Victoria Coren Mitchell hosts the series where knowledge will only take you so far. Patience and lateral thinking are also vital. The Wanderers and Inquisitors return for a round-two game. They compete to draw together the connections between things which at first glance, seem utterly random. So join Victoria Coren Mitchell if you want to know what comes fourth in this sequence - Throat, Hump, Skin, ?
It is the first of the second-round matches when two teams battle it out for a place in the quarter-finals. Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.
Solo show-stoppers from the world's greatest musicians in a journey through fifty years of BBC Music. From guitarist John Williams and cellist Jacqueline du Pre to trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and violinist Nigel Kennedy, this is a treasure trove of musical treats and dazzling virtuosity.
Whether it's James Galway's Flight of the Bumblebee performed at superhuman speed, Ravi Shankar's mesmerising Raag Bihag or Dudley Moore's brilliant Colonel Bogey March, every performance has its own star quality and unique appeal. Parkinson, Later with Jools Holland, The Les Dawson Show, Music at Night and Wogan are among the programmes featuring instruments ranging from marimba and kora to harp and flamenco guitar.
Sharks are more than just hunters. Only now are discoveries revealing a hidden side to their character. They have an intricate social life, complex courtship rituals, surprising ways of bringing up their young and extraordinary powers of navigation. They can forge relationships with the strangest of partners, even us! This is the secret life of the shark.
Bob Harris introduces highlights of the 51st annual CMA Awards from Nashville, Tennessee. Hosted by country music superstars Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood, the CMAs are the biggest night of the year in the country music calendar. Performers announced include Garth Brooks, Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town and Keith Urban as well as collaborations featuring pop star P!NK, Tim McGraw & Faith Hill, and Niall Horan & Maren Morris.
Award-winning comedian Rich Hall takes a country music journey from Tennessee to Texas to look at the movements and artists that don't get as much notoriety but have helped shape the genre over the years.
With the help of prominent performers and producers including Michael Martin Murphey, Robbie Fulks and Ray Benson, Rich explores the early origins of country music in Nashville and Austin. He visits the rustic studios where this much-loved sound was born and discovers how the genre has reinvented itself with influences from bluegrass, western swing and Americana.
Rich also explores how the music industries differ between these two cities and how they each generated their own distinct twist on the genre, from cosmic country and redneck country to the outlaw artists of the 1970s. Through Working Dog, a three-minute self-penned soap opera about a collie dog, Rich illustrates how different styles can change.
As he unearths the roots and inner workings of country music, Rich finds it's more than just music - it's a lifestyle.
Grab your partner by the hand - the BBC have raided their archive and brought to light glittering performances by country artists over the last four decades.
Star appearances include Tammy Wynette, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and, of course, Dolly Parton. All the greats have performed for the BBC at some point - on entertainment shows, in concert and at the BBC studios. Some of the rhinestones revealed are Charley Pride's Crystal Chandeliers from The Lulu Show, Emmylou Harris singing Together Again on The Old Grey Whistle Test and Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy from The Val Doonican Music Show.
We're brought up to date with modern country hits from Top of the Pops and Later...with Jools Holland.
MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017
MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09g5wdm)
Series 1
20/11/2017
Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.
MON 19:30 Great Continental Railway Journeys (b08gdltd)
Series 4 - Reversions
Vienna to Trieste - Part 1
Armed with his 1913 railway guide, Michael Portillo travels the Habsburg imperial line from Vienna across the awe-inspiring Semmering Pass, a handmade railway line blasted through the Alps.
Michael's journey takes him through a patchwork of nations which a century ago formed part of the Austro Hungarian empire. His destination is the Adriatic port of Trieste. In Vienna, he encounters a pre-Cold War spy and hears for himself the concert that caused a riot in 1913. At the winter sports resort of Semmering, rails of a slippier kind prove hard to navigate when Michael takes to a toboggan.
In Austria's second city, Graz, Michael ventures underground at the Lurgrotte Caves to find out about a famous turn-of-the-century rescue operation. Over the border in the former imperial territory of Slovenia, Michael discovers how an earthquake in Ljubljana encouraged its citizens to assert their national identity in architecture and art. In high spirits, with the help of the local liquor, Michael says 'Nosdraviya' to Slovenia and heads south.
Arriving in Italy at the empire's southern port of Trieste, Michael savours the imported coffee which fuelled the cafe culture of its elegant capital, Vienna.
MON 20:00 Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome (b0671rt9)
Athens
In the opening episode of the series, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill takes us on a journey across stunning locations in Greece and Italy to find out how Athens gave birth to the idea of a city run by free citizens 2,500 years ago. Every aspect of daily life from defence to waste disposal was controlled not by a king, but by the Athenians themselves. Ultimately, this radical new system would define a way of life and the Athenians would give it a name. They called it people power, demo-kratia or democracy. On our journey we meet the people who still see ancient Athens as the model for running the great cities of today, including perhaps the ancient capital's greatest champion in our modern one - Boris Johnson.
We discover how the Greeks created the first system of open government, and wrote the first constitution that laid down the rights of Athenian citizens nearly 2,000 years before our Magna Carta. Its creator was born in the 7th century BC, and even more surprisingly, the only surviving ancient copy is found on a papyrus not in Greece or Rome, but hidden away at the British Library in London, and it has never been filmed before. Andrew explains that it was this citizen-centric approach which created institutions that would build a city which was the envy of its day, with public libraries, public law courts, a public water supply and public space. In so doing, Athens would set a benchmark not just for the cities of the Ancient World, but also for those of the present and the future.
MON 21:00 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.
MON 22:00 Storyville (b09gljns)
My Mother's Lost Children
An eccentric Jewish family is thrown into turmoil when two stolen children reappear after 40 years.
MON 23:30 The Last Journey of the Magna Carta King (b052hrdd)
Ben Robinson retraces the dramatic last days of King John, England's most disastrous monarch, and uncovers the legend of his lost treasure.
John is famous for accepting Magna Carta, which inspired our modern democracy. But ten days him from ruler of an empire to sudden death and left the kingdom in ruins.
Ben follows in the footsteps of the king's epic last journey, from the treacherous marshes of East Anglia, through Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, to his final resting place in Worcester. He is joined by medieval historian professor Stephen Church.
Together they examine the truth behind the legend that has lived on for 800 years. Did the crown jewels really end up in the mud of the Wash? Was the king poisoned? Does he deserve his reputation as our most disastrous monarch?
Thanks to unique documents, we can tell this epic tale in the king's own words. Not only can we get into the mind of the Magna Carta king, we can reveal in fantastic detail how and where he travelled.
Ben reveals what happened when treasure seekers attempted to find the king's lost jewels with the help of a diviner. And using the latest technology reveals how we can actually see back in time to reveal the landscape as it would have looked when King John made his last journey 800 years ago.
MON 00:30 Swim the Channel (b07ll8s6)
In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb - with little more than some brandy, beer and beef tea to keep him going - became the first man to successfully swim from England to France. Since then more people have conquered Everest than successfully swum across the Channel. To this day, it remains the ultimate open water swimming challenge.
This documentary tells the story of those who keep Captain Webb's vision alive - the volunteer coaches and the unlikeliest of athletes who they tirelessly support in their dream to swim from England to France. The rules are simple - no physical aids, no wimp/wet suits, just a swimsuit, goggles, the all-important swimming cap and a spot of grease to stop the chafing.
At the heart of the community are pensioners Freda, Irene and Barry. They can be found in Dover every weekend from May to September come rain or shine, ready to train, feed and grease the wannabe Channel swimmers. The swimmers do not take on this arduous journey alone, and also rely on the skill of the pilots who navigate them safely to the other side of the busiest shipping lane in the world.
The community share their highs and lows both in and out of the water as they train together on this small stretch of pebbled beach shadowed by the ferry port. Feasting on jelly babies, and fuelled by adrenalin and dreams, the modern-day swimmer continues to risk it all in this, the ultimate challenge of man versus nature.
MON 01:30 Keys to the Castle (p01nnztr)
A touching and often funny observational documentary about a charming couple in their twilight years, who have lived in their beloved Scottish castle since rebuilding it from ruins 40 years ago.
Award-winning film-maker Darren Hercher follows Sandy and Alisoun Grant during their final few months in Inverquharity Castle as they come to terms with the emotional and practical difficulties of leaving a home they have loved.
As the challenges of age take their toll, Alisoun, for the first time in her long marriage to Sandy, has had to take control of their destiny and make increasingly difficult decisions about their day-to-day lives and future. The hardest truth for Alisoun to accept was that living in the castle had become impossible.
As the move approaches, and their lives are turned upside down, the film follows Alisoun as she faces the daunting task of downsizing from a castle to a bungalow. The distressing reasons behind the move gradually become clear and are gently explored.
Having handed over the keys to the castle, Sandy and Alisoun face the future with equal measures of trepidation and optimism, their unwavering commitment and love for each other always at the heart of the film as a new chapter approaches.
MON 02:30 Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome (b0671rt9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
TUESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2017
TUE 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09g5wdv)
Series 1
21/11/2017
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
TUE 19:30 Great Continental Railway Journeys (b08gdt5m)
Series 4 - Reversions
Vienna to Trieste - Part 2
Armed with his 1913 railway guide, Michael Portillo travels the Habsburg imperial line from Vienna across the awe-inspiring Semmering Pass, a handmade railway line blasted through the Alps.
Michael's journey takes him through a patchwork of nations which a century ago formed part of the Austro Hungarian empire. His destination is the Adriatic port of Trieste. In Vienna, he encounters a pre-Cold War spy and hears for himself the concert that caused a riot in 1913. At the winter sports resort of Semmering, rails of a slippier kind prove hard to navigate when Michael takes to a toboggan.
In Austria's second city, Graz, Michael ventures underground at the Lurgrotte Caves to find out about a famous turn-of-the-century rescue operation. Over the border in the former imperial territory of Slovenia, Michael discovers how an earthquake in Ljubljana encouraged its citizens to assert their national identity in architecture and art. In high spirits, with the help of the local liquor, Michael says 'Nosdraviya' to Slovenia and heads south.
Arriving in Italy at the empire's southern port of Trieste, Michael savours the imported coffee which fuelled the cafe culture of its elegant capital, Vienna.
TUE 20:00 Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost Middleland (b040mkvp)
Episode 2
Hadrian's Wall cut a deep scar across Britain that would never be forgotten. A thousand years after the Romans left, the island split once again, near the line of the wall, into the Kingdoms of England and Scotland.
Historian and MP Rory Stewart tells the story of how Britain was torn in two. The border country dividing Britain's lost Middleland became a zone of anarchy, as violent as border areas in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
TUE 21:00 Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow (p01m732z)
Episode 2
Dan Snow and his team continue down the Grand Canyon in antique wooden boats as they rediscover one of the Wild West's great adventures.
TUE 22:00 Timeshift (b08lkx0y)
Series 17
Roof Racks and Hatchbacks: The Family Car
The family car. We grow up in the back seat - and before we know it, we find ourselves in the driving seat...
Timeshift explores the British experience of the family car, from the groundbreaking Morris Minor to the ubiquitous Ford Cortina, the Range Rover to the new Jaguar F-Pace - not to mention their imported rivals, such as the Volkswagen Golf and the Volvo estate.
Despite its reputation for being practical and sensible, designers have long endeavoured to make the family car attractive, even exciting, and to keep pace as the family and its requirements have evolved over the decades. Can a family vehicle be small - like the Mini? Or fast - like the Golf GTi? And what's the real reason why so many of today's family cars seem so enormous?
But the story of the family car isn't just about design. It's about the joy and frustration of parents and kids being cooped up on the road together. A saga of continental road trips and games of I-spy, backseat squabbles and impromptu toilet breaks. For better or worse, the car is one of the few remaining places where families still get to be a family.
Contributors include motoring journalists Richard Porter and Zog Ziegler, author Ben Hatch and leading car designer Ian Callum.
TUE 23:00 Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (b00s77pc)
Spirit of the Age
In a series about the extraordinary stories behind maps, Professor Jerry Brotton shows how maps can reveal the fears, obsessions and prejudices of their age.
Religious passion inspires beautiful medieval maps of the world, showing the way to heaven, the pilgrims' route to Jerusalem and monstrous children who eat their parents. But by the Victorian era society is obsessed with race, poverty and disease. Royal cartographer James Wyld's world map awards each country a mark from one to five, depending on how 'civilised' he deems each nation to be. And a map made to help Jewish immigrants in the East End inadvertently fuels anti-semitism.
'Map wars' break out in the 1970s when left-wing journalist Arno Peters claims that the world map shown in most atlases was a lie that short-changed the developing world. In Zurich, Brotton talks to Google Earth about the cutting edge of cartography and at Worldmapper he sees how social problems such as infant mortality and HIV are strikingly portrayed on computer-generated maps that bend the world out of shape and reflect the spirit of our age.
TUE 00:00 Kew's Forgotten Queen (b07xjghp)
Within Kew Gardens stands an extraordinary gallery, celebrating the work of one of the most prolific botanical artists of the Victorian age. At a time when women barely left their parlour rooms, Marianne North's globetrotting exploits defied convention as she travelled alone at the height of the British Empire. From Borneo and Brazil to Japan, South Africa, Australia and India, she fearlessly navigated the world twice over in her pursuit of capturing every living plant on canvas.
Actress Emilia Fox tells the story of how this Victorian rebel changed the face of botanical research, propelling her to the top of a male-dominated world of science and exploration, gaining the admiration of Charles Darwin and even Queen Victoria. Retracing Marianne's footsteps and her passion for the natural world, Emilia revisits the awe-inspiring locations of some of her greatest experiences.
With exclusive access to Kew Gardens and Marianne's wealth of personal memoirs, letters and paintings, this is a tantalising tale of a visionary who rejected marriage and social convention for a pioneering life of conservation and adventure. Her artistic legacy remains as mesmerising today as it was in 1882 when her gallery opened at Kew Gardens.
TUE 01:00 Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost Middleland (b040mkvp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
TUE 02:00 Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow (p01m732z)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUE 03:00 Timeshift (b08lkx0y)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2017
WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09g5wf0)
Series 1
22/11/2017
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
WED 19:30 Great Continental Railway Journeys (b08gf0nt)
Series 4 - Reversions
Pisa to Lake Garda - Part 1
Bradshaw's 1913 Continental Railway Guide in hand, Michael Portillo makes a grand tour of a favourite Edwardian destination - Italy - where he experiences first hand the nation's need for speed in a state-of-the-art Maserati sports car.
Michael discovers from a British engineer how the leaning tower of Pisa was rescued from near collapse. In Carrara, he finds out how the marble used by Michelangelo is still quarried today and is invited to chip away at a contemporary sculpture. In Bologna, he embarks on a doomed search for spaghetti bolognese - until a cookery teacher takes pity on him and shows him how to make a much more authentic tagliatelle al ragu.
Following in the footsteps of Bradshaw's travellers, Michael explores the cradle of the Renaissance through Edwardian eyes but learns in Florence that the tourists' 'Italietta' was far removed from the new Italy envisaged by the futurists of the time. Heading north to Gargnano, Michael discovers the romantic hideaway of one of Britain's most famous writers, DH Lawrence, whose affair with his professor's wife scandalised his home country. Michael ends his journey in futuristic style with a high-speed boat trip across Lake Garda.
WED 20:00 How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears (b044jl70)
Mountains
Ray Mears looks at how the landscapes of America's three great mountain ranges - the Appalachians, the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada - challenged the westward push of the early pioneers.
As Ray travels through each landscape he discovers how their awe-inspiring geography, extreme weather, wild animals and ecology presented both great opportunities and great challenges for the native Indians, mountain men, fur traders, wagon trains and gold miners of the Wild West.
Ray begins his westward journey in the Appalachians where he explores how their timbered slopes fuelled the lumber industry and provided the fuel and building material for the emerging nation. Native Appalachian Barbara Woodall and lumberjack Joe Currie share their family history with him, and he gets to grips with the rare 'hellbender' salamander.
Further west, in the high jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Ray goes mule trekking with modern-day mountain man Stu Sorenson and he has close encounters with beaver, elk and black bear.
Finally, in the desert mountains of the Sierra Nevada, he explores the tragic story of the Donner Party wagon train whose members allegedly turned to cannibalism to survive. His journey ends as he pans for gold with modern day gold prospector John Gurney, and explores the boom and bust story of ghost town, Bodie.
WED 21:00 Digging for Britain (b09gfxbj)
Series 6
West
Professor Alice Roberts explores some of this year's most exciting archaeological finds from the west of Britain. Each discovery comes straight from the trenches/site, filmed by the archaeologists themselves. We discover the camp from which Vikings invaded Britain, and find groundbreaking new evidence that the world-famous Avebury stone circle isn't just a sacred site but a place where our ancestors lived and worked - a discovery that's also changing our understanding of neighbouring Stonehenge. In Staffordshire, the oldest Iron Age gold in Britain is unearthed - a set of beautiful gold torcs, mysteriously abandoned 2,500 years ago.
WED 22:00 Detectorists (b09g64vk)
Series 3
Episode 3
With time running out, Andy and Lance go to great (action-packed) lengths to protect their land. Away from the fields, life is no less stressful as Andy quits his job and Lance finds an unwelcome guest in the spare room. An audacious theft leaves Lance reeling.
WED 22:30 The League of Gentlemen (p008wlw4)
Series 1
Nightmare in Royston Vasey
Black comedy set in fictional bizarre northern town of Royston Vasey. Work on the new road begins but a terrifying discovery is made. Pauline's jobseekers are taught interview techniques. A tortoise meets a sticky end.
WED 23:00 Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers: Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes (p040pwl2)
Spies
What is the allure of the classic espionage story? As Andrew Marr argues in the conclusion to his series about the books we (really) read, the British spy novel is much more than a cloak-and-dagger affair. Rather, these books allow readers to engage with some pretty big questions about the human condition - principally, who are you? What or who would you be willing to betray? And for what cause would you lay your life on the line?
To help him decipher the rules of the classic espionage story, Andrew travels to Berlin in the footsteps of master spy novelist John le Carre, whose experience of witnessing the Berlin Wall being erected in 1961 inspired him to write the 20th century's greatest spy novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Andrew uncovers the various conventions that have governed the genre since it began. He shows how early spy novelists created a climate of fear, how they introduced the debonair gentleman spy, and how through the works of former secret agents such as Somerset Maugham they translated the often mundane details of espionage into their stories. The tradecraft of spywriting is gleaned from writers Frederick Forsyth, William Boyd, Gerald Seymour, Charles Cumming as well as novelist (and former director general of MI5) Dame Stella Rimington. And Andrew considers the future of the fictional spy in an age when the agent on the ground is being superseded by electronic surveillance.
WED 00:00 Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (b07gpdbz)
A colourful character who was not only ahead of her time but helped to define it, Peggy Guggenheim was an heiress to a family fortune who became a central figure in the modern art movement. As she moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century, she collected not only art; she collected artists. Her colourful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp as well as countless others. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo.
WED 01:30 How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears (b044jl70)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WED 02:30 Digging for Britain (b09gfxbj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 23 NOVEMBER 2017
THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09g5wf5)
Series 1
23/11/2017
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 Great Continental Railway Journeys (b08h7s8h)
Series 4 - Reversions
Pisa to Lake Garda - Part 2
Bradshaw's 1913 Continental Railway Guide in hand, Michael Portillo makes a grand tour of a favourite Edwardian destination - Italy - where he experiences first-hand the nation's need for speed in a state-of-the-art Maserati sports car.
Michael discovers from a British engineer how the leaning tower of Pisa was rescued from near collapse. In Carrara, he finds out how the marble used by Michelangelo is still quarried today and is invited to chip away at a contemporary sculpture. In Bologna, he embarks on a doomed search for spaghetti bolognese - until a cookery teacher takes pity on him and shows him how to make a much more authentic tagliatelle al ragu.
Following in the footsteps of Bradshaw's travellers, Michael explores the cradle of the Renaissance through Edwardian eyes but learns in Florence that the tourists' 'Italietta' was far removed from the new Italy envisaged by the futurists of the time. Heading north to Gargnano, Michael discovers the romantic hideaway of one of Britain's most famous writers, DH Lawrence, whose affair with his professor's wife scandalised his home country. Michael ends his journey in futuristic style with a high-speed boat trip across Lake Garda.
THU 20:00 SAS: Rogue Warriors (b08fmysp)
Series 1
Episode 2
With the tragic loss of Jock Lewes, Stirling's second in command is now the newly promoted Captain Paddy Mayne - an officer as unpredictable and dangerous as the new phase of war that is about to begin. Unknown to David Stirling, the Germans are training special units to track, intercept and kill the marauding SAS. The hunters soon become the hunted. The SAS has to adapt if it is going to survive. Disaster strikes when Stirling is captured by the Germans. As the SAS prepare to fight Hitler in Europe, they are without the inspirational leadership of the man who created them.
THU 21:00 Horizon (b03wyr3c)
2013-2014
How You Really Make Decisions
Horizon uncovers the truth about how you really make decisions.
Every day you make thousands of decisions, big and small, and behind all them is a powerful battle in your mind, pitting intuition against logic.
This conflict affects every aspect of your life - from what you eat to what you believe, and especially to how you spend your money.
And it turns out that the intuitive part of your mind is a lot more powerful than you may realise.
THU 22:00 Britain's Greatest Pilot: The Extraordinary Story of Captain Winkle Brown (b045pbq2)
Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown recounts his flying experiences, encounters with the Nazis and other adventures leading up to and during the Second World War. Illustrated with archive footage and Captain Brown's own photos.
THU 23:00 Operation Jericho (b016n2zz)
Actor and aviator Martin Shaw takes to the skies to rediscover one of the most audacious and daring raids of World War II.
On the morning of 18th February 1944, a squadron of RAF Mosquito bombers, flying as low as three metres over occupied France, demolished the walls of Amiens Jail in what became known as Operation Jericho. The reasons behind the controversial raid remain a mystery to this day.
This dramatic documentary investigates the missing pieces of the story, with interviews from survivors and aircrew, and tries to find out why the raid was ordered and by whom.
THU 00:00 B is for Book (b07jlzb7)
Documentary following a group of primary schoolchildren over the course of a year as they learn to read. Some of them make a flying start, but others struggle even with the alphabet. The film takes us into their home lives, where we find that some parents are strongly aspirational, tutoring children late into the night, while others speak English as a foreign language, if at all.
As the children master the basics, they discover the magical world of stories and look with fresh eyes at the world around them. The film gives us privileged access to a profound process that all of us only ever do once in our lives.
THU 01:00 SAS: Rogue Warriors (b08fmysp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
THU 02:00 Britain's Greatest Pilot: The Extraordinary Story of Captain Winkle Brown (b045pbq2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
THU 03:00 Horizon (b03wyr3c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRIDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b09g5wfd)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Great Continental Railway Journeys (b08h7zs8)
Series 4 - Reversions
Athens to Thessaloniki - Part 1
Armed with his 1913 Continental Railway Guide, Michael Portillo embarks on a Greek odyssey from Athens's port of Piraeus north to the city of Thessaloniki, captured the year before from the Ottoman Turks, who had ruled much of Greece for 400 years.
Exploring the Acropolis and delighting in the tastes of moussaka and baklava, Michael discovers the many influences at play in the creation of modern Greece - from its classical past to the oriental Ottomans and the great European powers of Britain, France and Russia.
Along the way, Michael discovers the parlous state of Greek finances at the time of his guidebook. He learns how an aristocratic English poet became a Greek national hero and relives Greek athletic victory at the first modern Olympic games.
Travelling through the Corinth Canal, Michael finds out about the surprisingly ancient origins of the modern railway. In Delphi, he discovers how at the turn of the 20th century an entire village was removed in order to excavate the site of the oracle.
Boarding one of the narrowest gauge railways in the world, the Little Train of Pelion, Michael travels to the village of Milies, where he learns about the place of the Orthodox Church in Greek national life. Michael ends his journey in Thessaloniki where, in 1913, Greece's King George I was assassinated.
FRI 20:00 The Good Old Days (b09glkdp)
Leonard Sachs presents the old-time music hall programme, first broadcast on 9 July 1980. Featuring Bernard Cribbins, Lorna Dallas, Sheila Bernette, Julia Sutton, John Rutland, Norman Warwick, Nuts and Bolts, Vince Hill and members of the Players' Theatre, London.
FRI 20:50 Sounds of the Seventies (b0074t1m)
Shorts
Sweet, Slade and Mud
More fizzy nuggets of seventies pop from the BBC archive. Three giants of the seven-inch single perform Blockbuster, Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Tiger Feet.
FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (b03mpphy)
1979 - Big Hits
1979 Top of the Pops collection, offering 60 minutes of the year's greatest, cheesiest and oddest performances. 1979 was the year music went portable with the launch of the Sony walkman and another year Top of the Pops, the BBC's flagship music show, managed to still draw over 15 million viewers every Thursday night.
The mod revival and 2 Tone was in full stomp, featured here with the Jam, the Specials, Madness and the Selecter. If new wave was your bag there is Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Gary Numan. In 1979 there was little chance of seeing a show on TV featuring Dame Edna's performance of Waltzing Matilda alongside the Ruts with Babylon's Burning, but the British public's eclectic taste predicted the chart and thus saw them together on TOTP in June.
With singles sales at their peak, it was a regular occurrence for groups like Racey and The Nolans to sell over a million copies and their performances may tell us why, or maybe not! Plus new wave pop from Lene Lovich, disco from Chic and a peek at the nation's favourite, Chas & Dave, singing Gertcha.
FRI 22:00 Gregory Porter's Popular Voices (b09g67l9)
Series 1
Crooners & Co
Soul and jazz star Gregory Porter explores the soft, intimate art of crooning. Born with the arrival of the microphone in the 1930s, crooning was initially about men seducing women and thrived through signature stars like Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.
But far from disappearing with the advent of rock 'n' roll, the art of crooning gained a new existential edge and was transformed by the likes of Roy Orbison, David Bowie and even Lana Del Rey into a haunting and abiding strain of contemporary pop.
With Iggy Pop, Joshua Homme, George Benson and Beck.
FRI 23:00 Popular Voices at the BBC (b09g67lc)
Series 1
Crooners
This compilation is a companion piece to the Crooners episode of Gregory Porter's Popular Voices, revelling in the enigmatic tones of some of popular music's most classic crooners.
From the BBC archives, we bring you the wit and charm of Sammy Davis Jr, the honeyed voice of Nat King Cole, the swagger of Sinatra, the swank of Bryan Ferry and the brooding of Willie Nelson. We also revisit some of the modernisers of crooning, from the theatrics of David Bowie to post-punk Echo and the Bunnymen, right up to the sensual murmurings of Lana Del Rey.
Featuring clips from Twiggs, The Vera Lynn Show, The Late Show, Top of the Pops and Whistle Test, it's time to slide into your favourite lounge suit and dim the lights!
FRI 00:00 Live at Eden (b0956qcx)
Series 1
Madness
Madness live at Cornwall's Eden Project in June 2017 performing fourteen of their well-known songs including House of Fun, Baggy Trousers, It Must Be Love and Night Boat to Cairo, as part of The Eden Sessions. The Sessions began in 2002 and are unique concerts in the beautiful setting of the Eden arena against the backdrop of the biomes.
Madness are one of the most successful British pop groups and have had fifteen singles in the UK top ten and a number one single with House of Fun. The band are from Kentish Town in London, formed forty years ago and became a hit band of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and have remained at the forefront of British pop music.
FRI 00:55 Top of the Pops (b03mpphy)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 01:55 Gregory Porter's Popular Voices (b09g67l9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRI 02:55 Popular Voices at the BBC (b09g67lc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
23:00 today]