Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.
Dr Helen Czerski examines the hottest natural phenomenon on the planet - lightning. Bolts of lightning five times hotter than the surface of the sun strike our planet over three million times every day - and yet we still know little about this deadly force of nature. Now, specialist photography is revealing how lightning travels through the air, high-speed cameras are unlocking the secrets of upward lightning that's triggered by our urban landscapes, and scientific expeditions are capturing rare images of intense electrical discharges over 80 kilometres wide.
Len Goodman and Lucy Worsley discover how the first few decades of the 20th century witnessed the most rapid and revolutionary change in the history of British dance. The bold new sound of ragtime music arrived on our shores from America and paved the way for wave after wave of new dances that would take the dance floor by storm.
Len gets to grips with quirky animal dances before exploring how a young couple called the Castles found fame as the first dancing screen icons. Lucy discovers how, whilst many people lapped up the new American imports, one woman saved that most English tradition, morris dancing, from extinction.
The First World War marked a pivotal moment - after the armistice everyone wanted to dance and Britain was swept up in the greatest dance boom the country had ever known. Palais de Danse opened across the country and for the first time dancing became a big business opportunity, with the dancing public holding sway over what was in or out of fashion on the dance floor.
Len and Lucy explore how we danced in interwar Britain and how women's new-found freedoms were epitomised by the iconic and reckless dancing girl, the flapper. They visit that most famous dance floor, the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool, to examine how dancing professionals sought to take back control with standardisation of music and dancing.
Finally, under the tutelage of Darren Royston, historical dance teacher at Rada, Lucy and Len put together one final performance of the most iconic dance from the era, the Charleston, in full period costume in front of a crowd at the famous Cafe de Paris in London.
Hannah explores a paradox at the heart of modern maths, discovered by Bertrand Russell, which undermines the very foundations of logic that all of maths is built on. These flaws suggest that maths isn't a true part of the universe but might just be a human language - fallible and imprecise. However, Hannah argues that Einstein's theoretical equations, such as E=mc2 and his theory of general relativity, are so good at predicting the universe that they must be reflecting some basic structure in it. This idea is supported by Kurt Godel, who proved that there are parts of maths that we have to take on faith.
Hannah then explores what maths can reveal about the fundamental building blocks of the universe - the subatomic, quantum world. The maths tells us that particles can exist in two states at once, and yet quantum physics is at the core of photosynthesis and therefore fundamental to most of life on earth - more evidence of discovering mathematical rules in nature. But if we accept that maths is part of the structure of the universe, there are two main problems: firstly, the two main theories that predict and describe the universe - quantum physics and general relativity - are actually incompatible; and secondly, most of the maths behind them suggests the likelihood of something even stranger - multiple universes.
We may just have to accept that the world really is weirder than we thought, and Hannah concludes that while we have invented the language of maths, the structure behind it all is something we discover. And beyond that, it is the debate about the origins of maths that has had the most profound consequences: it has truly transformed the human experience, giving us powerful new number systems and an understanding that now underpins the modern world.
In the final part of his personal account of Britain's empire, Jeremy Paxman tells the extraordinary story of how a desire for conquest became a mission to improve the rest of mankind, especially in Africa, and how that mission shaded into an unquestioning belief that Britain could - and should - rule the world.
In central Africa, he travels in the footsteps of David Livingstone who, though a failure as a missionary, became a legendary figure - the patron saint of empire who started a flood of missionaries to the so-called 'Dark Continent'.
In South Africa, Paxman tells the story of Cecil Rhodes, a man with a different sort of mission, who believed in the white man's right to rule the world, laying down the foundations for apartheid.
The journey ends in Kenya, where conflict between white settlers and the African population brought bloodshed, torture and eventual withdrawal.
Dr Zhivago is one of the best-known love stories of the 20th century, but the setting of the book also made it famous. It is a tale of passion and fear, set against a backdrop of revolution and violence. The film is what most people remember, but the story of the writing of the book has more twists, intrigue and bravery than many a Hollywood blockbuster.
In this documentary, Stephen Smith traces the revolutionary beginnings of this bestseller to it becoming a pawn of the CIA at the height of the Cold War. The writer of the novel, Boris Pasternak, in the words of his family, willingly committed acts of literary suicide in being true to the Russia he loved, but being honest about the Soviet regime he hated and despised. Under Stalin, writers and artists just disappeared if they did not support the party line. Many were murdered.
Writing his book for over 20 tumultuous years, Boris Pasternak knew it could result in his death. It did result in his mistress being sent to the gulag twice, but he had to have his say. This is the story of the writing of perhaps the bravest book ever published. It is the story before the film won Oscars and its author, the Nobel Prize. It is the untold story of the real Dr Zhivago - Boris Pasternak.
Two-part documentary in which archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper explores the extraordinary and resilient culture of the American north west, revealing one the most inspiring stories in human history.
1,400 miles of rugged, windswept and rocky coastline in what is now the Alaskan panhandle, British Columbia and Washington state have been home to hundreds of distinct communities for over 10,000 years. Theirs is the longest continuing culture to be found anywhere in the Americas. They mastered a tough environment to create unique and complex communities that have redefined how human societies develop. They produced art infused with meaning that ranks alongside any other major civilisation on earth. And they were very nearly wiped out - by foreign disease, oppression and theft of their lands. But a deep connection to the environment lies at the heart of their endurance, and - unlike many indigenous cultures annihilated following European contact - their culture sustains and has much to offer the rest of the world today.
In the second episode, Jago reveals how a cultural tradition that began over 10,000 years ago managed to survive against the odds. Following European contact, the indigenous peoples of what is now south east Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state suffered disease, theft of their land and oppression. But Jago argues that northwest coast culture has an extraordinary resilience. Its connection to the land has been developed over thousands of years, which meant that it was able to adapt and transform when faced with threats and disruption. These qualities make it one of the longest continuous cultures in the Americas.
Series about great British woodworkers continues by looking at the life and work of Grinling Gibbons. He isn't a household name, but he is the greatest woodcarver the British Isles has ever produced. Working in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, Gibbons created delightful carved masterpieces for the likes of Charles II and William of Orange. This film explores the genius of the man they called the 'Michelangelo of wood'.
THURSDAY 25 OCTOBER 2018
THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b0bnk7n8)
Series 1
25/10/2018
Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b0bpz9dq)
Gary Davies and Peter Powell present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 23 July 1986. Featuring Hollywood Beyond, Sinitta, Audrey Hall, Robert Palmer, Haywoode and Madonna.
THU 20:00 Human Universe (p0276pxp)
Are We Alone?
Brian Cox explores the ingredients needed for an intelligent civilisation to evolve in the universe - the need for a benign star, for a habitable planet, for life to spontaneously arise on such a planet and the time required for intelligent life to evolve and build a civilisation. Brian weighs the evidence and arrives at his own provocative answer to the puzzle of our apparent solitude.
THU 21:00 The Motorway: Life in the Fast Lane (b04kntmp)
No Such Thing as an Accident
Every year in Britain there are an estimated 250,000 road traffic collisions. It is a widely held theory amongst those working on the motorway that there is no such thing as an accident - usually something or someone is to blame. This episode takes a look at the work of the Highways Agency, motorway police and other agencies who are making Britain's motorways safer and also explores the environmental, economic and emotional costs of accidents that occur on Britain's motorways.
Catthorpe Junction is a major interchange linking the M1 and A14 to the start of the M6. Its outdated road layout has witnessed a number of road traffic collisions in the last few years but now it's about to be redesigned to make it safer and less congested, all to the tune of over £190 million. Overseeing the work is construction manager Mark Sutton, but it's not just a case of building a road. With the roadworks taking place on 78 acres of newly acquired farmland nestled amongst rural villages, Mark and his team have to ensure locals are happy, including the local wildlife. A protected colony of great crested newts needs to be relocated away from the works. This is a lengthy and expensive process, and the cost of relocating each newt could run into thousands of pounds.
Meanwhile out on the road, the Central Motorway Police Group patrol the motorway in their unmarked lorry, spying on drivers who fall afoul of the law. The Highways Agency and maintenance teams cope with the aftermath of an overturned lorry that has spilled its cargo of milk onto the carriageway, threatening to contaminate a local watercourse.
THU 22:00 Blackadder (p00bf6md)
Blackadder Goes Forth
Plan A - Captain Cook
Edmund cheats to win a competition to be named Official War Artist, thinking it's his ticket out of the trenches. So he's furious when his reward turns out to be going into no man's land to sketch the German positions.
THU 22:30 Blackadder (p00bf6pz)
Blackadder Goes Forth
Plan B - Corporal Punishment
Blackadder faces court martial for eating a carrier pigeon. With the pigeon's owner Melchett as judge and Darling as prosecutor, Edmund is relying on George and Baldrick to save his skin.
THU 23:00 Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners (b063jzdw)
The Price of Freedom
Historian David Olusoga continues his examination of Britain's forgotten slave owners. In this episode, David explores how in 1834 the government arrived at the extraordinary decision to compensate the slave owners with the equivalent of £17 billion in today's money. Tracing the bitter propaganda war waged between the pro-slavery lobby and the abolitionists, he reveals that paying off the slave owners for the loss of their human property was, ultimately, the only way to bring the system to an end.
Meticulously kept records held at the National Archives detail the names of the 46,000 slave owners from across the British empire who had a slice of this vast handout. Combined with new research, shared exclusively with the BBC by University College London, it reveals more about Britain's slave owners than we've ever known before.
Of the 46,000 names in the 1834 compensation records, 3,000 lived in Britain, yet they owned half of the slaves across the empire and pocketed half of the compensation money. These include members of the clergy and of the House of Lords. The records also show that at the point of abolition, more than 40 per cent of all the slave owners were women.
David goes on to investigate what happened to the wealth generated by the slave system and compensation pay out. He reveals aspects of Britain's spectacular industrialisation in the 19th century, the consolidation of the City of London as a world centre of finance, and a number of the country's most well-known institutions that all have links to slave-derived wealth.
Ultimately, David discovers that the country's debt to slavery is far greater than previously thought, shaping everything from the nation's property landscape to its ideas about race. A legacy that can still be felt today.
THU 00:00 Top of the Pops (b0bpz9dq)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 00:35 Storyville (b00ml582)
How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
Documentary which tells the extraordinary unknown story of how The Beatles helped to destroy the USSR.
In August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called The Beatles. He arranged their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world.
Twenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, The Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how The Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life.
The Soviet authorities were alarmed by the seditious potential of rock 'n' roll, with The Beatles a special target and denounced as 'bugs' in official papers. Their smuggled records were destroyed and their music was banned, but the myth blossomed as bootlegs and photos were covertly traded and even rented amongst fans.
Soon there were thousands of rock bands across the USSR trying to make music with crude homemade guitars. Speakers on lampposts installed to broadcast propaganda were grabbed by rock hopefuls, while reports that an electric pickup could be cannibalised from a telephone led to phone boxes being raided and disabled.
Millions of young people fell in love with The Beatles and the culture of the Cold War enemy, and defected emotionally from the Soviet system. The Beatles prepared the cultural way for the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately helped to wash away the foundations of that system.
THU 01:35 Smile! The Nation's Family Album (b08j8jj3)
In today's digital age, the classic family photo album has become an object of nostalgic affection. But it's much more than just a collection of sentimental snapshots.
Celebrating everyday moments and shared experiences, family photography offers an intimate portrait of Britain's postwar social history. And each generation had a different camera to tell their story.
Discovering how new technologies and evolving social attitudes inspired the nation to pick up a camera, the film charts a journey from the Box Brownie to Instagram, offering a touching portrait of our changing lives, taken not by the professional photographer but on our own cameras.
With increasingly affordable, quick-to-load and easy-to-use cameras, domestic photography became part of family life in the 20th century.
Suddenly we could all now document our family's celebrations, holidays and hobbies, and capture the most fleeting and precious memories, from birth to death.
We became a nation obsessed with taking photos, and tirelessly curating scrapbooks, and filling shoeboxes and albums with pictures that tell our family's own story.
But with the advent of digital cameras, the era of patiently waiting for the holiday snaps to come back from the processor and carefully arranging them in photo albums feels a long way from today's frenzy of digital images, instantly shared and uploaded...
The film features expert voices explaining the impact of different camera technologies, the role of Kodak in helping create an industry of popular photography, the impact of the digital revolution and the way changes in family photography have also reflected shifts in the family dynamic itself. It's no longer just dad in control of the camera, and mobile phones and social media have turned kids into photographers from a young age...
Among the stories featured in the film...
Using her father's Box Brownie as a young girl, then armed with the latest Kodak instamatic in her teens, and now using a digital SLR, Jenny Bowden's photos capture the past 60 years, from the 1950s street parades to the 60s mods, the 70s fashions when she married and started her own family, the various birthdays, graduations and weddings and deaths, and in the past decade the arrival of her own grandchildren, her albums span across her house. Today when her grandchildren visit, they head straight to the shelves as they love to flick through the albums and see themselves as babies.
Besotted and first-time mum Astrid has taken thousands of photos on her iPhone of her son Alexander since his birth eight months ago. Unlike her own mother Terry, whose photos of Astrid as a baby were considered and less frequent due to the costs of 35mm film, Astrid has the luxury of snapping away all day, taking advantage of the ease and low costs of the digital age, as she records her and Alexander's first year together. Proud Astrid spreads the happiness Alexander brings with Terry and other family via WhatsApp and Instagram.
We meet the English eccentric John Dobson, who has 161 carefully annotated scrapbooks - and counting! His careful curating of happy family memories helped him overcome his own childhood spent in a children's home.
We also meet the devoted Yorkshire dad Ian Macleod, who took a photo of his son every single day until his 21st birthday, and the Slight family in Essex, whose larger-than-life characters grew up in a pub and captured an East End way of life that no longer exists.
And we discover the emotional impact of family photos, with a family movingly sharing the very last film taken on a father's camera before he died.
From the extraordinary to the mundane, family photos capture the intimate moments of our lives. Often overlooked in the official story of photography, this film champions the family photo and the unique portrait it reveals of how the nation tells its own story.
THU 02:35 Human Universe (p0276pxp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
FRIDAY 26 OCTOBER 2018
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b0bnk7np)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b0bpzd98)
Janice Long and Mike Read present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 31 July 1986. Featuring Spandau Ballet, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Five Star, Stan Ridgway and Chris de Burgh.
FRI 20:00 Blues & Beyond with Cerys Matthews and Val Wilmer (b0bpb14f)
DJ and broadcaster Cerys Matthews and acclaimed blues photographer Val Wilmer select their favourite blues musicians, several of whom Val has met and photographed.
As they view their selection, they reveal the reasons behind their choices. Discover why Muddy Waters is their master of mojo, and how Val rescued Jimi Hendrix from some over-eager fans. From Howlin' Wolf to John Lee Hooker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Peggy Lee and many more, their playlist is packed with classic blues and punctuated with great stories.
Blues and Beyond offers new insights on both the subject and the narrators, as well as providing a heady nostalgic hit of the very best in blues music, from the intimate to the epic.
FRI 21:00 Queen: Rock the World (b09d5xpf)
Behind-the-scenes archive documentary following Queen's Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon as they record their sixth album News of the World and embark on a groundbreaking tour of North America.
By 1977, Queen had become a major headlining act in the UK, releasing chart-topping albums and singles as well as playing sell-out concerts in all the country's major venues. However, they were facing an increasingly hostile music press, who had a new favourite in punk and had turned against the elaborate, multi-layered recording techniques that had become the hallmark of the band's previous albums.
But an unfazed Queen had their sights set on greater things. As the band announced plans to record their next album, the expectation was it would be another production extravaganza, but Freddie, Brian, Roger and John already had other ideas. News of the World showcased them at their most raw, simple and best, returning to their roots as a live act. With a self-imposed limit on studio time and produced entirely on their own for the first time, this stripped-back album took the fans and press by surprise and demonstrated Queen's ability to transcend fashions. It was to prove a seminal moment in the band's history.
At the time, BBC music presenter Bob Harris was given exclusive and extensive access to the band to cover this period. Conducting insightful interviews with all four band members as well as filming them at work in the studio as they were planning and rehearsing their forthcoming North American tour, and then following them as they performed across the US, Bob captured a band attempting to replicate their huge domestic success on the global stage. Curiously, the documentary he set out to make was never completed, and the footage lay unused in the archive until now.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of the News of the World album, the footage has now been carefully restored and revisited to compile this hour-long portrait of a group setting out to take the next step on their remarkable journey to becoming one of the biggest bands on the planet. Armed with an array of new songs, including the monster hits We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions, Queen dazzled the American audience and laid the foundations of a relationship that endures to this very day.
Coming full circle, this film is bookended by footage shot in the summer of 2017 as Brian May and Roger Taylor took Queen back to the US with Adam Lambert as lead singer. Revisiting many of the cities they had performed in 40 years previously and including many of the songs from that 1977 album, they prove that despite the tragic loss of Freddie Mercury over 25 years ago, Queen can still rock the world.
FRI 22:00 The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody (b0074d94)
The full story behind the iconic song, featuring Brian May and Roger Taylor's return to Rockfield Studios, where they re-record the guitar and drum parts and tell the story of how the song came together. Narrated by Richard E Grant, the documentary includes exclusive rare recordings of Freddie Mercury performing the song in studio, Queen's first ever TV performance and the making of the video, as well as interviews with Mercury's friends and family, The Darkness and Bjorn Ulvaeus from Abba.
FRI 22:55 Bowie at Glastonbury 2000 (b0bntp2p)
On Sunday 25 June 2000, David Bowie closed Glastonbury with a two-hour performance. Only half an hour or so of that stunning set was broadcast on BBC television that night at Bowie's insistence. At the time, the BBC were heavily criticised for coming off Bowie after broadcasting the first five songs of the set live and only returning for a couple of encore songs at the end of the show. Fortunately the cameras kept rolling and captured the whole set.
This programme features an hour of highlights from that performance, including such previously unbroadcast hits as Ashes to Ashes, Starman and Let's Dance. Bowie was returning to the festival for the first time since 1971. His star was not in the ascendant after the Tin Machine era and such 90s solo albums as Outside, Earthling and Hours. But from the moment he walked out on the Pyramid Stage, resplendent in an Alexander McQueen frock coat with his hair in Hunky Dory mode, and launched into Wild is the Wind, it was clear that he had decided to embrace and fully restate both his catalogue and his legend. Arguably it was Bowie's greatest live performance since the 70s.
After a heart attack in June 2004 while at the end of the 110-plus dates of A Reality Tour, Bowie never played live with a band again. His final stage performance was at a private Aids benefit show with pianist Mike Garson in 2006.
FRI 00:00 The People's History of Pop (b083dj11)
1986-1996 All Together Now
Lauren Laverne celebrates the decade 1986-1996 when music had the power to unite fans - even sworn rivals - like never before. It's a decade that starts with a turn to the alternative, even among the fans of mega pop bands.
We hear from Depeche Mode fans who were invigorated by the band's darker sounds in Black Celebration - and have saved a lot of memorabilia from the gigs they went to see back then. We also hear from a fan of hip hop who discovered a burgeoning UK hip hop scene when he moved to London and shares footage of his friends MCing and DJing at home.
In 1988, the acid house wave hit and the show meets those who lived through it and loved it. They have saved flyers and photos from the halcyon days of raving that completely changed their lives, including one man who went from football hooligan to raver to club promoter.
Out of the clubs came mega pop bands. The programme meets an avid Take That fan who bought every type of merchandise she could as a teenager - saving pretty much all of it. Another fan takes viewers back to the site of her first ever Blur gig in 1994 and the show finishes by talking to fans of the most successful girl group of all time - The Spice Girls.
Pop treasures uncovered along the way include one of the first Hacienda membership cards, covered with signatures of Hacienda dignitaries, from New Order to Dave Haslam, A Guy Called Gerald, Bez and, of course, Tony Wilson. The programme also meets a club promoter who shares rare footage of one of The Prodigy's early rave-inspired gigs. And Lauren also meets someone with a rare Oasis demo tape from a gig at the Boardwalk in London in January 1992.
FRI 01:00 Top of the Pops (b0bpzd98)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
FRI 01:30 Sound of Song (b04z23vl)
Reeling and Rocking
Musician Neil Brand explores the magical elements that come together to create great songs by recreating some of the most memorable and innovative recording sessions in music history - from Elvis's slapback echo in Memphis and The Beatles' tape loops at Abbey Road to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and The Beach Boys' pop symphonies.
He shows that all this was made possible by the discovery of magnetic tape by an American soldier in the ruins of WWII Germany, the invention that, more than any other, drove the emergence of the music studio as a compositional tool and the rise of the producer as a new creative force shaping the sound of song.
FRI 02:30 Blues & Beyond with Cerys Matthews and Val Wilmer (b0bpb14f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]