TUESDAY 08 NOVEMBER 2011

TUE 19:00 World News Today (b01709cr)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


TUE 19:30 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00npjt1)
Episode 5

It is the day of the festival. The showman's wagon is revealed in all its glory and festivalgoers have a chance to see work in progress. With the cottage and the mill completed, Griff and George reflect on George's first job as an architectural designer.


TUE 20:00 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.


TUE 21:00 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 22:30 The Sculptress (b007b6vb)
Episode 2

Conclusion of the psychological thriller about a woman convicted of the gruesome killings of her mother and sister, whose case is taken up by an investigative reporter.


TUE 00:05 Songs of America 1969 (b01770d9)
A vintage programme from a turbulent time in America's past. Considered controversial at the time, it features footage of Simon and Garfunkel on stage, in the studio and on tour. It also integrates video montages of key events of the era, including news clips of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, activist Cesar Chavez and the Poor People's March on Washington. Songs include America, So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bridge over Troubled Water, Scarborough Fair, El Condor Pasa (If I Could), Punky's Dilemma, Mrs Robinson, Mystery Train, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy), The Boxer, Homeward Bound, The Sound of Silence and several others.


TUE 01:00 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


TUE 02:00 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00npjt1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 02:30 Murder on the Lake (b00qjngb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]