Archaeologist Ben Robinson explores the Cornish fishing village of Port Isaac. Behind the quaint facade lies something far more gritty - a place where people exploited a range of natural resources, on land and at sea, to make a living and find profits far beyond Britain's shores.
Life on England's waterways with Robbie Cumming. A low canal tunnel in Staffordshire proves a problem, and Robbie helps out a stranded boater.
Few places on earth evoke more mystery and romance than Arabia. This series enters the forbidding wilderness and reveals a magical cast of characters, from the snow-white oryx that inspired the myth of the unicorn to the long-legged jerboa leaping ten times its own body length through the star-filled Arabian nights. Horned vipers hunt glow-in-the-dark scorpions, while Bedouin nomads race their camels across the largest sand desert in the world.
Classic Shakespeare play adapted for television by Russell T Davies. In the tyrannical court of Athens, pitiless dictator Theseus plans his wedding to Hippolyta, a prisoner of war, and young Hermia is sentenced to death by her own father. Meanwhile, in the town below, amateur theatre group the Mechanicals rehearse, with all their comic rivalries. And beyond Athens, in the wild woods, dark forces are stirring.
Compilation of some indelible hits by artists we hardly heard from again, at least in a chart sense. Featuring Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? - a number one in 1969 and a hit he never really matched, Trio's 1982 smash Da Da Da, Phyllis Nelson's 1985 lovers rock-style classic Move Closer, and The New Radicals' 1999 hit You Get What You Give.
We travel through the years selecting some of your favourite number ones and a few others that came close, revealing what's happened to the one-off hitmakers since and exploring the unwritten laws that help make sense of the one-hit wonder phenomenon.
Documentary about Rohani, an 80-year-old hunter who dives like a fish on a single breath, descending to great depths for several minutes. Set against the spectacular backdrop of the Togian Islands in Indonesia where he grew up, this award-winning film recreates events that capture the extraordinary turning points in his life, as a hunter and as a man.
Oxford historian Dr Janina Ramirez sets ex-forger Shaun Greenhalgh his hardest task yet. Shaun has to carve an Islamic bottle out of rock crystal in the style of the 10th-century Egyptian Fatimids. Rock crystal is notoriously fragile. Sourcing the right quantities of it is almost impossible. The real problems begin, however, when the carving is finished.
Thomas Quasthoff, one of the premier baritones of his generation, presents his personal guide to the love of his life, the German lied song. Drawing on his multiple roles as maestro, teacher and founder of an international lied singing competition, Professor Quasthoff goes on a personal journey into this short, domestic but intensely expressive art form.
Lied means 'song' in the German language and lieder are poems of nature, love, and death set for solo voice and a piano. Quasthoff used to sing these songs around the world and now he has turned from practitioner to teacher, passing on this two-century-old tradition to a new generation of young singers.
With a wide range of contributors, including musicians and academics, there is a focus on Franz Schubert as the first great lieder writer. In the early 19th century Schubert, who died tragically young, seized the new possibilities of the piano and created over 600 songs. Thomas unlocks the factors that then came together to create an explosion of lieder: the rise of the German Romanticism and the role that personal, emotional poetry played in the homes of the growing German middle class, the spectacular popularity of the domestic piano and an emerging philosophical imperative to explore the soul.
Lied is the most intimate music of the great composers and in Hamburg Quasthoff goes looking for Johannes Brahms, a composer he feels a great empathy with, and discovers the grave of an almost forgotten poet who inspired a masterpiece of lied song.
The documentary goes to Heidelberg where Quasthoff chairs the Das Lied International song competition - here 26 young lied singers and their pianists spend five days performing before an international jury, including singers Brigitte Fassbaender, Bernarda Fink and Dame Felicity Lott.
The programme includes rare archive of Thomas Quasthoff before his retirement from the classical stage, performing with pianist Andras Schiff in 2003 as well as a newly restored telerecording of Quasthoff's lied singing hero, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In the most personal section of the film Quasthoff takes a late night vocal excursion to the island of Sicily.
In this first episode, Prof Richard Clay explores how utopian visions begin as blueprints for fairer worlds and asks whether they can inspire real change.
Charting 500 years of utopian visions and making bold connections between exploration and science fiction - from radical 18th-century politics to online communities like Wikipedia - Richard delves into colourful stories of some of the world's greatest utopian dreamers, including Thomas More, who coined the term 'utopia', Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek.
Richard builds a compelling argument that utopian visions have been a powerful way of criticising the present, and he identifies key values he believes the imagined better futures tend to idealise. He shows how the concept of shared ownership, a 'commons' of both land and digital space online, has fired utopian thinking, and he explores the dream of equality through the campaign for civil rights in the 1960s and through a feminist theatrical production in today's America.
Immersing himself in a terrifying '1984' survival drama in Vilnius, Lithuania, Richard also looks at the flip side, asking why dystopias are so popular today in film, TV and comic book culture. He explores whether dystopian visions have been a way to remind ourselves that hard-won gains can be lost and that we must beware of humanity's darker side if we are ever to reach a better place.
Across Britain, Germany, Lithuania and America, Richard talks about the meaning of utopia with a rich range of interviewees, including Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols, explorer Belinda Kirk, football commentator John Motson and Hollywood screenwriter Frank Spotnitz.
MONDAY 20 APRIL 2020
MON 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hjkv)
Series 1
Mountain Path
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
In this series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
Join Bob, in this first programme in the series, for a happy half hour as he creates one of his beautiful mountain and evergreen scenes, complete with paths and ample bushes.
MON 19:30 The Beauty of Maps (b00s3v0t)
Medieval Maps - Mapping the Medieval Mind
Documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world and its ambition is breathtaking - to picture all of human knowledge in a single image. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous 'monstrous races' which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.
The Mappa Mundi, meaning 'cloth of the world', has spent most of its long life at Hereford Cathedral, rarely emerging from behind its glass case. The programme represents a rare opportunity to get close to the map and explore its detail, giving a unique insight into the Medieval mind. This is also the first programme to show the map in its original glory, revealing the results of a remarkable year-long project by the Folio Society to restore it using the latest digital technology.
The map has a chequered history. Since its glory days in the 1300s it has languished forgotten in storerooms, been dismissed as a curious 'monstrosity', and controversially almost sold. Only in the last 20 years have scholars and artists realised its true depth and meaning, with the map exerting an extraordinary power over those who come into contact with it. The programme meets some of these individuals, from scholars and map lovers to Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry, whose own work, the Map of Nowhere, is inspired by the Mappa Mundi.
MON 20:00 Meet the Romans with Mary Beard (b01ghsjx)
All Roads Lead to Rome
We still live in the shadow of ancient Rome - a city at the heart of a vast empire that stretched from Scotland to Afghanistan, dominating the West for over 700 years. Professor Mary Beard puts aside the stories of emperors and armies, guts and gore, to meet the real Romans living at the heart of it all.
In this programme, Mary asks not what the Romans did for us, but what the empire did for Rome.
She rides the Via Appia, climbs up to the top seats of the Colosseum, takes a boat to Rome's port Ostia and takes us into the bowels of Monte Testaccio. She also meets some extraordinary Romans: Eurysaces, an eccentric baker, who made a fortune out of the grain trade and built his tomb in the shape of a giant bread oven; Baricha, Zabda and Achiba, three prisoners of war who became Roman citizens; and Pupius Amicus, the purple dye seller making imperial dye from shellfish imported from Tunisia. This is Rome from the bottom up.
MON 21:00 Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure (b016xjq6)
Leonardo da Vinci is considered by many to be one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Yet his reputation rests on only a handful of pictures - including the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
As the National Gallery in London prepares to open its doors on a remarkable exhibition of Leonardo's work, Fiona Bruce travels to Florence, Milan, Paris and Warsaw to uncover the story of this enigmatic genius - and to New York, where she is given an exclusive preview of a sensational discovery: a new Leonardo.
MON 22:00 Patrick Kielty's Mulholland Drive (b06wy729)
Patrick Kielty's journey to find the truth about William Mulholland, the man who provided water for Los Angeles. Patrick's family are water men - from his great-grandfather to his father, they all worked for the water company in Northern Ireland. Water runs in his veins, along with gin on a Sunday night. Nowadays his second home is Los Angeles, so he was surprised to discover that the man who gave LA its water, and hence made the city we know today possible, was from Belfast. That man was William Mulholland, and this is Patrick's journey to find out why no-one has really heard of him.
MON 22:50 Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues (b06qgh3w)
Knights of the Road: The Highwayman's Story
Few figures in British history have captured the popular imagination as much as the outlaw. From gentleman highwaymen, via swashbuckling pirates to elusive urban thieves and rogues, the brazen escapades and the flamboyance of the outlaw made them the antihero of their time - feared by the rich, admired by the poor and celebrated by writers and artists.
In this three-part series, historian Dr Sam Willis travels the open roads, the high seas and urban alleyways to explore Britain's 17th- and 18th-century underworld of highwaymen, pirates and rogues, bringing the great age of the British outlaw vividly to life.
Sam shows that, far from being 'outsiders', outlaws were very much a product of their time, shaped by powerful national events. In each episode, he focuses not just on a particular type of outlaw, but a particular era - the series as a whole offers a chronological portrait of the changing face of crime in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Sam begins with the arrival of a new breed of gentleman criminal out of the ashes of the English Civil War - the highwayman. Heavily romanticised in literature, these glamorous gangsters became a social menace on the roads and a political thorn in the side of the creaking British state - threatening to steal our wallets and our hearts. But underneath the dashing image of stylish robbers on horseback lay a far darker reality.
MON 23:50 The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich (b07l6bd0)
Medieval art historian Dr Janina Ramirez tells the incredible story of a book hidden for centuries in the shadows of history, the first book ever written in English by a woman, Julian of Norwich, in 1373.
Revelations of Divine Love dared to present an alternative vision of man's relationship with God, a theology fundamentally at odds with the church of Julian's time. The book was suppressed for 500 years. It re-emerged in the 20th century as an iconic text for the women's movement and was acknowledged as a literary masterpiece.
Janina follows the trail of the lost manuscript, travelling from Norwich to Cambrai in northern France to discover how the book survived and the brave women who championed it.
MON 00:50 The Secret Life of Books (b06pm5v9)
Series 2
Swallows and Amazons
Former journalist and keen amateur sailor John Sergeant takes to the water in the wake of the plucky young heroes of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, and learns how a globe-trotting foreign correspondent and acquintance of Lenin and Trotsky came to perfect a new, more authentic kind of children's literature that featured real children doing real things in real places.
MON 01:20 Life Is a Circus (m000599v)
A heartwarming story of homelessness, belonging, adventure and hope, told over the course of a year in Oxford, as an unlikely group of homeless people throw loneliness aside and come together to create and perform an entirely new piece of theatre.
MON 02:20 The Joy of Painting (m000hjkv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
MON 02:50 Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure (b016xjq6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUESDAY 21 APRIL 2020
TUE 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hjky)
Series 1
Nature's Paradise
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
In this series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
In this programme, Bob creates a fantastic American south western mountain scene, with spectacular red peaks looming over a lazy, tree-lined stream.
TUE 19:30 The Beauty of Maps (b00s5p6k)
City Maps - Order out of Chaos
Documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps.
The British Library is home to a staggering 4.5 million maps, most of which remain hidden away in its colossal basement, and the programme delves behind the scenes to explore some amazing treasures in more detail. This is the story of three maps, three 'visions' of London over three centuries; visions of beauty that celebrate but also distort the truth. It's the story of how urban maps try to impose order on chaos.
On Sunday 2 September 1660, the Great Fire of London began reducing most of the city to ashes, and among the huge losses were many maps of the city itself. The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the fire. Consisting of sixteen separate sheets, measuring eight feet by five feet, it took six years to complete. Morgan's beautiful map symbolised the hoped-for ideal city.
In 1746 John Rocque produced what was at the time the most detailed map ever made of London. Like Morgan's, Rocque's map is all neo-Classical beauty and clinical precision, but the London it represented had become the opposite. In engravings of the time, such as Night, the artist William Hogarth shows a city boiling with vice and corruption. Stephen Walter's contemporary image, The Island, plays with notions of cartographic order and respectability. His extraordinary London map looks at first glance to be just as precise and ordered as his hero Rocque's but, looking closer, it includes 21st-century markings, such as 'favourite kebab vans' and sites of 'personal heartbreak'.
TUE 20:00 Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines (p01f51z4)
Pain
Pain has a profound effect on our bodies - when we are experiencing it, millions of nerve cells deep within our brains are firing, telling us 'it hurts' - and for centuries the challenge has been to find something that will lessen or even switch off these sensations to bring us relief. Dr Michael Mosley discovers just what pain is, why we want to control it and how we ultimately did it when the discovery of morphine, the world's first pharmaceutical, at the beginning of the 19th century led to a 200-year journey of scientific breakthrough, discovery and self-experimentation.
TUE 21:00 Expedition Volcano (b09hlzbb)
Series 1
Episode 1
In the heart of Africa, deep in the Congo, is one of the most spectacular volcanoes on Earth - Nyiragongo. This spectacular volcano contains a massive boiling cauldron of molten rock - the world's largest continually active lava lake. But it is also one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. It has erupted twice in the last 50 years, most recently in 2002, wreaking havoc and destruction on the people who live in the nearby city of Goma. This region is also dangerous for another reason - it has been racked by war and humanitarian crises for most of the last 30 years, so Nyiragongo is one of the least studied active volcanoes on Earth.
But now, an international and local team of scientists are mounting a major expedition to study the volcano. They are attempting to discover the warning signs that it is building towards a new eruption, so they can alert the people of Goma before it erupts again. The team will take around four tonnes of climbing equipment, scientific instruments and supplies up to the crater rim. Then a small team will descend into the crater itself - 350m down a potentially deadly rockface - to spend a week camping right next to the lava lake. The expedition is led by Belgian scientist Dr Benoit Smets, who is an expert on Nyiragongo. He is joined by British geologist Prof Chris Jackson. Together, they work with the rest of the team using gas-sampling equipment, thermal cameras and sound waves to try and predict when the volcano will next erupt.
But there is another side to this volcano. As well as the threat of eruption, it impacts life in Goma and the surrounding area in many surprising ways. Humanitarian doctor Xand van Tulleken investigates how Nyiragongo has transformed people's lives by looking at the hidden dangers - from deadly disease to suffocating gases. In charge of expedition logistics is former Royal Marine Aldo Kane. It is his job to get everyone in and out of the crater safely. But during the expedition, he will also risk his life to get the team as near to the lava lake as possible.
TUE 22:00 Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney (b08bgfpg)
Episode 3
Seven miles off the coast of Scotland and cut off by the tumultuous Pentland Firth, the fastest-flowing tidal race in Europe, Orkney is often viewed as being remote. However it is one of the treasure troves of archaeology in Britain, and recent discoveries there are turning the Stone Age map of Britain upside down. Recent finds suggest an extraordinary theory - that rather than an outpost at the edge of the world, Orkney was the cultural capital of our ancient world and the origin of the stone circle cult which culminated in Stonehenge.
In the third of this three-part series, Neil Oliver, Chris Packham, Andy Torbet and Dr Shini Somara join hundreds of archaeologists from around the world who have gathered there to investigate at one of Europe's biggest digs. Andy dives below the waves in search of the inspiration for the first stone circle, Chris and Neil spend the night on an abandoned island as they hunt for clues as to why cultures change, Shini tests the technology behind a Bronze-Age sauna, and the archaeologists uncover a remarkable find.
TUE 23:00 The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl (b07m8n2q)
Fighter pilot, inventor, spy - the life of Roald Dahl is often stranger than fiction. From crashing his plane over Africa to hobnobbing in Hollywood, and his remarkable encounters with everyone from Walt Disney to President Roosevelt - this is the story of his greatest adventures, and how his real-life escapades find expression in his most famous books, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Matilda.
Through a vast collection of his letters, writings and archive, the story is told largely in his own words, with contributions from his last wife Liccy, daughter Lucy and biographer Donald Sturrock. Long-term collaborator and illustrator Quentin Blake also creates exclusive new drawings for the film which are specially animated to bring Dahl's marvellous world to life.
TUE 00:00 The Renaissance Unchained (b070sq9t)
Gods, Myths and Oil Paints
Waldemar Januszczak challenges the traditional notion of the Renaissance having fixed origins in Italy and showcases the ingenuity in both technique and ideas behind great artists such as Van Eyck, Memling, Van der Weyden, Cranach, Riemenschneider and Durer.
TUE 01:00 The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers (b09hm1y8)
Series 1
Paradise
Alinka Echeverria reveals the way in which Mexican artists shook off European artistic influence to find a distinctive voice, expressed through landscape painting, and reconnected with pre-Hispanic subject matter. The murals of Teotihuacan and illustrated Aztec codices show how nature was the reference point for their worldview, their power structures and their calendars. But following the conquest in the 16th century, the Spanish 're-educated' indigenous artists to aspire to European aesthetics, and for nearly 300 years after conquest, the art of what was called New Spain looked a lot like the art of old Spain.
A century after independence in 1810, artists began to depict Mexico's ancient foundation myths, including the symbolic volcanoes that dominate the Valley of Mexico. Indigenous people, their land and lives were no longer taboo. Following the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910, landscape paintings established a new style that was resolutely Mexican and confirmed the re-established connections between Mexico's indigenous population and their land. Forces of nature and Mexico's landscape continue to be integral to the Mexican sense of artistic identity.
TUE 02:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hjky)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
TUE 02:30 Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines (p01f51z4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 22 APRIL 2020
WED 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hjly)
Series 1
Mountain by the Sea
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
In this series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
In this edition of the series, majestic mountains reign over a colourful seascape as Bob Ross creates one of the most challenging masterpieces ever painted in a single half hour.
WED 19:30 The Beauty of Maps (b00s64f4)
Atlas Maps - Thinking Big
Documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps.
The Dutch Golden Age saw map-making reach a fever pitch of creative and commercial ambition. This was the era of the first ever atlases - elaborate, lavish and beautiful. This was the great age of discovery and marked an unprecedented opportunity for mapmakers, who sought to record and categorise the newly acquired knowledge of the world. Rising above the many mapmakers in this period was Gerard Mercator, inventor of the Mercator projection, who changed mapmaking forever when he published his collection of world maps in 1598 and coined the term 'atlas'.
The programme looks at some of the largest and most elaborate maps ever produced, from the vast maps on the floor of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, to the 24-volume atlas covering just the Netherlands, to the largest atlas in the world, The Klencke Atlas. It was made for Charles II to mark his restoration in 1660. But whilst being one of the British Library's most important items, it is also one of its most fragile, so hardly ever opened. This is a unique opportunity to see inside this enormous and lavish work, and see the world through the eyes of a king.
WED 20:00 Michael Wood's Story of England (b00tw231)
Romans to Normans
Groundbreaking series in which Michael Wood tells the story of one place throughout the whole of English history. The village is Kibworth in Leicestershire in the heart of England - a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two.
With the help of the local people and using archaeology, landscape, language and DNA, Michael uncovers the lost history of the first 1,000 years of the village, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and graphic evidence of life on the eve of the Norman Conquest.
WED 21:00 King Arthur's Britain: The Truth Unearthed (b0bkvw8v)
With exclusive access to a major new excavation, Alice Roberts pulls together all the latest evidence to reveal what Dark Age Britain was really like. In the 5th century, the future of Britain hung in the balance. After four centuries of straight roads and hot-and-cold running water the Romans upped and left, called back to support their own ailing empire. The country quickly descended into chaos, plunging the native population into poverty and instability as their livelihoods - many dependent on the Romans - disappeared almost overnight. The nation was vulnerable and it didn't take long for Anglo-Saxon invaders to take advantage, a vast bloodthirsty army quickly overran the country, killing the locals and settling down to change the history of the British Isles forever.
At least, that is what the fragmentary historical texts record, but the truth is we don't actually know what happened. There is no reliable written account of events and for two whole centuries sources provide the names of less than ten individuals. This pivotal moment in our national history has been shrouded in mystery until now.
Alice Roberts uses new archaeological discoveries to decode the myths and medieval fake news, piecing together a very different story of this turning point in Britain's history. The story begins with exclusive access to the excavations of an unprecedented stone palace complex on the Tintagel peninsula in Cornwall. Long known to have been a Dark Age settlement the new evidence reveals that Tintagel was also a seat of power, but who ruled there? The rocky outcrop has mythical connections with the legendary King Arthur, but there has never been any evidence found that he actually lived there or even existed.
Alice explores the link between the Arthur legend and the location, tracking down the early sources for the period and the first written reference to King Arthur. She discovers the story of a divided Britain - bloodthirsty conquering Anglo-Saxons in the east and embattled Britons in the west. Into this great divide the legend of King Arthur was born, a heroic defender of the native population against the invading Anglo-Saxon hordes, but is there any archeological evidence that the written accounts are true?
WED 22:00 Archaeology: A Secret History (p0109jny)
In the Beginning
Archaeologist Richard Miles presents a series charting the history of the breakthroughs and watersheds in our long quest to understand our ancient past. He begins by going back 2,000 years to explore how archaeology began by trying to prove a biblical truth - a quest that soon got archaeologists into dangerous water.
WED 23:00 An Art Lovers' Guide (b08nz05n)
Series 1
Amsterdam
With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take viewers on three cultural city breaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.
In this opening episode, they head to Amsterdam, a city that pioneered so much of modern life, from multinational trade to the way we design our homes. To find out how, Alastair and Janina take us on a fast-paced tour of the city's cultural hotspots. Picking their way through the crowds queuing to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, they also introduce us to the paintings of Jan Steen, a Dutch legend whose paintings capture the city's freewheeling lifestyle.
They take us on an entertaining tour of the canals that helped build Amsterdam and explore the city's reputation for tolerance in the oldest surviving Jewish library in the world. Along the way, Alastair and Janina discover how art and culture reflect the liberal attitudes, appetite for global trade and love of home comforts that helped shape the character of this trailblazing city.
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 Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective (b0bgffgg)
This documentary explores the lives of dwarfs through centuries of representations in art and culture, revealing society's shifting attitudes towards people with dwarfism.
Presented by Richard Butchins, a disabled film-maker, artist and journalist, the film shows how people with dwarfism have been seen as royal pets, creatures from a separate race, figures of fun and freaks; and it reveals how their lives have been uniquely intertwined with mythology in the popular imagination, making it it all but impossible for dwarfs to simply get on with their everyday lives.
The film features interviews with artists, like Sir Peter Blake, who saw dwarfs in the circus as a young man and has featured them prominently in his work; academics, like Professor Tom Shakespeare, who has dwarfism himself and feels strongly about how dwarfs are represented in art; and ordinary people with dwarfism who would just like dwarfs to be seen like everybody else. It also features artists with dwarfism who offer us a glimpse of the world from their perspective, revealing the universal concerns that affect us all, regardless of stature.
Taking in relics from antiquity, garden gnomes and some the greatest masterpieces of Diego Velazquez, the film uncovers a hidden chapter in both the history of art and the history of disability.
WED 02:30 The Joy of Painting (m000hjly)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
WED 03:00 King Arthur's Britain: The Truth Unearthed (b0bkvw8v)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2020
THU 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hjl3)
Series 1
Towering Peaks
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
In this series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
This episode features a real Bob Ross classic – the majestic, snow-covered mountain, rolling foothills, leafy trees, bushes and a serene lake.
THU 19:30 The Beauty of Maps (b00s64hx)
Cartoon Maps - Politics and Satire
The series concludes by delving into the world of satirical maps. How did maps take on a new form, not as geographical tools, but as devices for humour, satire or storytelling?
Graphic artist Fred Rose perfectly captured the public mood in 1880 with his general election maps featuring Gladstone and Disraeli, using the maps to comment upon crucial election issues still familiar to us today. Technology was on the satirist's side, with the advent of high-speed printing allowing for larger runs at lower cost. In 1877, when Rose produced his Serio Comic Map of Europe at War, maps began to take on a new direction and form, reflecting a changing world.
Rose's map exploited these possibilities to the full using a combination of creatures and human figures to represent each European nation. The personification of Russia as a grotesque-looking octopus, extending its tentacles around the surrounding nations, perfectly symbolised the threat the country posed to its neighbours.
THU 20:00 Timeshift (b06pm5vf)
Series 15
How Britain Won the Space Race: The Story of Bernard Lovell and Jodrell Bank
The unlikely story of how one man with some ex-WWII army equipment eventually turned a muddy field in Cheshire into a key site in the space race. That man was Bernard Lovell, and his telescope at Jodrell Bank would be used at the height of the Cold War by both the Americans and the Russians to track their competing spacecraft. It also put Britain at the forefront of radio astronomy, a new science which transformed our knowledge of space and provided the key to understanding the most mind-bending theory of the beginnings of the universe - the Big Bang.
THU 21:00 Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema (b0bd7qlk)
Series 1
Coming of Age
Mark Kermode continues his fresh and very personal look at the art of cinema by examining the techniques and conventions behind classic film genres, uncovering the ingredients that keep audiences coming back for more.
In this episode, Mark explores the genre that captures the joy and pain of growing up – the coming of age movie. It’s the most universal of all genres, the one we can all relate to from our own experience, yet it can also be the most autobiographical and personal. Film-makers across the world repeatedly return to core themes such as first love, breaking away from small town life and grown-ups who don’t understand. And wherever and whenever they’re set, these stories are vividly brought to life using techniques such as casting non-professional actors, camerawork that captures a child’s-eye view, and nostalgic pop soundtracks.
From Rebel without a Cause to Lady Bird by way of Kes, Boyz n the Hood and This Is England, Mark shows how recurring sequences like the makeover and the group singalong, and characters like the gang and mentor figure have helped create some of the most moving and resonant films in cinema.
THU 22:00 Lionel Richie at the BBC (b017sw7c)
A selection of Lionel Richie's greatest moments from the BBC archives, from his first Top of the Pops appearance with The Commodores in 1979 to highlights from his 2009 concert at the BBC's Maida Vale studios.
THU 23:00 Secrets of Silicon Valley (b091zhtk)
Series 1
The Persuasion Machine
Jamie Bartlett reveals how Silicon Valley's mission to connect the world is disrupting democracy, helping plunge us into an age of political turbulence. Many of the Tech Gods were dismayed when Donald Trump - who holds a very different worldview - won the American presidency, but did they actually help him to win? With the help of a key insider from the Trump campaign's digital operation, Jamie unravels for the first time the role played by social media and Facebook's vital role in getting Trump into the White House. But how did Facebook become such a powerful player?
Jamie learns how Facebook's vast power to persuade was first built for advertisers, combining data about our internet use and psychological insights into how we think. A leading psychologist then shows Jamie how Facebook's hoard of data about us can be used to predict our personalities and other psychological traits. He interrogates the head of the big data analytics firm that targeted millions of voters on Facebook for Trump - he tells Jamie this revolution is unstoppable. But is this great persuasion machine now out of control? Exploring the emotional mechanisms that supercharge the spread of fake news on social media, Jamie reveals how Silicon Valley's persuasion machine is now being exploited by political forces of all kinds, in ways no one - including the Tech Gods who created it - may be able to stop.
THU 00:00 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000b8mf)
Series 1
A Woman's Place
Ever since Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, published in 1740, the novel has been a predominantly female literary form, offering far more opportunities to women writers than any other and consistently turning a powerful lens on the full range and depth of women's lives. Yet novels that explore women's stories, characters and emotions have often been attacked as frivolous – and sometimes by women themselves. But they are only frivolous to people for whom love, sex, friendship, family and one's own prospects in life are trivial matters. And there have been plenty of very serious female novelists too, from George Eliot and Middlemarch to Virginia Woolf and Orlando.
Women's rights have always been at the heart of the novel. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a famous rallying cry for feminism. The battle for women's suffrage is the subject of the propagandist novel No Surrender, written by Constance Maud in 1911. Works like this were forgotten until imprints like Virago republished them in the 1970s. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is another case in point - now seen as an icon of African-American women's writing, its reprinting was promoted by one of the most significant novelists of the last few decades, Alice Walker, author of the lacerating The Color Purple. The episode brings the discussion right up to date with a novel from 2019 by a black British writer and about a black British woman, Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie.
THU 01:00 Hollywood's Brightest Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (b09jhrlt)
Documentary about Hollywood wild-child Hedy Lamarr. Fleeing to America after escaping her Nazi sympathiser husband, Hedy Lamarr conquered Hollywood. Known as 'the most beautiful woman in the world', she was infamous for her marriages and affairs, from Spencer Tracy to JFK. This film rediscovers her not only as an actress, but as the brilliant mind who co-invented 1940s wireless technology.
THU 02:30 The Joy of Painting (m000hjl3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
THU 03:00 Lionel Richie at the BBC (b017sw7c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRIDAY 24 APRIL 2020
FRI 19:00 Perfect Pianists at the BBC (b0729r6r)
David Owen Norris takes us on a journey through 60 years of BBC archive to showcase some of the greatest names in the history of the piano. From the groundbreaking BBC studio recitals of Benno Moiseiwitsch, Solomon and Myra Hess in the 1950s, through the legendary concerts of Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, to more recent performances, including Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida and Stephen Hough, David celebrates some of the greatest players in a pianistic tradition which goes back to Franz Liszt in the 19th century. Filmed at the Cobbe Collection, Hatchlands Park.
FRI 20:00 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097f2gv)
Series 1
Revolution
In the first episode of this fascinating and entertaining series exploring the politics of music, Suzy Klein takes us back to the volatile years following the Russian Revolution and World War I, when music was seen as a tool to change society.
Suzy explores the gender-bending cabarets of 1920s Berlin, smashes a piano in the spirit of the Bolshevik revolution, and discovers that playing a theremin is harder than it looks. She also reveals why one orchestra decided to work without a conductor, uncovers the dark politics behind Mack the Knife and probes the satirical songs which tried to puncture the rise of the Nazis. Finally, she tells the story of the infamous Horst Wessel song, which helped bring Hitler to power.
Suzy's musical stories are richly brought to life with the help of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its Chorus, as well as wonderful solo performers. This was a golden age for music, and its jazz, popular songs, experimental symphonies and classics like Rachmaninoff all provoke debate - what kind of culture do we want? Is music for the elite or for the people? Was this a new age of liberal freedom to be relished - or were we hurtling towards the apocalypse?
With music's incredible power to bypass our brains and get straight to our hearts, it can at once invoke the very best in us and, Suzy argues, inflame the very worst. Music lovers beware!
FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (m000hjm1)
Mark Goodier and Simon Parkin present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 27 July 1989 and featuring Bros, Simple Minds and Kirsty MacColl.
FRI 21:30 Sounds of the 70s 2 (b01kcq0k)
New Wave - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
By the end of the 70s the world had changed and so had music. In America, it was all about memorable melodies, great guitar rhythms, a little bit of post-punk angst and looking really cool. In the UK it was about Brit style cheekiness, social commentary, a melody and a hook, a lot of attitude - and looking really cool. This episode goes beyond punk and looks into the dawning of a new decade and the phenomenon of New Wave, including performances from Elvis Costello, the Police, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Squeeze, Blondie, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Cars, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop.
FRI 22:00 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 23:00 Queen: The Legendary 1975 Concert (b00p4hgm)
On Christmas Eve 1975, Queen crowned a glorious year with a special concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon. The show on the final night of their triumphant UK tour was broadcast live on BBC TV and radio, and has become a legendary event in Queen's history.
Featuring stunning renditions of early hits Keep Yourself Alive, Liar and Now I'm Here alongside Brian May's epic guitar showcase Brighton Rock, a rip-roaring version of the then new Bohemian Rhapsody and the crowd-pleasing Rock 'n' Roll Medley, this hour-long concert shows Queen at an early peak and poised to conquer the world.
FRI 00:05 Radio 2 Live (b06pf5dw)
Hyde Park Headliners
Rod Stewart Live at Hyde Park
On a sunny day in September 2015, Rod Stewart took to the stage in London's Hyde Park to bring to a close BBC Radio 2's annual Festival in a Day. In front of 50,000 people, Rod delivered not his usual stadium set but a bespoke selection of hits from his back catalogue spanning his career, including Gasoline Alley, Angel, In a Broken Dream and The Killing of Georgie (Part 1 & 2), plus Faces classics such as Ooh La La and the blues standard Rollin' and Tumblin', a number that Rod used to perform with Long John Baldry back in the day. To close the set, Rod brought on his old pal guitarist Jim Cregan to help him perform his 1978 hit I Was Only Joking.
All in all, a memorable and unique concert that is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
FRI 01:05 Gregory Porter's Popular Voices (b09gvqj9)
Series 1
Truth Tellers
Gregory examines how early 20th-century blues growlers like Bessie Smith paved the way for the rhyme and flow of hip-hop, how truth became a quest of rock 'n' roll's greatest poets from Woody Guthrie to Gil Scott-Heron, from Lou Reed to Suzanne Vega, and why great popular voices, including Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Kurt Cobain, don't have to be technically perfect to resonate so deeply and stir our souls. With Dave Grohl, Suzanne Vega and KRS-One.
FRI 02:05 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097f2gv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
FRI 03:05 Sounds of the 70s 2 (b01kcq0k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:30 today]