TUESDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2010

TUE 19:00 World News Today (b00tzlzx)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


TUE 19:30 It's Only a Theory (b00n9105)
Episode 2

Comedians Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter host a series in which qualified professionals and experts submit their theories about life, the universe and everything for examination by a panel of Hamilton, Hunter and a guest celebrity, who then make a final decision on whether the theory is worth keeping.

The guest celebrity is broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney and the experts are Professor David Crystal, John Man and Dr Kathleen Richardson.


TUE 20:00 Britain's Best Drives (b00hq4fb)
North Yorkshire Moors

Actor Richard Wilson takes a journey into the past, following routes raved about in motoring guides of mid-20th century.

In a classic Morris Minor Traveller, he drives from Scarborough to Whitby via the Yorkshire moors. On the way, he learns about the rise and fall of the British seaside resorts, takes a toll road through the Dalby Forest and checks out the mythical roadside wonder that is the Hole of Horecum.

He finds out how the village of Goathland now lives a double life, and ends up with a carload of goths on their way to visit Whitby Abbey.


TUE 20:30 Time to Remember (b00tzlzz)
Stage and Screen

In the 1950s, the newsreel company Pathe mined their archive to produce a series of programmes for television called Time to Remember. Made by the producer Peter Baylis, they chronicled the political, social and cultural changes that occurred during the first half of the 20th century.

Each episode was narrated by a prominent actor such as Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, Edith Evans, Basil Rathbone and Joyce Grenfell, all reading scripts recalling historic, evocative or significant moments from an intriguing past.

In 2010, the material from the original Time to Remember has been collected together thematically to create a new 12-part series under the same title that offers a rewarding perspective on the events, people and innovations from history that continue to shape and influence the world around us.

Archive footage from the theatres, music halls and cinemas of the 1920s and 30s combines with characterful voiceover to give a glimpse of the entertainment industries in their early 20th century golden age. It includes footage of Charles Laughton applying his own stage make-up, chorus line auditions and rehearsals in the West End, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visiting Europe, and Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie, 1929's Blackmail.


TUE 21:00 The Born Free Legacy (b00tzm01)
Born Free caused a sensation when it was first published in 1960. As well as topping the New York Times bestseller list, the book, and the Hollywood film that followed, made a massive impact on conservation and science and our fundamental attitudes to wild animals and the environment.

This documentary marks the 50th anniversary of Born Free's publication by revisiting the inspirational story of Austrian artist and author Joy and her husband George Adamson, a warden turned wildlife conservationist. The account of the couple's experiences and adventures in East Africa as they raised an orphaned lioness cub, and their success in training her to survive in the wild, won the hearts and minds of people around the world and challenged the conventional view of wild animals as being without personalities, emotions or individual rights.

The extraordinary relationship between Elsa the lioness and her adopted 'parents' caused a seismic shift in popular attitudes towards animals and left a legacy that is as controversial today as it is fondly celebrated.

The documentary was filmed on location in Kenya and draws on extraordinary archive, including home video footage filmed by Joy and George, shot over the course of 50 years. Featuring contributions from their many friends, associates and contemporaries, it gives a remarkable insight into the personal lives and work of a couple who contributed to a sea change in our view of our relationship with wild animals and our place on the planet.


TUE 22:00 Elsa the Lioness (b00v1xk5)
First transmitted in 1961, David Attenborough travels to Meru National Park in Kenya to visit Joy and George Adamson and meet Elsa the lioness and her cubs shortly before Elsa's death.

In the late 1950s, game warden George and his wife Joy became the carers of three orphaned cubs - Elsa, Big One and Lustica - after George had been forced to kill their mother. Big One and Lustica were eventually sent to Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands, but Elsa remained with the Adamsons. Joy's quest to train Elsa to survive in the wild and Elsa's subsequent independence became the basis for the book and film Born Free.

Now living in the wild with her own three cubs in Meru National Park, David joins the Adamsons as they try and track down Elsa to check up on her wellbeing.


TUE 22:30 Reputations (b00v1xk7)
Joy Adamson - Born Wild?

The series re-evaluating high-profile reputations gets its claws into Joy Adamson of 'Born Free' fame. Her book - and the equally celebrated film - about Elsa the lion cub, portrayed Adamson as a saintly animal lover leading an idyllic life.

This film paints a different picture - that of a tough, ambitious and promiscuous woman, whose relationship with husband George included sexual and professional jealousy - and violence.


TUE 23:25 Time to Remember (b00tzlzz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


TUE 23:55 The Born Free Legacy (b00tzm01)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


TUE 00:55 Murder on the Lake (b00qjngb)
Joan Root, with her husband Alan, produced beautiful and famous natural history films, born of her deep love of Africa and its flora and fauna. This delicate but determined member of Kenya's Happy Valley was gunned down in January 2006 by intruders bearing AK-47s. Four men were charged with her murder, including David Chege, the leader of a private vigilante group Root herself had financed to stop the illegal fishing that was killing Lake Naivasha, the beautiful lake beside which she lived.

Chege was from Karagita, the largest of the slums that has sprung up beside the lake in the last twenty years. In that time, the population of Naivasha has rocketed from 30,000 to 350,000 as a desperate tide of impoverished migrant workers arrived in search of employment on Kenya's flourishing flower farms. This has created squalor, crime and, in the minds of Root and her fellow naturalists, ecological apocalypse.

This film tells the story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of Joan Root, and of her campaign to save the lake she loved. Who killed Joan Root? Was it the fish poachers, whom Root stopped from plying their illegal trade in a bid to save her beloved Lake Naivasha? Was it her loyal lieutenant Chege, whom Root ultimately cut off from her payroll? Or was it one of her white neighbours, with whom Root had feuded?

Through the telling of Root's story, the film opens a window onto contemporary Africa and the developed world's relationship to it. For it is the Kenyan rose, which is exported by the millions on a daily basis from Naivasha, that has brought not just jobs and foreign exchange earnings, but a population explosion that has caused the destruction of the environment Root worked so hard to stop. Her campaign may have ultimately cost her her life.


TUE 02:25 Time to Remember (b00tzlzz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


TUE 02:55 The Born Free Legacy (b00tzm01)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]