The story of Cromford. A picturesque Derbyshire village at the heart of famous industrialist Sir Richard Arkwright's mechanised cotton mills and a textile revolution. Presenter and archaeologist Ben Robinson discovers it wasn't just an industrial revolution. Cromford became a new kind of village, built to service the enterprise of this powerful man.
The reality of life afloat with Robbie Cumming. A fallen tree and a leaking lock pound hamper Robbie's journey across the Pennines.
In a remote corner of southern Arabia one mountain range holds a remarkable secret. Swept by the annual Indian Ocean monsoon, the Dhofar mountains become a magical lost world of waterfalls and cloud forests filled with chameleons and honey badgers. Offshore, rare whales that have not bred with any others for over 60,000 years and green sea turtles come ashore in their thousands, shadowed by egg-stealing foxes. Heat-seeking cameras reveal, for the first time, striped hyenas doing battle with Arabian wolves. Meanwhile, local researchers come face to face with the incredibly rare Arabian leopard.
The 80 year-old King Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, according to their affection for him. Cordelia refuses to flatter him, so he banishes her. Having acquired power, Goneril and Regan expel their father from their homes. At the same time, Lear's prime minister, Gloucester, is betrayed by his son Edmund and his other son, Edgar, is forced to go into hiding. Lear becomes mad, Gloucester is blinded: both the kingdom and the family collapse into chaos and warfare. Lear and Cordelia are reunited; for a brief moment love reigns, then tragedy descends.
Plunge into exciting, strange and beautiful animated worlds with Radio 1 film critic Ali Plumb as he celebrates the new breed of animators whose short films include malicious toasters, cheeky Glaswegian pigeons, job-haunting ghosts and incredibly smelly fungi. Stylistically, the films include a beautiful pen and ink evocation of Manchester architecture, a super-real, digital recreation of the human body and all points between.
Documentary exploring more than a century of animation in Britain, including the creative and technical inventiveness of the UK's greatest animation pioneers.
The defining characteristic of British animation has always been ingenuity. Unable to compete with the big American studios, animators in Britain were forced to experiment, developing their own signature styles. The documentary uncovers the trade secrets of animation legends like Bob Godfrey, John Halas and Joy Batchelor, Len Lye and Bristol's world-renowned Aardman Animations.
Tracing the development of British animation from the end of the Victorian era to contemporary blockbusters, Secrets of British Animation shows the perseverance and determination that are part of the animator's mindset. Focusing on the handmade tradition of animation in the UK, the programme includes newly-remastered early films from the archive of the British Film Institute.
An exploration of the BBC's long love affair with the lives and works of the Bronte sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. For over half a century, the ill-fated literary dynasty has proved irresistible to drama and documentary makers alike, keen to reinvent their novels for new audiences. So we get Bronte heroines reimagined for each emerging generation, first as classic 1950s housewife material, then wild child '60s 'chicks', Gothic waifs and, finally, empowered modern women. The Bronte males, meanwhile, are restyled as assorted prigs, wife-beaters, even brooding prog rockers and, of course, wouldn't you know it, new men. Wonderful stuff.
Utopia has been imagined in a thousand different ways. Yet when people try to build utopia, they struggle and very often fail. Art historian professor Richard Clay asks whether utopian visions for living can ever reconcile the tension between the group and the individual, the rules and the desire to break free.
Travelling to America, he encounters experimental communities, searching for greater meaning in life. Richard visits a former Shaker village in New Hampshire and immerses himself for a day at the Twin Oaks eco-commune in Virginia, where residents share everything, even clothes. He looks back at the grand urban plans for the masses of the 20th-century utopian ideologies, from the New Deal housing projects of downtown Chicago to the concrete sprawl of a Soviet-era housing estate in Vilnius, Lithuania. He also meets utopian architects with a continuing faith that humanity's lot can be improved by better design. Interviewees include architect Norman Foster and designer Shoji Sadao.
MONDAY 27 APRIL 2020
MON 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqmj)
Series 1
Ocean Breeze
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 Ross paints an awesome cloudy sky set against a turbulent sea of crashing waves.
MON 19:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqml)
Series 1
Warhol
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Alastair Sooke gains privileged access to the Tate Modern for a last look at the Warhol exhibition. Sooke argues that Warhol might just be the most significant artist of the second half of the 20th century. Warhol not only predicted, but in many ways helped to create, the world we live in - one obsessed with hyper-consumption, mass media and celebrity.
Covering works from across Warhol’s career, Sooke explores Warhol’s long-running commitment to experimental film and TV, as well as his fascination with advertising, pop music and commerce. And he delves into the man behind the carefully curated eccentricity, examining the expressions of Warhol’s queer identity in his later works and how his background as the son of eastern European immigrants influenced his art.
In conversation with Gregor Muir, one of the exhibition’s curators, Sooke discovers that one of his aims with the show was to strip away some of the myths about Warhol’s work and broaden the focus away from Warhol’s pop art studies of the 1960s. Finally, he muses on the particularly Warholian irony that this blockbuster show was closed, due to the coronavirus lockdown, almost as soon as it had opened.
MON 20:00 Meet the Romans with Mary Beard (b01gxqgg)
Streetlife
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 descends into the city streets to discover the dirt, crime, sex and slum conditions in the world's first high-rise city. This Rome is not the marble Rome we know, but a vast, messy metropolis with little urban planning, where most Romans lived in high-rise apartment blocks with little space, light, or even sanitation. Forced outdoors into the city streets, she reveals where they went to hang out, get drunk, have sex and get clean. She looks at the Forum as a place of gamblers, dentists and thieves, and she explores the lustiness of Roman bar life and jokes.
Finally, exploring law and order from the bottom up, Mary examines how this city really worked. She meets Ancarenus Nothus, an apartment dweller who lived in fear of the rent collector; 'Notorious' Primus, who wrote about his three great pleasures in life - 'baths, wine and sex'; and 'Unlucky' Doris, a seven-year-old girl killed in one of Rome's many fires.
MON 21:00 The Price of Everything (m000hqmq)
Documentary that explores the labyrinthine art world of the 21st century and examines both the place of art and artistic passion in our money-driven, consumer-based society.
Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, from current market darlings Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby to one-time art star Larry Poons, the film exposes deep contradictions as it holds a mirror up to the values of the modern era, coaxing out the dynamics at play in pricing the priceless.
MON 22:35 Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues (b06qskdx)
Pirates
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 takes to the high seas in search of the swashbuckling pirates of the golden age of piracy during the early 18th century. Following in the wake of the infamous Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Calico Jack and others, Sam charts the devastating impact these pirates had during an era of colonial expansion and how, by plundering the vast network of seaborne trade, they became the most-wanted outlaws in the world.
MON 23:35 Return to Larkinland (b06hhlyl)
Writer and critic AN Wilson revisits the life and work of one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century, Philip Larkin - a poet soon to be honoured with a place in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Wilson traces Larkin's life from his childhood in Coventry, through to his student days at Oxford and then his adult years working in university libraries, whilst writing some of the best-loved and notorious poems in the English language.
Wilson, who knew Larkin in his later life, remembers memorable encounters with the poet and this personal connection helps him to reveal a complex man with a complicated, and at times tortured, private life. As part of this candid exploration into Larkin's life, Wilson confronts the allegations of racism, bigotry and misogyny that emerged following the publication of his Selected Letters and authorised biography, and which have dogged his posthumous reputation.
However, Wilson concludes that it is Larkin's poems, not his faults, that have survived. Featuring readings of his work by Larkin himself, including the greatness of The Whitsun Weddings, Arundel Tomb, Church Going and Aubade, Wilson argues that Larkin spoke for Britain between the 1950s and 1970s perhaps more than any other writer.
MON 00:35 Through the Lens of Larkin (b095zds8)
A look at the life and loves of Philip Larkin, one of the 20th century's greatest British poets, seen through his photographs.
Throughout his life Larkin recorded the people and events around him and took scores of self-portraits. Poet and academic John Wedgwood Clarke looks through more than five thousand photographs found after Larkin's death and asks what they tell us about his work.
MON 01:05 The Joy of Painting (m000hqmj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
MON 01:35 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqml)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
MON 02:05 The Price of Everything (m000hqmq)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUESDAY 28 APRIL 2020
TUE 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqpg)
Series 1
Golden Sunset
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 from the series, Bob Ross devises a painting from scratch that contrasts a frozen pond and snowdrifts with a warm, rich sky and late-autumn foliage.
TUE 19:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqpj)
Series 1
Rembrandt
Historian Simon Schama takes us on a very personal virtual tour of the Young Rembrandt exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, currently in lockdown. The exhibition charts the first ten years of the Dutch master’s career, when the miller’s son from Leiden became the superstar of 17th-century Amsterdam and was on course to become one of the greatest artists of all time.
For Schama, who was able to see the exhibition before it closed, the coronavirus crisis has given Rembrandt’s work even more impact and resonance. As he says, ‘No artist I think better understood the fragile nature of human happiness; the shocking suddenness with which we can go from riches to rags, wellbeing to sickness, contentment to grief.’
Schama tells the story of the artist’s rise to fame and riches, celebrating the audacity and astonishing technical mastery of many of the works on show. But he also shows us a deeply wise and philosophical artist, who was always aware of the fickleness of fortune, and who was as interested – if not more - in portraying beggars as he was prosperous burghers and kings.
TUE 20:00 Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines (b03ccs7k)
Pus
Infection can take over the entire human body, and if our immune systems aren't strong enough we will die - in fact, infectious disease has regularly wiped out millions of people across the planet. Dr Michael Mosley explores our earliest attempts to tackle infection and reveals the moment we began to harness the power of microbes to fight back. This is the story of how scientists, chemists and doctors helped us win the battle, from Louis Pasteur to Howard Florey, and how a small team of dedicated men and women wiped out one of mankind's deadliest diseases - smallpox.
TUE 21:00 Expedition Volcano (b09hv9g1)
Series 1
Episode 2
In the heart of Africa, deep in the Congo, are some of the most spectacular volcanoes on Earth. They threaten the lives of more than a million people, in a region already left shattered by decades of violence.
Now, a team of international and local scientists are here to investigate these rarely visited volcanoes to try and predict when they will next erupt, and to examine how the volcanic forces at work here affect every aspect of life.
For the past week, the expedition has focused on Nyiragongo. Now Chris Jackson and his fellow geologists are heading to the nearby volcano Nyamulagira - one of the most active yet least explored volcanoes on the planet. Few have visited this volcano, for a good reason - the forests that blanket its slopes hide a number of armed groups. The team travel on a UN helicopter flight at treetop level to avoid being hit by groundfire, before landing as close to the active crater as they can. They then have only a few hours to gain as much data as possible to help predict future eruptions.
Beyond Nyamulagira lies a spectacular but dangerous volcanic landscape. The expedition will also explore the hidden dangers and natural wonders contained there - from deadly gases lurking under the vast Lake Kivu, to giant craters left over from sudden explosive eruptions.
Meanwhile, Dr Xand van Tulleken travels across the region to discover how the volcanoes influence every aspect of life here. He sees the legacy of violence created by the volcanic mineral riches. He also explores other natural resources that have the potential to break this cycle of violence, best represented by the mountain gorillas that live on the flanks of the volcanoes. And he meets the people most affected by the ongoing battle to wrest control of these natural resources away from criminal gangs and militias - the widows of park rangers killed in the struggle. Their commitment to protect their natural environment represents the best hope for the future of this troubled region.
Meanwhile, the work the scientists have done will enable local people to better manage the risks of living in such a dangerous part of the world.
TUE 22:00 Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand (b086tw3q)
Summer 2003: Bob Monkhouse entertains a room full of comedians with stand-up, chat and a comedy masterclass. The night became the stuff of legend among comedians but was not transmitted until much later.
TUE 23:00 Talking Comedy (b05qt2b7)
Bob Monkhouse
A laughter-filled look back at gag-master Bob Monkhouse's appearances over the years on a selection of the BBC's best-loved talk shows.
TUE 23:30 The Renaissance Unchained (b071gsdv)
Whips, Deaths and Madonnas
Waldemar Januszczak returns to Italy to trace the Italian Renaissance from its perceived origins with Giotto and takes a look at the importance of religious narrative in Italian art. While there were certainly a few aesthetic influences from classical art, the majority of Italian painting and sculpture in the 14th and 15th centuries was created to inspire devotion, especially in the work of Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Fra Angelico.
TUE 00:30 The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers (b09j2vvp)
Series 1
Power
Alinka Echeverria reveals how artists became the authors of Mexico's official history, defining the origins of its power and wielding significant influence over millennia.
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.
The relationship between art and power can be seen throughout world history. But Alinka argues that Mexico differs. Not only did indigenous artists project the power of the elites in its ancient civilisations, artists became the authors of Mexican history and the power brokers in the struggles for political dominance.
In Mexico's history, power changes hands quickly and often violently. The city state of Cholula dominated central Mesoamerica around 1,000 years ago, but fell to Spanish conquistadors in the space of a day.
Nearly 500 years later, one of the largest triumphal arches in the world was intended to express the unassailable power of Porfirio Diaz. But before the arch was completed, the Mexican Revolution swept Diaz from power. The fragile nation needed a new national story to provide unity and stability. Art was to create it.
Diego Rivera painted a spectacular sweep of Mexican history as he, and the government who commissioned him, wanted it understood. It was origin myth and propaganda rolled into one. The power of art to establish Mexican nationalism was extraordinary. Frida Kahlo used her considerable influence to make the personal political, in both gender politics and amplifying indigenous voices.
Today, nowhere is it more important to express Mexican power and identity than at its borders. In Tijuana, on the border with the United States, the creativity of individual artists and collectives is fired by matters of everyday politics and the proximity to their northern neighbour. The results underline how art and power in Mexico are inextricably linked.
TUE 01:30 The Joy of Painting (m000hqpg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
TUE 02:00 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqpj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
TUE 02:30 Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines (b03ccs7k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL 2020
WED 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqmt)
Series 1
Ocean Sunset
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 30-minute challenge, Bob Ross captures the beauty of the beach, as the sun goes down, in a seascape painted in gold, purple and orange.
WED 19:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqmw)
Series 1
Tate Britain
In times of crisis, people often think that art and culture are luxuries. However, in this episode of Museums in Quarantine, Dr James Fox argues, in difficult times such as these, that we need art more than ever. Taking the viewer on a personal tour of some of the most profound artworks from the Tate Britain’s collection, from a self-portrait by 18th-century artist William Hogarth through to the gallery’s 21st-century installations, Dr Fox shows how art has a unique ability both to depict humanity’s suffering and offer us consolation.
Guiding us through the silent galleries of the temporarily closed Tate Britain, Dr Fox argues that great artists’ renderings of war and disaster remind us that we are not alone. Countless others have also lived through, and triumphed over, adversity.
The paintings, by some of Britain’s foremost landscape artists, present a bucolic vision of Britain – one that is deeply reassuring. And art, of course, also allows us a means of creating other worlds in our imagination and an escape from the confines of our own home.
Ultimately, this uplifting film asserts that art has the power to bring us hope and offer us a glimmer of light in the darkness.
WED 20:00 Michael Wood's Story of England (b00tzmsd)
Domesday to Magna Carta
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.
Wood's unique portrait moves on to 1066 when the Normans build a castle in Kibworth. He reveals how occupation affected the villagers from the gallows to the alehouse, and shows the medieval open fields in action in the only place where they still survive today.
With the help of the residents, he charts events in the village leading to the people's involvement in the Civil War of Simon de Montfort. Intertwining the local and national narratives, this is a moving and informative picture of one local community through time.
WED 21:00 Timeshift (b019c85h)
Series 11
The Rules of Drinking
Timeshift digs into the archive to discover the unwritten rules that have governed the way we drink in Britain.
In the pubs and working men's clubs of the 40s and 50s there were strict customs governing who stood where. To be invited to sup at the bar was a rite of passage for many young men, and it took years for women to be accepted into these bastions of masculinity. As the country prospered and foreign travel became widely available, so new drinking habits were introduced as we discovered wine and, even more exotically, cocktails.
People began to drink at home as well as at work, where journalists typified a tradition of the liquid lunch. Advertising played its part as lager was first sold as a woman's drink and then the drink of choice for young men with a bit of disposable income. The rules changed and changed again, but they were always there - unwritten and unspoken, yet underwriting our complicated relationship with drinking.
WED 22:00 Archaeology: A Secret History (p0109k28)
The Search for Civilisation
Archaeologist Richard Miles shows how discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries overturned ideas of when and where civilisation began as empires competed to literally 'own' the past.
WED 23:00 An Art Lovers' Guide (b08ps5rd)
Series 1
Barcelona
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 us on three cultural citybreaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats - and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.
In this second episode, Janina Ramirez and Alastair are on a mission to get to know one of the most popular cities in the world through its art and architecture. Although Barcelona is famous for its exuberant modernista buildings, the Gothic Quarter and artistic superstars such as Picasso, Janina and Alastair are determined to discover some less well-known cultural treats. Escaping the crowds on the Ramblas, they seek out the designs of an engineer who arguably put more of a stamp on the city than its star architect, Antoni Gaudi. Alastair marvels at the Romanesque frescoes that inspired a young Miro, while Janina discovers a surprising collection of vintage fans in the Mares, one of the city's most remarkable but rarely visited museums.
With a behind-the-scenes visit to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, a session of impromptu Catalan dance and Alastair adding the finishing touches to some Barcelona street art, it is a fast-paced and colourful tour of the city's art and artists, revealing how Barcelona developed its distinctive cultural identity and how the long-running fight for independence has shaped the artistic life of the city.
WED 00:00 Radio 2 Live (b03ycqgg)
Hyde Park Headliners
Smokey Robinson Live in Hyde Park
As part of BBC Radio 2's Festival in a Day in London's Hyde Park, soul and Motown legend Smokey Robinson takes to the stage at the end of a lovely summer's day to close proceedings with a rousing headline set. Along with a little help from the crowd, Smokey and band perform a selection of classics from his impressive repertoire including You've Really Got a Hold on Me, The Tears of a Clown, I Second That Emotion and The Tracks of My Tears.
WED 01:00 Peter Rice: An Engineer Imagines (m0007zg7)
An Engineer Imagines tells the story of Peter Rice, widely regarded as the most distinguished structural engineer of the late 20th century, and his massive impact on modern architecture. Without his innovations in material and design, and his collaboration with the leading architects of his time, some of the most recognisable architectural buildings in the world would not have been possible. These buildings include the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Lloyds of London building.
The documentary traces Rice's extraordinary work and short life, from his native Dundalk through Belfast, London, Sydney and Paris, to his untimely death in 1992, and explores his lasting legacy, which can be seen today, not only in Europe and beyond, but also in his native Ireland.
WED 02:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqmt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
WED 02:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqmw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
WED 03:00 Timeshift (b019c85h)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2020
THU 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqq7)
Series 1
Triple View
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 Ross shows his viewers how to prepare their canvasses, guiding them step by step, as he paints a mountain view through a window, complete with cosy cabin and meadow.
THU 19:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqq9)
Series 1
British Museum
Art historian Dr Janina Ramirez has lovingly paced the galleries of the British Museum since she was a child. Now, as the museum’s incomparable collections lie shuttered during the lockdown, she has been given permission to curate a highly personal selection of some of her favourites amongst its many treasures and to guide us on her very own virtual tour of its silent, empty galleries.
For Ramirez, no other collection in the world makes it possible to chart the highs and lows of humans across the world, and across time, in quite the same way. Her tour takes her across many different cultures and periods of history, alighting on objects as varied as a decorated Aztec skull, ancient Egyptian cat mummies and an 18th-century tea set. As she says, ‘Whether they provide a glimpse into enduring notions of love, sex and spirituality or catalogue moments of change, power and achievement, the artefacts in this one building show us the eternal and the ephemeral.’
The film is a personal reflection on the solace, wisdom and sense of perspective that the British Museum’s global collections can bring us in a time of crisis. ‘We all matter,’ Ramirez concludes, ‘we all stitch ourselves, even in the smallest way, onto the tapestry of existence. These artefacts show us that each of us leaves our footprints in the sands of time.'
THU 20:00 Great Expectations (2012) (b039f0bs)
As a boy, Pip is made a plaything for haughty young Estella by eccentric Miss Haversham. When circumstances enable Pip to become a gentleman, he hopes to be able to woo wealthy Estella, but both are pawns in a larger game.
Sumptuous and star-studded adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, from BBC Films.
THU 22:00 Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema (b0bf7wrl)
Series 1
Science Fiction
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.
This time Mark explores the most visionary of all genres - science fiction, and shows how film-makers have risen to the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. Always at the forefront of cinema technology, science fiction films have used cutting-edge visual effects to transport us to other worlds or into the far future. But as Mark shows, it's not just about the effects. Films as diverse as 2001, the Back to the Future trilogy and Blade Runner have used product placement and commercial brand references to make their future worlds seem more credible. The recent hit Arrival proved that the art of film editing can play with our sense of past and future as well as any time machine. Meanwhile, films such as Silent Running and WALL-E have drawn on silent era acting techniques to help robot characters convey emotion. And District 9 reached back to Orson Welles by using news reporting techniques to render an alien visitation credible.
Mark argues that for all their spectacle, science fiction films ultimately derive their power from being about us. They take us to other worlds and eras, and introduce us to alien and artificial beings, in order to help us better understand our own humanity.
THU 23:00 Horizon (b08c3v47)
2017
Hair Care Secrets
The Horizon team have gathered together a team of scientists and doctors to investigate the incredible, natural material that is growing out of our heads - our hair. With access to the research laboratories of some of the world's leading hair care companies, including L'Oreal and ghd, the team explore the cutting-edge research and technology designed to push the boundaries of hair and hair care.
Each one of us has a unique head of hair - an average of 150,000 individual hair strands growing approximately one centimetre every month. Over your lifetime, that is over 800 miles. The time and effort we put into styling, sculpting and maintaining this precious material has created a global hair care market worth a staggering £60 billion pounds. With such high stakes, it is inevitable that when developing hair-care products, science and business operate hand in hand. The team reveal how this industry science compares to the rigorous academic standards that they are used to.
These investigations also reveal why we care so much about our hair, and whether or not it is worth splashing out on expensive shampoos. They uncover the magic ingredients found in conditioners and lay bare the secrets of the shiny, glossy hair seen in the adverts.
THU 00:00 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000bhgt)
Series 1
The Empire Writes Back
Robinson Crusoe, the hero of the first ever novel published in English, in 1719, was a slave trader. Right from its inception, as this programme investigates, the English novel was closely bound up with the dynamics of colonialism and marched along, in lock step, to the British Empire’s rise, decline and fall. Slavery, which predated the empire, but was an inescapable part of it, is the subject of two famous American novels more than a century apart - Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The legacy of slavery is also at the heart of one of the most famous novels of all, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and its 'prequel', written a century later - Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
The British Empire was often taken as a given – even God-given - and widely celebrated. In the novels of some writers, though, it was questioned more deeply – such as Rudyard Kipling’s famous espionage yarn Kim. Fifty years later, a very different type of spy, James Bond, fought to keep the empire going when it had in truth already gone. By then a new voice had emerged - that of writers from the newly independent former British colonies, like Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe. At the same time, immigrants from the Caribbean were coming to the UK in search of a warm welcome and a better life. Their mixed experiences began to be told in the Trinidadian Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, published in 1956. The twin evils of racism and slavery come full circle in recent works like the former Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman’s series Noughts and Crosses and the 2016 Man Booker prize winner The Sellout, a savage comedy by Paul Beatty – in which a present-day African-American Los Angeleno keeps a slave.
THU 01:00 Arena (b0613d0c)
Nicolas Roeg - It's About Time
The first major profile of the great British film director Nicolas Roeg, examining his very personal vision of cinema as in such films as Don't Look Now, Performance, Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Roeg reflects on his career, which began as a leading cinematographer, and on the themes that have obsessed him, such as our perception of time and the difficulty of human relationships. With contributions from key collaborators, including Julie Christie, Jenny Agutter and Theresa Russell, and directors he has inspired such as Danny Boyle, Mike Figgis, Bernard Rose and Ben Wheatley.
THU 02:00 The Joy of Painting (m000hqq7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
THU 02:30 Museums in Quarantine (m000hqq9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 03:00 Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema (b0bf7wrl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
22:00 today]
FRIDAY 01 MAY 2020
FRI 19:00 Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC (b072x1qh)
Violinist Nicola Benedetti explores 60 years of BBC archive to celebrate the world of the violin and its most outstanding performers. From Nathan Milstein, Mischa Elman and Isaac Stern to Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman and Nigel Kennedy, Nicola gives us a violinist's perspective on what makes a great performance in a tradition which stretches back to the 19th-century virtuoso Paganini. Filmed at the Royal Academy of Music Museum, London.
FRI 20:00 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097ts08)
Series 1
Dictatorship
Suzy Klein reaches the 1930s, when the totalitarian dictators sought to use and abuse music for ideological ends. She looks at the lives of Richard Strauss, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, who produced some of the 20th-century's best-loved music whilst navigating the precarious tightrope of working for perhaps the most terrifying music lovers ever - Hitler and Stalin.
The political message of the classic musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf is revealed as well as the secret code hidden in Shostakovich's quartets and Strauss's deeply personal reasons for trying to please the Nazis.
Suzy also uncovers why Hitler adored Wagner but banned Mendelssohn's Wedding March, how Stalin used music to subtly infiltrate minds and why Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a Nazi favourite, appeals to our most primitive senses.
Suzy also raises some intriguing questions: can we pin meaning onto music? What are the moral responsibilities of artists? And did the violence and tyranny of those regimes leave an indelible stain on the music they produced?
The stories are brought to life by performances from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its chorus - demonstrating Suzy's argument that music's incredible power to bypass our brains and reach for our hearts makes it a potent and dangerous force.
FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (m000hqmy)
Steve Wright and Jenny Powell present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 3 August 1989 and featuring Kylie Minogue, Paul McCartney and Gun.
FRI 21:30 The Shadows at Sixty (m000hqn0)
A look back at the incredible success of The Shadows as they celebrate their sixtieth anniversary. Starting from where they began as The Drifters to then becoming the backing band for Cliff Richard and enjoying huge success in their own right, the programme celebrates The Shadows’ achievements across a time of constant change within the social, cultural and musical landscape.
The Shadows were at the forefront of the UK beat boom generation and the first backing group to emerge as big stars in their own right. Using unseen archive, personal testimony and interviews with the band, along with those they influenced, including Brian May, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, The Shadows at Sixty is not just a trip down memory lane, but an in-depth, often emotional story of a group’s journey through six decades.
FRI 22:30 Great Guitar Riffs at the BBC (b049mtxy)
Compilation of BBC performances featuring some of the best axe men and women in rock 'n' roll, from Hendrix to The Kinks, Cream to AC/DC, The Smiths to Rage Against the Machine and Radiohead to Foo Fighters. Whether it is The Shadows playing FBI on Crackerjack, Jeff Beck with The Yardbirds, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream's Sunshine of Your Love from their final gig, Pixies on the Late Show, AC/DC on Top of the Pops or Fools Gold from The Stone Roses, this compilation is a celebration of rock 'n' roll guitar complete with riffs, fingerstylin', wah-wah pedals and Marshall amps.
FRI 23:30 Radio 2 Live (b07ws9xc)
Hyde Park Headliners
Elton John Live at Hyde Park
Sir Elton John, one of the most highly acclaimed and successful solo artists of all time, headlines Radio 2's Festival in a Day on London's Hyde Park stage, performing a string of hits to a 50,000-strong crowd.
With a career spanning over five decades, Sir Elton has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, holds the record for the biggest-selling single of all time and plays 107 shows a year. But this is all about London's Hyde Park - the multiple Grammy-winning legend and flamboyant superstar performs classics old and new from his back catalogue to his latest album Wonderful Crazy Night, his 33rd studio feat that has seen him reunite some vital band members for the first time in nearly a decade along with collaborating with his long-standing lyricist Bernie Taupin.
It's an incredible and unforgettable evening of songs from the mighty powerhouse rock legend that is Sir Elton John.
FRI 00:30 The People's History of Pop (b077rchk)
The Birth of the Fan
Twiggy celebrates the 60s, meeting skiffle musicians, fans of The Shadows, Liverpudlians who frequented the Cavern Club at the height of Merseybeat, Beatles devotees, Ready Steady Go! dancers, mods, lovers of ska, bluebeat and Millie Small, and fans of The Rolling Stones.
Unearthed pop treasures include a recording of John Lennon's first ever recorded performance with his band The Quarrymen.
FRI 01:30 The Shadows at Sixty (m000hqn0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:30 today]
FRI 02:30 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097ts08)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]