever become our friends, if we should trust them with our lives, and if one day they will even become conscious.
The programme uncovers the roots of an essential ingredient of any relationship - the art of conversation. The presenters come face to face with a whole range of creations - from one of the first talking robots, Alpha, a 1930s gun-toting womaniser; and the one-sided conversations with Siri; or Valkyrie - a heroic female robot designed to pave the way for us to set up home on Mars; to a little robot called Kirobo - designed to be a companion on the International Space Station. Unbearably cute, Kirobo even has the body language off pat - turning and nodding as he speaks.
Ben visits the first attempt to make a robotic brain - a 1940s tortoise born in Bristol - with a rudimentary awareness of its surroundings, before meeting its most advanced descendant - the driverless car. Can Ben overcome his inherent fear of robots and put his trust in a robotic car enough take his hands off the wheel?
Finally, we meet some astonishing robots who aren't simply pre-programmed with facts about the world, they learn about it for themselves. The one-metre-high iCub not only looks like a child, but he learns like one. Just like a two-year-old he is learning to count on his fingers and is forming his own unique understanding of the world.
As robots continue to evolve, Ben and Danielle consider the unsettling question of what it would mean if robots developed consciousness.
WED 22:00 Queers (b08zzbhb)
Series 1
I Miss the War
The 1967 Sexual Offences Act will revolutionise everything, won't it? Well, perhaps not as far as dapper gent Jackie is concerned.
WED 22:20 Queers (b08zzbhd)
Series 1
Safest Spot in Town
As the Blitz hits London, Fredrick is grateful that he survived in a very unlikely place of refuge.
WED 22:40 Horizon (b04knbny)
2014-2015
Is Your Brain Male or Female?
Dr Michael Mosley and Professor Alice Roberts investigate whether male and female brains really are wired differently.
New research suggests that the connections in men and women's brains follow different patterns, patterns which may explain typical forms of male and female behaviour. But are these patterns innate, or are they shaped by the world around us?
Using a team of human lab rats and a troop of barbary monkeys, Michael and Alice test the science and challenge old stereotypes. They ask whether this new scientific research will benefit both men and women - or whether it could drive the sexes even further apart.
WED 23:40 The Joy of Logic (b03k6ypz)
A sharp, witty, mind-expanding and exuberant foray into the world of logic with computer scientist Professor Dave Cliff. Following in the footsteps of the award-winning The Joy of Stats and its sequel Tails You Win - The Science of Chance, this film takes viewers on a new rollercoaster ride through philosophy, maths, science and technology- all of which, under the bonnet, run on logic.
Wielding the same wit and wisdom, animation and gleeful nerdery as its predecessors, this film journeys from Aristotle to Alice in Wonderland, sci-fi to supercomputers to tell the fascinating story of the quest for certainty and the fundamentals of sound reasoning itself.
Dave Cliff, professor of computer science and engineering at Bristol University, is no abstract theoretician. 15 years ago he combined logic and a bit of maths to write one of the first computer programs to outperform humans at trading stocks and shares. Giving away the software for free, he says, was not his most logical move...
With the help of 25 seven-year-olds, Professor Cliff creates, for the first time ever, a computer made entirely of children, running on nothing but logic. We also meet the world's brainiest whizz-kids, competing at the International Olympiad of Informatics in Brisbane, Australia.
The film also hails logic's all-time heroes: George Boole who moved logic beyond philosophy to mathematics; Bertrand Russell, who took 360+ pages but heroically proved that 1 + 1 = 2; Kurt Godel, who brought logic to its knees by demonstrating that some truths are unprovable; and Alan Turing, who, with what Cliff calls an 'almost exquisite paradox', was inspired by this huge setback to logic to conceive the computer.
Ultimately, the film asks, can humans really stay ahead? Could today's generation of logical computing machines be smarter than us? What does that tell us about our own brains, and just how 'logical' we really are...?
WED 00:40 Voyages of Discovery (b0074t6g)
Hanging by a Thread
Explorer Paul Rose tells the story of the USS Squalus submarine which became stranded on the bottom of the Atlantic in 1937. No one had ever been saved from a stricken sub beneath the ocean before, but maverick designer Charles Momsen, who had been ignored by the navy top brass, was suddenly called into action to bring up the crew.
Rose meets the last living survivor from the sub and one of the men, now 103, who helped save him. The rescue kick-started a whole new era of technology, laying the foundation for modern deep-sea diving.
WED 01:40 Inside Einstein's Mind: The Enigma of Space and Time (b06s75vs)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WED 02:40 Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots (b08zn62b)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 03 AUGUST 2017
THU 19:00 World News Today (b08zmpqr)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b08zn99n)
Peter Powell and Gary Davies present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 19 April 1984. Featuring The Special AKA, Thompson Twins, Blancmange, Queen, Nik Kershaw, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Lionel Richie and Kool and the Gang.
THU 20:00 Shipwrecks: Britain's Sunken History (b03lytyp)
Civilising the Sea
Shipwrecks are the nightmare we have forgotten - the price Britain paid for ruling the waves from an island surrounded by treacherous rocks. The result is a coastline that is home to the world's highest concentration of sunken ships. But shipwrecks also changed the course of British history, helped shape our national character and drove innovations in seafaring technology, as well as gripping our imagination.
The terrible toll taken by shipwrecks was such that in the winter of 1820 some 20,000 seaman lost their lives in the North Sea alone. That's 20 jumbo jets. But in the final part of his series, maritime historian Sam Willis tells the stirring story of how the Victorians were finally driven into action, finding various ingenious solutions - from rockets that could fire rescue lines aboard stricken vessels to lifejackets, lifeboats and the Plimsoll Line, which outlawed overloading.
In Africa, he traces the legend of the Birkenhead Drill - the origin of 'women and children first'. Decorum even in disaster was the new Victorian way and it was conspicuously on hand to turn history's most iconic shipwreck - Titanic - into a tragic monument to British restraint.
THU 21:00 Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain (b08zn99q)
Series 1
Episode 2
Every so often the world changes beyond your wildest dreams. In 1967 the Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised homosexuality, offering lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people the opportunity to start living openly for the first time.
Presented by Stephen K Amos and Susan Calman, this unique series features LGBTQ people from across the UK as they share the objects that helped define their lives during 50 transformative years.
In episode two, these crowdsourced artefacts include a copy of the controversial schoolbook Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, naval discharge papers and even a pair of Ugg boots.
We meet the nun-impersonating freedom fighters the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the writer behind TV's steamiest lesbian kiss and a Muslim man who set up an LGBT support group for Southeast Asians.
Ranging from 1987 to 2017, this was an era when public acceptance of homosexuality overtook the government's - a time when many celebrities came out and stood up for LGBTQ rights. But it is also the story of ordinary people in extraordinary times - told through their treasured possessions - charting the joys and heartbreaks of just being true to yourself.
Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain is part of Gay Britannia, a season of programming produced in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.
THU 22:00 Queers (b08zzcm3)
Series 1
The Perfect Gentleman
Bobby is a swaggering man about town. But Bobby has a secret. Can it survive when it really matters?
THU 22:20 Queers (b08zzcm5)
Series 1
Something Borrowed
Steve, a groom-to-be, anxiously prepares his wedding speech. But now the big day is here, what has been won and what has been lost?
THU 22:40 Timeshift (b01rjr2y)
Series 12
How To Be A Lady: An Elegant History
Journalist Rachel Johnson goes in search of what seems an almost vanished social type - the lady. With a handful of vintage etiquette books to guide her and a generous helping of film archive, she wants to find out how the idea of the lady changed over time - and what it might mean to be one now. Along the way she tries out etiquette classes and side-saddle lessons, as well as discovering that debutante balls have been revived for export.
THU 23:40 Top of the Pops (b08zn99n)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 00:15 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b038rkw9)
Aethelstan: The First King of England
In this third episode, Alfred's grandson Aethelstan fulfils the family plan and creates a kingdom of all England.
Travelling from Devon to Cumbria, Scotland and Rome, Michael Wood tells the tale of Aethelstan's wars, his learning and his lawmaking, showing how he created a national coinage and tracing the origin of the English parliament to the king's new assembly politics. But there's also a dark side, with later legends that the king had his brother drowned at sea. In his last desperate struggle, Aethelstan defeated a huge invasion of Vikings and Scots in what became known as the Anglo-Saxon 'Great War'.
Wood argues that Aethelstan was one of the greatest English monarchs, and with his grandfather Alfred, his father Edward and his aunt Aethelflaed, a member of our most remarkable royal family and 'even more than the Tudors, the most gifted and influential rulers in British history'.
THU 01:15 Shipwrecks: Britain's Sunken History (b03lytyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
THU 02:15 Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain (b08zn99q)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 04 AUGUST 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b08zmpr6)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b08znbn1)
Simon Bates and Janice Long present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 26 April 1984. Featuring Sandie Shaw and The Smiths, Duran Duran, Julio Iglesias & Willie Nelson, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Flying Pickets and Lionel Richie.
FRI 20:00 BBC Proms (b08znbn3)
2017
Ella and Dizzy Revisited
A special Proms tribute to jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, in the centenary year of their births. Grammy Award-winning singer Dianne Reeves and sensational trumpeter James Morrison perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Hollywood music legend John Mauceri, as they showcase some of the music most closely associated with Ella and Dizzy.
FRI 22:10 Reginald D Hunter's Songs of the South (p02j959j)
Mississippi and Louisiana
In the final part of his road trip, Reginald D Hunter follows in the footsteps of Huckleberry Finn with a trip down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans through the Delta to learn about the birth of blues and how it manifests itself today.
In Louisiana, Reg takes a detour to a bayou to learn about Creole culture and zydeco before winding up in New Orleans to meet the city's musical triumvirate of Dr John, Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas.
Also featuring Stax musicians Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd.
FRI 23:10 Oh You Pretty Things: The Story of Music and Fashion (b04j1wxw)
Tribes
Just how did Britain become the place where the best music goes with the most eye-catching styles? Lauren Laverne narrates a series about the love affair between our music and fashion, looking at how musicians and designers came up with the coolest and craziest looks and how we emulated our idols.
British pop and rock is our great gift to the world, at the heart of the irrepressible creative brilliance of Britain. But it has never just been about the music. Across the decades we have unleashed a uniquely British talent for fusing the best sounds with stunning style and fashion to dazzling effect.
The series begins in the golden years of the 1960s. Mod legends The Small Faces became the best-dressed band in England, Cilla Black and fashion label BIBA were a perfect fit, while The Beatles and The Stones embraced the foppish hair and frilly shirts of psychedelia. Through rude boys and rockers, the relationship between music and fashion blossomed, becoming intimately entwined in the sound and vision of Roxy Music.
But this isn't just a story of brillant musicians and maverick designers, it's a story that touches us all because, at some point in our lives, we've all delved into the great dressing-up box and joined the pageant that is British music and fashion.
FRI 00:10 Oh You Pretty Things: The Story of Music and Fashion (b04j8ttm)
Idols
Just how did Britain become the place where the best music goes with the most eye-catching styles? Lauren Laverne narrates a series about the love affair between our music and fashion, looking at how musicians and designers came up with the coolest and craziest looks and how we emulated our idols.
British pop and rock is our great gift to the world, at the heart of the irrepressible creative brilliance of Britain. But it has never just been about the music. Across the decades we have unleashed a uniquely British talent for fusing the best sounds with stunning style and fashion to dazzling effect.
The second episode takes us through the 1970s, a decade of political, social and cultural upheaval reflected best in its music and fashion. Suzi Quatro on Top of the Pops unleashed her leather jumpsuit into the living rooms of Britain at the birth of the rock chick look. The fantastical world of prog rock emerged, with its golden-caped leader Rick Wakeman and his army of intellectual but corduroy-wearing followers journeying from the university campus to medieval and fantastical Arthurian worlds. Queen rocked the rainbow in their Zandra Rhodes-designed costumes, amazing the audience and cementing the band as one of the country's most loved and most flamboyant bands of all time.
But no other British music and fashion movement has had more reverberation than the international phenomena of punk, beginning (and, some say, ending) with The Sex Pistols' sweary appearance with Bill Grundy on the Today programme.
However, this isn't just a story of brilliant musicians and maverick designers, it's a story that touches us all because, at some point in our lives, we've all delved into the great dressing-up box and joined the pageant that is British music and fashion.
FRI 01:10 Oh You Pretty Things: The Story of Music and Fashion (b04jy2s1)
Image
Just how did Britain become the place where the best music goes with the most eye-catching styles? Lauren Laverne narrates a series about the love affair between our music and fashion, looking at how musicians and designers came up with the coolest and craziest looks and how we emulated our idols.
British pop and rock is our great gift to the world, at the heart of the irrepressible creative brilliance of Britain. But it has never just been about the music. Across the decades we have unleashed a uniquely British talent for fusing the best sounds with stunning style and fashion to dazzling effect.
The final episode in the series takes us into the 1980s - the decade when, thanks to the music video, image became everything. From Dexys Midnight Runners in their austere work wear and dungarees, through the flamboyant new romantics of London's Blitz club, the anti-fashion statements of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to the band with the image that typified the decade - Duran Duran. The episode ends, as the decade did, with the emerging popularity of urban street wear led by Jazzie B and Soul II Soul.
But this isn't just a story of brilliant musicians and maverick designers, it's a story that touches us all because at some point in our lives, we've all delved into the great dressing-up box and joined the pageant that is British music and fashion.
FRI 02:10 Top of the Pops (b08znbn1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
FRI 02:50 Reginald D Hunter's Songs of the South (p02j959j)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:10 today]