SATURDAY 06 NOVEMBER 2010

SAT 19:00 Life (p07gj8bp)
Birds

Birds owe their global success to feathers - something no other animal has. They allow birds to do extraordinary things.

For the first time, a slow-motion camera captures the unique flight of the marvellous spatuletail hummingbird as he flashes long, iridescent tail feathers in the gloomy undergrowth. Aerial photography takes us into the sky with an Ethiopian lammergeier dropping bones to smash them into edible-sized bits. Thousands of pink flamingoes promenade in one of nature's greatest spectacles. The sage grouse rubs his feathers against his chest in a comic display to make popping noises that attract females. The Vogelkop bowerbird makes up for his dull colour by building an intricate structure and decorating it with colourful beetles and snails.


SAT 20:00 Birds Britannia (b00vnf8d)
Garden Birds

Documentary series which looks at the different birds that live in the UK and at the stories they can tell us about the British people over time. Top of our affections are garden birds, including the nation's favourite, the robin. Yet this relationship is a surprisingly modern one, the result of some of the most dramatic changes in British society in the last 150 years.


SAT 21:00 Wallander (b00fy2zw)
Series 1

Sidetracked

New drama series, in which Swedish detective Kurt Wallander investigates a series of violent and terrifying murders in the beautiful setting of Skane, Southern Sweden.

What connects the shocking suicide of a young woman and the vicious murder of a government minister? Inspector Kurt Wallander's investigation uncovers wrongdoing and corruption that extends to the heart of the Swedish establishment.


SAT 22:30 Mad Men (b00vnflx)
Series 4

The Beautiful Girls

Peggy is forced to face some unpleasant facts about a client's discriminatory business practices.

Don and Faye's burgeoning relationship is tested when Sally runs away from home and turns up at the office.

Roger tries to rekindle his affair with Joan.


SAT 23:15 Getting On (b00vnfgw)
Series 2

Episode 2

Darkly comic series that offers a glimpse inside a world a million miles away from traditional hospital dramas. This is the dull, dreary, dog end of the health service with paperwork to fill in, bottoms to wipe and the drama played out in a thousand tiny acts of revenge and kindness, shining a light on the way workplace relationships play out and mapping out the life of a hospital through six shifts (five days and one night) on B4 ward.

With Den and Hilary flirting behind closed doors, an incident on the ward is all it takes to trigger the blame game. Pippa has good news on her faecal forum paper and the presence of Peter Healy lightens her mood. Paperwork and pragmatism once again prevail as the staff on B4 clockwatch their way through the day.


SAT 23:45 Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits (b00vngl0)
Art critic Laura Cumming takes a journey through more than five centuries of self-portraits and finds out how the greatest names in western art transformed themselves into their own masterpieces.

The film argues that self-portraits are a unique form of art, one that always reveals the truth of how artists saw themselves and how they wanted to be known to the world. Examining the works of key self-portraitists including Durer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Warhol, Laura traces the development of the genre, uncovering the strange and various ways artists have managed to get their inner and outer selves to match up.

Laura investigates the stories behind key self-portraits, interviews artists as they attempt a self-portrait, and shows how the history of the self-portrait is about more than how art and artists have changed, it also charts the evolution of the way we see ourselves and what it means to be human.

She also discusses Courbet with Julian Barnes, Rembrandt's theatricality with Simon Callow, and meets the contemporary artists Mark Wallinger and Patrick Hughes, observing the latter making his first ever self-portrait.


SAT 01:15 Solomon Burke: Everybody Needs Somebody (b0074scp)
Fifty years after his first record - Christmas Presents from Heaven, a song dedicated to his grandmother - sold a million copies, the late soul singer Solomon Burke's life story reads like the rollercoaster ride she predicted for him.

He was the 'wonder boy preacher' who had his own gospel radio show at the age of twelve, then had his early success blighted by a crooked manager - a descent that left him in the gutter, with a distrust of the music business that would never completely leave him.

A spell working for his aunt's funeral home, his unlikely qualification as a licensed mortician and his seduction back into recording by the promise of a red Lincoln Continental followed. Then came a record deal on Atlantic Records alongside his heroes Ivory Joe Hunter, Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown, making hit records, only to have his business venture with label mates Wilson Pickett and Joe Tex sabotaged by the very record company he had helped keep afloat.

Paul Spencer's film follows his journey from a humble Philadelphia neighborhood to New York and Hollywood, and the music industry's highest accolades - induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Grammy for his 2002 album Don't Give Up on Me. His music is traced back to its gospel roots and we learn how faith in God sustained him, his 21 children, 79 grandchildren and 17 great grand children, the family he thought he would never have.

Bill Wyman tells how the Rolling Stones covered three of his songs in their formative years, Tom Jones admits that, for him, Solomon left all the other soul singers in the shade, and Jools Holland explains how his powerful voice and magisterial presence guaranteed him appearances on Later and one of Jools's own records.


SAT 02:15 A History of the World (b00sj1pc)
The Clock That Changed the World

Adam Hart-Davis tells the story of the amazing 280-year-old wooden clock, made in Lincolnshire, that changed timekeeping for ever and helped solve the problem of how to navigate round the world.

Adam tells the amazing story of John Harrison and gets to grips with the clock in Leeds, helping to put it together and make it run. He also makes his own wooden clock to show how Harrison did it.

Adam takes to the sea at Hull to show why finding your position was so difficult in the 1700s and why sailors so often got it wrong, with tragic results. He shows how Harrison changed all that, eventually designing an incredibly accurate portable watch that Captain Cook took on his second voyage.

Bringing the story bang up to date, Adam shows how the idea of using time to find your position was key to Captain Cook, but is also at the heart of today's satellite navigation systems. On the way, he finds evidence of John Harrison and his brother James (also a joiner) round north Lincolnshire.


SAT 02:45 Johnny Kingdom's Year with the Birds (b00vnf8g)
Episode 1

Johnny Kingdom, gravedigger-turned-amateur filmmaker spends a year recording the bird life in and around his home on his beloved Exmoor.

Johnny has spent three years creating a wildlife habitat on his 52-acre patch of land on the edge of Exmoor. He's been busy nailing nest boxes on tree trunks, planting a wildflower meadow, dredging his pond, putting up remote cameras and wiring them up to a viewing station in his cabin on the land - all the time hoping against hope that not only will he attract new wildlife but also that he will be able to film it.

This year he is turning his attention to the bird life, hoping to follow some of the species he finds near his home and on his land, across the seasons. We see the transitions from the lovely autumn mists of the oak wood, through the sparkling snow-clad landscape of a north Devon winter, into spring's woodland carpet of bluebells and finally the golden glow of early summer.

The bulk of the series is from Johnny's own camera. Don't expect the Natural History Unit - instead expect passion, enthusiasm, humour and an exuberant love of the landscape and its wildlife.

The series begins at the end of autumn, with Johnny clearing out bird boxes and sorting out his new remote cameras in preparation for the winter. There are two birds in particular that he wants to film - the great spotted woodpecker and the wren. But the harsh winter looks as if it could spell trouble for the wrens and it will be spring before Johnny knows how well they have fared.

He has better luck with the woodpecker and eventually finds their roost. Meanwhile, at home, he struggles to get shots of a mistle thrush as his wife Julie and his neighbours disturb this shy bird as it feasts on a rowan tree.


SAT 03:15 Birds Britannia (b00vnf8d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]