SATURDAY 30 MAY 2020

SAT 19:00 This Farming Life (b073h49f)
Series 1

Episode 1

It is autumn, the time of year to prepare for the upcoming mating - or tupping - season. On the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, sea shepherd and ex-barrister Sandy gathers in a flock of wild sheep from a remote Scottish island by boat. Later, he and wife Ali attempt to train two wayward Highland cattle calves.

On the mainland in the east of Scotland, fiances Mel and Martin head to market to look for the perfect rams to impregnate their ewes. In central Scotland near Loch Lomond, hill farmers Bobby and Anne health-check their flock to make sure they're fit to breed. In the far north, large-scale sheep farmer John has 4,000 ewes to check, but is also expecting thousands of visitors from all over the world as he hosts the world sheepdog trials. Further east, Martin must bring his barley in before the rain comes if he has any chance of saving his crop, but his new combine harvester is playing up.


SAT 20:00 Masters of the Pacific Coast: The Tribes of the American Northwest (b07mlplp)
Survival

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.


SAT 21:00 The Young Montalbano (b03b3brl)
Series 1

The First Case

Young detective Salvo Montalbano is posted to a remote village in the Sicilian mountains, where he struggles to adapt to the somewhat unwelcoming climate, but a promotion and transfer bring him to the more agreeable seaside town of Vigata. Here he finds himself supervising a team of local policemen, including veteran Carmine Fazio and affable but bumbling agent Catarella. Montalbano's first case in Vigata involves investigating an attempted murder at the hands of a vulnerable young woman whose motives appear unfathomable.

In Italian with English subtitles.


SAT 23:00 Own the Sky: Jet Pack Dreamers (m0009dl2)
How what began as a passion for the tantalising possibilities of jetpacks became an obsession. Shot over ten years, this documentary chronicles Australian David Mayman's seemingly impossible quest to fulfil his childhood dream to build and fly the world’s first jetpack.

His ambition, which nearly cost him his life and family, culminates in an attempt to make the world's first jetpack flight around the Statue of Liberty.


SAT 00:00 Rock 'n' Roll America (b061fdr7)
Whole Lotta Shakin'

As rock 'n' roll took off with teens in 1955 it quickly increased record sales by 300 per cent in America. Big business and the burgeoning world of TV moved in. Elvis made a big-money move to major label RCA instigated by Colonel Tom Parker, an illegal immigrant from Holland who had made his name at country fairs with a set of dancing chickens. Elvis made his national TV debut with Heartbreak Hotel and followed it with a gyrating version of Hound Dog that shocked America. PTAs, church groups and local councils were outraged. Rock 'n' roll was banned by the mayor of Jersey City and removed from jukeboxes in Alabama. Now Ed Sullivan would only shoot Elvis from the waist up.

The conservative media needed a cleaned-up version and the young, married-with-kids Christian singer Pat Boone shot up the chart, rivalling Elvis for sales. Not that this stopped rock 'n' roll. Jerry Lee Lewis again scandalised the nation with his gyrating finger in Whole Lotta Shakin' and the Everlys shocked with Wake Up Little Susie, both 45s being banned in parts of America.

It took bespectacled geek Buddy Holly to calm things down as a suburban down-home boy who, with his school friends The Crickets, turned plain looks into chart success. But by the end of 1958 the music was in real trouble. Elvis was conscripted into the army, Jerry Lee was thrown out of Britain and into obscurity for marrying his 13-year-old cousin and Little Richard went into the church.

Featuring Jerry Lee Lewis, Don Everly, Tom Jones, Wanda Jackson, Pat Boone, DJ Fontana, Eric Burdon, James Burton, Jerry Allison (The Crickets' drummer), Mike Stoller, PF Sloan, Joe Boyd, Jerry Phillips, Marshall Chess and JM Van Eaton (Jerry Lee Lewis's drummer).


SAT 01:00 Rock 'n' Roll America (b0623809)
Be My Baby

In the years bookended by Buddy Holly's death in early 1959 and The Beatles landing at JFK in spring 1964, rock 'n' roll calmed down, went uptown and got spun into teen pop in a number of America's biggest cities. Philadelphia produced 'teen idols' like Fabian who were beamed around the country by the daily TV show Bandstand. Young Jewish songwriters in New York's Brill Building drove girl groups on the east coast who gave a female voice to teenage romance. Rock 'n' roll even fuelled the Motown sound in Detroit and soundtracked the sunshiny west coast dream from guitar instrumental groups like The Ventures to LA's emerging Beach Boys.

In the early 60s, rock 'n' roll was birthing increasingly polished pop sounds across the States, but American teens seemed to have settled back into sensible young adulthood. Enter the long-haired boys from Liverpool, Newcastle and London.

Featuring exclusive interviews with Jerry Lee Lewis, Ben E King, Chubby Checker, Ronnie Spector, Barrett Strong, Eric Burdon and Pat Boone.


SAT 02:00 Top of the Pops (m000jjj7)
Andy Crane and Simon Mayo present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 14 September 1989 and featuring Tina Turner, Black Box and Damian.


SAT 02:30 Top of the Pops (m000jjjc)
Nicky Campbell presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 21 September 1989 and featuring S'Express, London Boys and The Wonder Stuff.


SAT 03:00 Masters of the Pacific Coast: The Tribes of the American Northwest (b07mlplp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



SUNDAY 31 MAY 2020

SUN 19:00 BBC Young Musician (m000jqyp)
2020

Strings Final Highlights

With just one place in this year’s semi-final left to play for, the focus is on strings with three violinists, a cellist and a harpist competing in the last of the BBC Young Musician 2020 category finals. Organist and conductor Anna Lapwood introduces highlights of the strings final, which was filmed at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff before the lockdown. Anna is joined by acclaimed British violinist Matthew Trusler to review each of the performances.

The competitors are violinists Mio Takahashi, Ilai Avni and Coco Tomita, who are all 18, cellist Ellen Baumring-Gledhill, who is also 18, and 17-year-old harpist Huw Boucher. They perform works by composers including Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Kreisler.

To win the category and progress to the semi-final, they will need to impress an expert jury. Internationally acclaimed violinist Fenella Humphreys and harpist Stephen Fitzpatrick, whose career has seen him perform with some of the world’s leading orchestras, join Angela Dixon, chief executive of Saffron Hall and chair of this year’s judging panels. Saxophonist Jess Gillam returns to profile one of the UK’s most important institutions for young musicians - the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

The winner from this strings final will join the winners from the keyboard, woodwind, brass and percussion categories as they take their place in the competition’s semi-final, due to be broadcast later in the year together with the grand final.

As well as the highlights programmes on BBC Four, you can watch all of the category finals in full on the BBC iPlayer, presented by Josie d’Arby.


SUN 20:00 Highlands - Scotland's Wild Heart (p03pjd66)
Spring - Season of Extremes

Series about the wildlife of the Scottish Highlands, narrated by Ewan McGregor.

It's late March in the Cairngorm mountains and the hills are on fire! Old heather is being burned in readiness for the grouse season. Traditionally, this inferno marks the end of winter and the start of spring in this wilderness. But spring is the most unpredictable of all seasons here. Ospreys, red squirrels, dippers, capercaillies, roe deer and bottlenose dolphins have struggled to find food and raise their young while coping with the extremes of wind and weather.


SUN 21:00 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
Most people thought that when the working traffic on canals faded away after the war, it would be the end of their story. But they were wrong. A few diehard enthusiasts and boat owners campaigned, lobbied and dug, sometimes with their bare hands, to keep the network of narrow canals open.

Some of these enthusiasts filmed their campaigns and their home movies tell the story of how, in the teeth of much political opposition, they saved the inland waterways for the nation and, more than 200 years after they were first built, created a second golden age of the canals.

Stan Offley, an IWA activist from Ellesmere Port, filmed his boating trips around the wide canals in the 40s, 50s and 60s in 16mm colour. But equally charming is the film made by Ed Frangleton, with help from Harry Arnold, of a hostel boat holiday on the Llangollen Canal in 1961. There are the films shot by ex-working boatman Ike Argent from his home in Nottinghamshire and looked after by his son Barry.

There is astonishing film of the last days of working boats, some shot by John Pyper when he spent time with the Beecheys in the 60s, film taken by Keith Christie of the last days of the cut around the BCN, and the films made by Keith and his mate Tony Gregory of their attempts to keep working the canals through their carrying company, Midland Canal Transport.

There is film of key restorations, the Stourbridge 16 being talked about with great wit and affection by one of the leading activists in that watershed of restorations in the mid-60s, David Tomlinson, and John Maynard's beautiful films of the restoration of the Huddersfield, 'the impossible restoration', shot over two decades.

All these and more are in the programme alongside the people who made the films and some of the stars of them. Together they tell the story of how, in the years after 1945, a few people fought the government like David fought Goliath to keep canals open and restore ones that had become defunct, and won against all the odds.


SUN 22:00 Dracula by Northern Ballet (m000jqyr)
The legendary vampire's insatiable thirst for blood knows no bounds. Until he encounters Mina.

Bram Stoker’s gothic romance is brought to life on stage in this gripping ballet, performed by the exceptional dancers of Northern Ballet to music by Schnittke, Rachmaninov, Pärt and Daugherty.

Choreographed by David Nixon OBE and recorded at Leeds Playhouse on Halloween, 2019.


SUN 23:45 Ballrooms and Ballerinas: Dance at the BBC (b06sg7zj)
Strictly Come Dancing - today one of the most popular shows on television - is the latest manifestation of the BBC's enduring love affair with dance. Whether it was profiling stars such as Margot Fonteyn, reluctantly teaching us how to do the twist or encouraging us to dance like John Travolta, the BBC's cameras were there to capture every move and every step. From ballet to ballroom and beyond, this is Dance at the BBC.


SUN 00:45 Unprecedented (m000jjh1)
Series 1

Episode 1

Viral by James Graham
After schools shut and A Levels are postponed, three teenagers use lockdown to come up with the next big viral craze.

Penny by Charlene James
Ray has been moved into a hotel for the foreseeable future yet he knows that survival is a lot more complicated than having a roof over your head.

Going Forward by John Donnelly
When team meetings move online, an under-pressure team leader takes drastic measures to make sure targets are met.


SUN 01:15 Unprecedented (m000jjjs)
Series 1

Episode 2

Romantic Distancing by Tim Price
Love in the time of coronavirus: can technology bridge the emotional gap as well as the geographical?

Safer at Home by Anna Maloney
As families and couples are forced into isolation, Mike takes pride in looking after his pregnant partner Ellie. Mike’s mother Betsy is delighted - she is extremely fond of Ellie - but she starts to see things about their relationship that unsettle her.

House Party by April De Angelis
A street in south London get together on Houseparty for a virtual drinking session in the first week of isolation, but not everyone is in the mood for a party.


SUN 01:45 Unprecedented (m000jjj4)
Series 1

Episode 3

Grounded by Duncan Macmillan
Liz is stressed by her parents’ cavalier attitude to the virus. Their age and health conditions put them heavily at risk. However, when overcome by the stress of her work, Liz is the one who needs looking after.

Fear Fatigue by Prasanna Puwanarajah
Based on conversations with NHS workers in March 2020, Fear Fatigue documents the feelings and fears of frontline staff in the days and weeks before the Coronavirus lockdown.


SUN 02:15 Unprecedented (m000jqt0)
Series 1

Episode 4

Kat and Zaccy by Deborah Bruce
Zac is reluctant to come home from university during lockdown. How long can he ignore his mother’s emotional pleas for his return?

The Unexpected Expert by Matilda Ibini
This crisis will have a huge impact on Roxy’s social care package. The local authority thanks her for her understanding, yet she feels significantly misunderstood.

The Night After by Josh Azouz
A couple in their sixties try to make contact with the outside world. Is it a distress signal? Or a message to a specific loved one? Greek Gods, a noose and the past all threaten to overwhelm them. A touching tale of toast, taboos and toddlers.


SUN 02:45 BBC Young Musician (m000jqyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



MONDAY 01 JUNE 2020

MON 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000jqzz)
Series 1

Mountain at 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.

Across the 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.

Spend half an hour with American painter Bob Ross as he demonstrates the creation of the perfect, brown-toned mountain scene - warm and wonderful!

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.


MON 19:30 The Beauty of Diagrams (b00vl3h1)
Vitruvian Man

Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the most familiar scientific diagrams.

He looks at Leonardo da Vinci's world-famous diagram of the perfect human body, which has many layers from anatomy to architecture, and defines our species like no other drawing before or since. The Vitruvian Man, drawn in the 1480s when he was living and working in Milan, has become one of the most famous images in the world. Leonardo's drawings form a vast body of work, covering every imaginable subject in spectacular detail: from feet, skulls and hands to muscles and sinews; from hearts and lungs to buildings, bridges and flying machines.

Vitruvian Man perfectly synthesises Leonardo's passions for anatomy, for the mechanics of the human body and for geometry. It is also full of surprises, illustrating an ancient architectural riddle set out 1,500 years earlier by the classical writer Vitruvius about the relative proportions of buildings and men; a riddle that, even today, still fascinates and beguiles experts and viewers alike.


MON 20:00 Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (b007nn9k)
Revolution

Andrew Marr revisits the Britain of Margaret Thatcher and comes to some surprising conclusions about the British national character.

Promising to restore order, confidence and national pride, Margaret Thatcher unleashed a dramatic and divisive transformation of British society. In a period of extreme ideological polarisation, British identity was redefined by the global market, and striking miners and sections of the Trade Union movement were demonised as the enemy within. Imperial visions stirred again as the fleet sailed for the Falklands. Having won power with the promise to restore traditional British values, the Thatcher government unleashed a whirlwind of privatisation and deregulation that amounted to a cultural, economic and political revolution. Heroic national rescue operation or final act of self-destruction?

This film explores the extent to which British people are all now the children of Margaret Thatcher.


MON 21:00 Rome's Lost Empire (b01pc063)
Dan Snow uses satellite technology to reveal the secrets of the Roman Empire. Together with space archaeologist Sarah Parcak, Dan sets out to identify and then track down lost cities, amphitheatres and forts in an adventure that sees him travel through some of the most spectacular parts of the vast empire. Cutting-edge technology and traditional archaeology help build a better understanding of how Rome held such a large empire together for so long.


MON 22:30 Rome's Invisible City (b05xxl4t)
With the help of a team of experts and the latest in 3D scanning technology, Alexander Armstrong, along with Dr Michael Scott, explores the hidden underground treasures that made Rome the powerhouse of the ancient world. In his favourite city, he uncovers a lost subterranean world that helped build and run the world's first metropolis and its empire.

From the secret underground world of the Colosseum to the aqueducts and sewers that supplied and cleansed it, and from the mysterious cults that sustained it spiritually to the final resting places of Rome's dead, Xander discovers the underground networks that serviced the remarkable world above.


MON 23:30 Seven Ages of Britain (b00qn322)
Age of Conquest

David Dimbleby tells the story of Britain through its art and treasure. The first part of the chronicle begins with the Roman invasion and ends with the Norman Conquest.

David travels throughout Britain in search of the greatest works of art from the time: the mosaics of Bignor Roman Villa, the burial treasure of Sutton Hoo, Anglo-Saxon poetry and Alfred the Great's jewel. He also goes abroad, throughout Europe, to find objects either made in Britain, or which tell us something about our past.

In Aphrodisias, Turkey, he finds the oldest image of Britannia; in Florence, a beautiful illuminated Bible made by Northumbrian monks in the 8th century; in Normandy, the Bayeux Tapestry, now believed to have been made by English nuns. He ends at the Tower of London, now seen as a symbol of Britishness, but originally built by William the Conqueror to subdue the people of England.


MON 00:30 How to Go Viral: The Art of the Meme with Richard Clay (m0003g0q)
Art historian Professor Richard Clay immerses us in the febrile world of viral media, exploring the popularity and meaning of internet memes, from LOL cats to emoji, pratfall videos to ‘dank’ alt-right satire. Playfully fusing the conventions of a BBC Four authored documentary with a throwaway YouTube video style, the film examines the rise and rise of this new visual language and asks what makes a few memes cut through and spread so intensely, while the vast majority fall quietly by the wayside.

To explore this question, Richard Clay experiments with devising and releasing his own memes, applying what he finds out in interviews with meme creators and influencers. These include Tom Walker, the comedian who plays YouTube sensation Jonathan Pie; Amanda Brennan, meme ‘librarian’ at Tumblr; Richard Dawkins, the biologist who coined the word ‘meme’; Christopher Blair, a self-proclaimed liberal troll; and Sam Oakley from LADBible, a video creator company that reaches a billion people a month.


MON 01:30 Hidden History: The Lost Portraits of Bradford  (m0009h27)
Thirty years ago, thousands of portraits from a small studio in Bradford were saved from a skip. They form a unique collection of photographs that records the changing face of a British industrial city in the middle of the 20th century. Many of the people in the portraits were new arrivals from the Asian subcontinent, eastern Europe and the Caribbean, attracted by the offer of work in wool mills. The names of these people are a mystery – only their faces survive.

A small studio, Belle Vue, in the middle of Bradford, built a business on taking portraits of the newly-arrived migrants. Photographer Tony Walker used a battered Victorian camera to take images of his customers, which were often sent back to relatives in the countries they’d left behind.

Working alongside staff from museums in Bradford, presenter Shanaz Gulzar identifies and tracks down the people in the portraits, and uncovers dramatic social change and the hidden stories behind the portraits.


MON 02:30 The Joy of Painting (m000jqzz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 03:00 Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (b007nn9k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



TUESDAY 02 JUNE 2020

TUE 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000jqyw)
Series 1

Soft Mountain Glow

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.

Across the 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.

In this 30-minute class, follow each of Bob Ross's masterful strokes of the paintbrush as he creates a tranquil landscape setting - almost feathery in appearance - at the base of a towering mountain.

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.


TUE 19:30 The Beauty of Diagrams (b00w57gr)
Copernicus

Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the most familiar scientific diagrams.

When Polish priest and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus developed his extraordinary theory of a sun-centred universe 500 years ago, he was flying in the face of both science and religion. Mankind had believed for thousands of years that the earth was at the centre of the cosmos, and to disagree was to risk derision and accusations of heresy.

For decades he was too afraid to publish, but the arrival of a young German scientist gave Copernicus courage, and his book and its extraordinary diagram were published in 1543, when he was on his deathbed. His image of the heliocentric universe changed forever our understanding of the Cosmos, and of our place in it.


TUE 20:00 Chemistry: A Volatile History (b00qjnqc)
The Power of the Elements

The explosive story of chemistry is the story of the building blocks that make up our entire world - the elements. From fiery phosphorous to the pure untarnished lustre of gold and the dazzle of violent, violet potassium, everything is made of elements - the earth we walk on, the air we breathe, even us. Yet for centuries this world was largely unknown, and completely misunderstood.

In this three-part series, professor of theoretical physics Jim Al-Khalili traces the extraordinary story of how the elements were discovered and mapped. He follows in the footsteps of the pioneers who cracked their secrets and created a new science, propelling us into the modern age.

In the final part, Professor Al-Khalili uncovers tales of success and heartache in the story of chemists' battle to control and combine the elements, and build our modern world. He reveals the dramatic breakthroughs which harnessed their might to release almost unimaginable power, and he journeys to the centre of modern day alchemy, where scientists are attempting to command the extreme forces of nature and create brand new elements.


TUE 21:00 The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (p01xtmv7)
Episode 3

Dr Lucy Worsley's story of the first Georgian kings reaches the final years of George II's reign. With extensive access to artworks in the Royal Collection, she shows how Britain's new ruling family fought the French, the Jacobites and each other, all at the same time. But while George very publicly bickered with his troublesome son Frederick, Prince of Wales, he also led from the front on the battlefield - the last British king to do so - and helped turn his adopted nation into a global superpower.

What would have seemed an unlikely outcome when the Georges first arrived from Hanover was achieved on the back of a strong navy, a dubious slave trade and a powerful new entrepreneurial spirit that owed much to the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment.


TUE 22:00 The Treasure Hunters (b040r3bv)
Raw Treasure

From pirates' hoards and shipwrecked booty to dazzling gems to precious metals, we lust after treasure, fight over it and go to the ends of the earth to find it - our planet is a treasure chest just waiting to be opened. In this series, Ellie Harrison and Dallas Campbell journey around the globe on the ultimate treasure hunt.

They scratch the surface of our planet to uncover its most extraordinary riches - from mountains of gold to the most valuable gemstones in the world and the largest natural treasure ever found.

In this episode, Ellie ventures down one of the deepest gold mines in the world in search of the gleaming metal that was once thought to be the skin of the gods and the sweat of the sun. Dallas free-dives for lustrous pearls in the waters around north west Australia and, using one of the largest treasure-hunting machines, he seeks out diamonds from the bottom of the ocean.

Dallas and Ellie reveal how you could make your fortune on the beach. Lumps of ambergris can wash up on almost any shoreline in the world. Although it starts life in a sperm whale's stomach, it ends up as a costly raw ingredient in the most expensive perfumes.

And while Dallas tries his hand at opal mining in one of the most hostile places on earth, Ellie discovers how one of the largest and most unusual treasures ever uncovered has helped us solve a 67-million-year-old puzzle.


TUE 23:00 Tomorrow's Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction (p026c7n7)
Robots

Dominic Sandbrook continues his exploration of the most innovative and imaginative of all genres and gets to science fiction's obsession with robots.

The idea of playing God and creating artificial life has fascinated us since the earliest days of science fiction - but what if our creations turn against us?

Dominic, leading writers and film-makers follow our hopes and fears from the first halting steps of Frankenstein's monster, via the threats of Doctor Who's Cybermen and The Terminator, the provocative ideas of Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica, to the worlds of cyberspace and the Matrix, where humanity and technology merge.

Among the interviewees are Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner), actor Peter Weller (RoboCop), producer Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator), Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker (Star Wars), actor Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica) and novelist William Gibson.


TUE 00:00 Looking for Rembrandt (m00042kq)
Series 1

Episode 1

Rembrandt arrives in Amsterdam ‘like a thunderclap’ and his star rises as he is courted by the city’s wealthy elite. But he has grander plans to be a great history painter. His meticulous attention to emotion means he takes far too long to complete important commissions, bringing him into conflict with Amsterdam’s most powerful patrons.

He falls in love with and marries Saskia van Uylenburgh. Together they enjoy their new-found riches, amassing an incredible personal collection of artwork, exotic curios, stuffed animals and valuable prints, much of which Rembrandt buys at auctions with alarming regularity. He begins to attract a reputation – one that would dog him throughout his life and even after his death – for being a spendthrift. Yet he continues to create works that declare himself to be among the great old masters like Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo. A hubris which is dramatically paralleled with personal tragedies – the deaths of three of his children in infancy, and Saskia – which nonetheless influence some of his most poignant and moving works


TUE 01:00 Machines (b09g8cc9)
A mesmerising and unflinching look behind the doors of a textile factory in India, as director Rahul Jain observes the life of the workers and the oppressive environment they seldom escape from. Machines tells a story of the human cost of mass production in a globalised world, showing the gulf between rich and poor from both perspectives.


TUE 02:05 The Joy of Painting (m000jqyw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 02:35 The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (p01xtmv7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 03 JUNE 2020

WED 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000jqyb)
Series 2

Meadow Stream

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.

Across the 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.

In this programme, Ross shows you how to paint a beautiful summer scene, with a cabin and rushing rivulet flowing through a luscious green landscape.

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.


WED 19:30 The Beauty of Diagrams (b00wbn7y)
Newton's Prism

Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the world's most familiar scientific diagrams.

In the mid-1660s, Isaac Newton bought a pair of prisms at a fair near Cambridge, which were to be the basis of a series of experiments that would unlock a secret that had occupied scientists for centuries - the nature of light itself.

To explain what he had done, Newton created a diagram. It is called The Crucial Experiment and is a pivotal image in scientific history, a graphic moment when the ancient world was overturned by modern science. Newton demonstrated that white light is not pure, but made up of a number of different colours, the colours of the rainbow.

Newton's ideas transformed our knowledge of what we see and how we see, and the prism and its refracted colours became a captivating image. From fibre-optics to the cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, Newton's work went on to influence centuries of science and art.


WED 20:00 Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (p00kjq6h)
Spark

Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements.

Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments - a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.

Episode one tells the story of the very first 'natural philosophers' who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself. It was these men who truly laid the foundations of the modern world. Electricity was without doubt a fantastical wonder. This is the story about what happened when the first real concerted effort was made to understand electricity - how we learned to create and store it, before finally creating something that enabled us to make it at will - the battery.


WED 21:00 SAS: Rogue Warriors (b08f00s0)
Series 1

Episode 1

The Special Air Service is the world's most famous combat unit, with the motto Who Dares Wins, but the story of how it came into existence has been, until now, a closely guarded secret.

For the first time, the SAS has agreed to open up its archive and allow Ben Macintyre to reveal the true story of their formation during the darkest days of World War Two.

With unprecedented access to the SAS secret files, unseen footage and exclusive interviews with its founder members, this series tells the remarkable story behind an extraordinary fighting force.

Episode one tells the story of the founding of the SAS in the heat of the north African desert in 1941. David Archibald Stirling is an aristocratic dreamer who had once held ambitions to be an artist or perhaps a famous mountaineer but now, with the war in the desert reaching its most desperate stage, Stirling has a vision for a new kind of war: attacking the enemy where they least expect it - from behind their own lines. But Stirling is up against the many in British High Command who do not want to see him succeed with his radical new way of warfare. Against the odds, Stirling wins through and helps the Allies towards victory in the desert. The cost is high. In combat, Stirling loses lieutenant Jock Lewes, his right-hand man. With his brilliant training methods and invention of a new weapon, Lewes has proved vital to making Stirling's dream of a crack fighting force a reality. Stirling must soldier on alone.


WED 22:00 The Treasure Hunters (b040zb5q)
Man-made Treasure

Ellie Harrison and Dallas Campbell reveal the greatest treasures we've ever created.

Dallas braves vicious currents to dive on a shipwreck where gold, silver and 5,000 emeralds have been found. Ellie tells the tale of intrigue and obsession surrounding a jewelled room in Russia decorated with millions of pounds worth of amber. She enters the secretive world of the diamond cutters - each lives with the knowledge that a slip of the hand could cost them millions of pounds.


WED 23:00 Timeshift (b08mp2l8)
Series 17

Dial "B" for Britain: The Story of the Landline

Timeshift tells the story of how Britain's phone network was built. Incredibly, there was once a time when phones weren't pocket-sized wireless devices but bulky objects wired into our homes and workplaces. Over the course of 100 years, engineers rolled out a communications network that joined up Britain - a web of more than 70 million miles of wire. Telephones were agents of commercial and social change, connecting businesses and creating new jobs for Victorian women. Wires changed the appearance of urban skylines and the public phone box became a ubiquitous sight.

Yet despite ongoing technical innovation, the phone service often struggled to meet demand. When the mobile phone arrived, it appeared to herald the demise of the landline. Yet ironically, now we're more connected than ever, it's not the telephone that's keeping us on the landline.

In 1877, Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell returned to Britain from America to showcase a revolutionary new electric device - the telephone. After impressing no less than Queen Victoria, Bell helped drive uptake of the telephone in Britain, tapping into the growth of a growing commercial phenomenon - the office. Soon, whole networks of telephone lines were being built, connected together by exchange switchboards. Female switchboard operators were preferred by telephone companies as they were cheaper and perceived as more polite, opening up new employment opportunities for women in late Victorian Britain.

At first only the wealthiest people had phones in their homes, but the public call box soon emerged, although when the GPO - the General Post Office - took over the private networks, it initially struggled to find an acceptable design for its box and met some resistance to its now iconic bright red colour.

The introduction of direct dial telephones and automatic exchanges, as well as services like the 999 emergency number and the speaking clock, helped drive private uptake of phones in the 1930s. However, with the onset of World War Two, military concerns took priority. Gene Toms, a switchboard operator, recalls her time during the war, trying to work while wearing a helmet during air raids, dealing with self-important officers and doing her best to assist servicemen phoning home.

A renewed drive to restore, modernise and expand the network after the war kept a legion of engineers busy. Former GPO engineers Jim
Coombe, Bryan Eagan and Dez Flahey share their memories of dubious safety practices and difficult customers. Despite the expansion, the network still had limited capacity relative to demand, and one cheaper solution was the "party line", shared with another household, although it created problems of privacy.

The introduction of STD - subscriber trunk dialling - in the late 1950s enabled callers to make long distance calls without the help of an operator. But STD, like the network itself, was taking a long time to roll out; and despite the introduction of stylish coloured telephones and the Trimphone in the 1960s to tempt customers, the service acquired a bad reputation among many users. Even an episode of the children's series Trumpton reflected the general frustration. Archive footage shows the then postmaster general, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, being grilled by an interviewer about the shortcomings of the phone service.

But there was an exciting new symbol of the future under construction - the Post Office Tower, part of a network of towers designed to expand the capacity of the network using a wireless, microwave system. By the 1970s telephone supply was catching up with demand. People were increasingly moving home around the country, relocating for work, and young families expected to have a phone as a standard mod con. An advertising campaign featuring a talking cartoon bird - Buzby - encouraged customers to make more calls. What was once a service had become a thriving business, and British Telecommunications was privatised in 1984.

The arrival of the mobile phone soon threatened to supersede the landline - but the internet, a technology that the founding fathers of telephony could never have dreamed of, has given the landline a new lease of life.


WED 00:00 The High Art of the Low Countries (b01rsfgd)
Dream of Plenty

Andrew Graham-Dixon shows how the art of Renaissance Flanders evolved from the craft of precious tapestries within the Duchy of Burgundy into a leading painting school in its own right. Starting his journey at the magnificent altarpiece of Ghent Cathedral created by the Van Eyck brothers, Andrew explains their groundbreaking innovation in oil painting and marvels at how the colours they obtained can still remain so vibrant today.

Andrew describes how, in the early Renaissance, the most urgent preoccupation was not the advancement of learning, humanist or otherwise, but the Last Judgment. People believed they were living in the end of days; a subject popular with preachers and artists and intensely realised in swarming microscopic detail by Hieronymus Bosch.


WED 01:00 The Joy of Painting (m000jqyb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 01:30 Pride and Prejudice (b0074r75)
Episode 1

Colin Firth stars as Mr Darcy in this iconic BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by writer Andrew Davies. The arrival of the wealthy Mr Bingley causes great excitement within the Bennet family. One of her five daughters, Mrs Bennet feels, is sure to capture the heart of the wealthy young aristocrat. Meanwhile the wilful and opinionated Elizabeth Bennet matches wits with haughty Mr Darcy.


WED 02:25 Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (p00kjq6h)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



THURSDAY 04 JUNE 2020

THU 19:00 The Joy of Painting (m000jr02)
Series 2

Nature's Edge

Imagine yourself nestled in a Bob Ross cabin, hidden in the midst of a plush green forest and surrounded by the sounds of nature.


THU 19:30 The Beauty of Diagrams (b00wvd9x)
Pioneer Plaque

Series in which mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores the stories behind some of the world's most familiar and influential scientific diagrams.

When the unmanned space probe Pioneer 10 took off from Cape Canaveral in March 1972, it had on board a remarkable diagram. The Pioneer Plaque was designed to communicate fundamental facts about Earth and its inhabitants to life on other planets. In carefully engraved graphic images and mathematical symbols, the plaque would reveal the Earth's location in the solar system and show extra-terrestrial intelligent life what human beings looked like.

But how could one single diagram do all that - what do you put in and what do you leave out? With its naked human figures, the plaque sparked arguments amongst feminists and conservatives.

So was it, in the end, a great intellectual game or was it the most enterprising, artistic and scientific diagram of all time, perhaps even the ultimate diagram?


THU 20:00 Pride and Prejudice (b0074rph)
Episode 5

A dramatisation of Jane Austen's classic story of social mores. Darcy is pleased to introduce Elizabeth to his sister, Georgiana, and to welcome her and her aunt and uncle to Pemberley. In spite of Miss Bingley's best efforts, their relationship is growing warmer, until Elizabeth receives a piece of distressing news from Longbourn.


THU 21:00 Earth from Space (p072n8m0)
Series 1

Changing Planet

Cameras in space tell stories of life on our planet from a brand new perspective. At a time when the Earth’s surface is changing faster than ever in human history, watch cities grow, forest disappear and glaciers melt. In the ever-growing grey of cities one man is feeding thousands of parakeets; in Sumatra a female orang-utan and her daughter face life in a forest under threat; while in Tanzania local people use satellites to replant a forest, securing the future for a family of chimpanzees. This is our home as we’ve never seen it before.


THU 22:00 Chasing the Moon (m0006vr8)
Series 1

Earthrise (Part Two)

In the aftermath of the deadly Apollo 1 fire, Nasa faced harsh scrutiny. The horror of the first casualties at Cape Kennedy led Americans to increasingly question the very premise of landing a man on the moon. Yet again, it was the Cold War that gave Nasa’s mission new urgency and life.

Amid concerns that the Soviets might exploit the hiatus to overtake the Americans, less than a year after the fatal Apollo 1 fire, the nation gathered on 21 December 1968, to watch as Apollo 8 lifted off and headed for the moon. Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman recalls, ‘My odds for mission success were a hundred percent. If I didn’t think I was coming back, I wasn’t going to go.’ The rest of America, Borman’s wife and children included, gathered nervously to watch the televised live broadcast as the Saturn V launched into orbit around the Earth and then took three men out of the gravitational pull of their home planet for the very first time.

As the American crew became the first to orbit the moon, footage and photography from Apollo 8 not only gave us images of the Earth’s satellite but an entirely new perspective of our world. Americans celebrated this unparalleled accomplishment. The space programme had turned a corner.

A film By Robert Stone.

A Robert Stone Production for American Experience WGBH/PBS in association with Arte France.


THU 22:50 Inside Einstein's Mind: The Enigma of Space and Time (b06s75vs)
The story of the most elegant and powerful theory in science - Albert Einstein's general relativity.

When Einstein presented his formidable theory in November 1915, it turned our understanding of gravity, space and time completely on its head. Over the last 100 years, general relativity has enabled us to trace the origins of the universe to the Big Bang and to appreciate the enormous power of black holes.

To mark the 100th anniversary of general relativity, this film takes us inside the head of Einstein to witness how his idea evolved, giving new insights into the birth of a masterpiece that has become a cornerstone of modern science. This is not as daunting as it sounds - because Einstein liked to think in pictures. The film is a magical visual journey that begins in Einstein's young mind, follows the thought experiments that gave him stunning insights about the physical world, and ultimately reaches the extremes of modern physics.


THU 23:50 The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour (b04nqpz3)
Blood for Sale: Gothic Goes Global

Gothic fantasy horror would be outstripped by real horror as the truth of mechanised warfare dawned on an innocent world in 1914. The language of Gothic would increasingly come to encapsulate the horrors of the 20th century - from Marx's analysis of 'vampiric' capitalism to Conrad's dark vision of imperialism and TS Eliot's image of The Wasteland, a Gothic narrative seemed to make more sense of the modern world more than any other.


THU 00:50 Fabric of Britain (b03bgrvf)
Knitting's Golden Age

Documentary exploring how knitting rose from basic craft to the height of popular fashion in the 20th century. It's a craft that has given us scratchy jumpers, sexy bathing costumes and the infamous poodle loo cover, has sustained Britain through the hardships of war and shown a mother's love to generations of little ones. Today, knitwear has become a staple of every wardrobe thanks to a prince's golfing taste, The Beatles and 80s breakfast television. Warm-hearted and surprising, this is the story of the people's craft, and a very British one at that.


THU 01:50 The Joy of Painting (m000jr02)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


THU 02:20 Earth from Space (p072n8m0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



FRIDAY 05 JUNE 2020

FRI 19:00 John Williams at the BBC (b073mrky)
Fifty years of spellbinding performances from one of the guitar's greatest players, John Williams. Gold from the BBC's archive that takes in classical masterworks, the prog rock of Sky and comedy with Eric Sykes, as well as duets with fellow guitar maestro Julian Bream.


FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (m000jqyf)
Sybil Ruscoe and Jenny Powell present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 28 September 1989 and featuring Wet Wet Wet, The Beautiful South and Gloria Estefan.


FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (m000jy3k)
Steve Wright and Jakki Brambles present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 5 October 1989 and featuring Sonia, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Black Box.


FRI 21:00 Tom Jones at 80 (m000jqyk)
To mark his 80th birthday, the BBC pays tribute to Welsh icon and international superstar Sir Tom Jones with this archive-based celebration.

Looking back over 60 years in showbusiness, the film takes us on a journey through Tom’s career via some of his greatest songs and performances - from Delilah and It’s Not Unusual to The Green, Green Grass of Home and Kiss - many of which will have a special resonance for a Welsh audience.

Additional context to Sir Tom’s incredible longevity is provided through rarely seen archive footage and interviews with the great man himself.


FRI 22:00 Tom Jones's 1950s: The Decade That Made Me (b0788qph)
In this personal journey through his formative years in south Wales in the 1950s, Tom Jones takes us on a trip through the decade of his childhood and adolescence, the years that shaped his ambition, his talent and his tastes and that witnessed an explosion of popular culture and the sweeping aside of the old order.

Television, the movies, the radio and - most importantly - the music of the first rock 'n' roll years give us a unique insight into both the country and the decade that would shape Tom's talent and, in the 60s, make him a star. Tom Jones's 1950s in Pontypridd are told first hand by the man himself as he travels back to his birthplace.

Tom's take on the decade is amplified and explored by a Greek chorus of contributors who share their account of their 50s. Joan Bakewell, Katherine Whitehorn and Michele Hanson share their experiences both as women and from differing class backgrounds, historians Alwyn Turner, Martin Johnes, Francis Beckett and Tony Russell draw the social and political landscape of a rapidly changing decade, while musicians Bruce Welch, Clem Cattini, Marty Wilde and Tom McGuinness talk of how that decade began their musical journeys and changed their lives forever, all illustrated by a rich seam of archive that captures a decade we mostly saw in black and white.

The result is a rich mix of humour, confession and reflection - all brought to life by Tom Jones himself, our guide through the lives and times of a young generation struggling to find its own voice.


FRI 23:00 A Little Later (m000jqym)
Tom Jones

Classic performances by Tom Jones from the Later...with Jools Holland archives.


FRI 23:15 Sounds of the Sixties (b0074qbf)
Original Series

1964-66: The Beat Room

Things get cool and serious in the archive rock show as it highlights the BBC's cutting-edge pop programme The Beat Room amongst others, with great performances from John Lee Hooker, The Pretty Things and Tom Jones.


FRI 23:45 ...Sings Elvis (b00pqcg3)
2011 marked the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth and was celebrated by a host of performances by artists covering the King's classic songs culled from the BBC archives.

Some of Britain's biggest stars were introduced to rock n roll as teenagers via their idol Elvis, and Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones and John Cale all pay their tribute. The original songwriters of some of Elvis's greatest hits perform their own versions of classic tracks, including Carl Perkins singing Blue Suede Shoes and Mac Davis doing In the Ghetto.

Other artists paying homage from across five decades include The Deep River Boys, the Stylistics, Boy George, Alison Moyet, Pet Shop Boys and Robbie Williams. There will be jumpsuits, pelvic thrusts, brilliant tunes ... and Glen Campbell's Elvis impersonation.


FRI 00:45 Singer-Songwriters at the BBC (b015j8g7)
Series 2

Episode 2

The celebration of the singing songwriting troubadours of the 1960s and 70s continues with a further trawl through the BBC archives for timeless and classic performances.

Tom Paxton starts proceedings with a rare black and white performance of his classic song The Last Thing on My Mind filmed in 1964. Also making an appearance is the 'fifth Beatle', Harry Nilsson, with a performance from his BBC concert in 1972. Other gems from this year include Canadian Gordon Lightfoot, songwriting duo Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan as Stealers Wheel and the most popular acoustic act of the 1970s, the gentle, bespectacled John Denver.

From the Basil Brush Show in 1973, Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance make a surprise appearance. Californian Beach Boy Bruce Johnston offers a sublime version of Disney Girls, and Joan Armatrading injects a bit of brio on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Rounding it all off is six-time Grammy winner Billy Joel.


FRI 01:45 Country Music by Ken Burns (m000bpkf)
Series 1

I Can't Stop Loving You (1953-1963)

In Memphis, the confluence of blues and hillbilly music at Sun Studios gave birth to rockabilly, the precursor of rock and roll. Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were at the forefront.

In the recording studios of Music City, country music’s twang was replaced by something smoother - the Nashville sound. Patsy Cline became one of its biggest stars before her untimely death.


FRI 02:35 Tom Jones's 1950s: The Decade That Made Me (b0788qph)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]