TUESDAY 15 MARCH 2016

TUE 19:00 World News Today (b073mckz)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


TUE 19:30 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01r6zdv)
Ruins

Presenter and Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn explores the wealth of Britain's extraordinary holy places on a pilgrimage that spans almost 2,000 years of history.

Travelling across the breadth of the UK, Ifor uncovers the stories and rich history behind many of our most famous sites, explaining the myths and legends of some of Britain's most sacred places. Over six episodes, Ifor visits crumbling ruins, tranquil healing pools, sacred caves, island refuges, towering mountain hideaways and ancient shrines to find out what these historical sites tell us about who we are today. From the divine to the unexpected, the series uncovers Britain's extraordinary variety of inspirational, surprising and half-forgotten holy places and brings to life our spiritual history.

In the first episode, Ifor explores why ruins are among the best-preserved and most-loved holy sites in Britain. He visits the famous ruins of St Andrews Cathedral, the mystical atmosphere of Wales's best-preserved Roman site, the battered remains of Coventry's iconic cathedral and the Gothic majesty of North Yorkshire's Whitby Abbey - the inspiration behind Bram Stoker's Dracula. Along the way, he asks why we're drawn to holy ruins long after their religious use is over. Is it just nostalgia or something much deeper that fuels our obsession and enduring fascination with the decaying grandeur of a ruin?


TUE 20:00 The River Taff with Will Millard (b070t48y)
Series 1

Episode 3

Writer and fisherman Will Millard reaches the end of his journey down the River Taff in south Wales. This beautiful wild river, once neglected and polluted, has now come back to life. Will goes wild swimming with a group of eccentrics trying to change the image of this forgotten river. He meets retired Somali sailors drawn to Cardiff in the city's glory days as a thriving port and tells the story of how the industrial docks have been transformed. Finally, he sets out to catch the king of fish, migratory salmon returning to the river where they were born.


TUE 20:30 The Brecon Beacons with Iolo Williams (b06wyxfx)
Series 1

Summer

It's the busy summer season. A fox family is playing below the Carmarthen Fans, lizards bask in the sun on limestone pavements in the upper Swansea valley and hundreds of dragonflies emerge from pools in the uplands near Brecon.

Iolo Williams is on the Black Mountain foothills as sheep are gathered by shepherds on horseback and a group of dedicated volunteers tries to repair a mountain.

Ancient botanical cures for ailments and old steam railways are two of many hidden histories.


TUE 21:00 The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum (b01rrld8)
Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill presents a documentary following the scientific investigation that shows what life was like in the small Roman town of Herculaneum, moments before it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption.

Just 10 miles from Pompeii, 12 vaults tell a new story about what life was like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They contain the skeletons of 340 people, 10 per cent of the local population, killed by the volcano. Amongst them are the first new skeletons to be found in the area for 30 years which are now the subject of a ground-breaking scientific investigation. The finds included a toddler holding his dog, a two-year-old girl with silver earrings and a boy embracing his mother.

Those found inside the vaults were nearly all women and children. Those found outside on the shoreline were nearly all men. Why?

It is revealed that the local population went to their deaths not as in often portrayed in Pompeii's popular myth, but more like the passengers of the Titanic, where women and children were put first.

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill takes us to meet the scientists leading the forensic project - Luca Bondioli and Luciano Fattore - and then on a tour of the town. He uncovers houses, wooden furniture (including their beds and the only surviving baby's cradle from the Roman world), and food and human waste, preserved by a layer of ash up to five times deeper than Pompeii, as well as perfectly preserved court transcripts scratched on wooden tablets telling of slaves challenging their status in the town's courts. New scientific analysis has enabled us to unearth not just what they ate, but how they ate it, it seems they had a penchant for eating fish whole including their heads, a tradition, that has survived in Herculaneum to this day.


TUE 22:00 Storyville (b04ndsb3)
Exposed: Magicians, Psychics and Frauds

Renowned magician James 'The Amazing' Randi has been wowing audiences with his jaw-dropping illusions, escapes and sleight of hand for over 50 years. When he began seeing his cherished art form co-opted by all manner of con artists, he made it his mission to expose the simple tricks charlatans have borrowed from magicians to swindle the masses.

This entertaining film chronicles Randi's best debunkings of faith healers, fortune tellers and psychics. It documents his rivalry with famed spoon-bender Uri Geller, whom Randi eventually foiled on a high-profile television appearance. Another target was evangelist Peter Popoff, whose tent-show miracles and audience mind-reading were exposed as chicanery when Randi revealed a recording of Popoff's wife feeding him information through a radio-transmitter earpiece.

In telling Randi's strange, funny and fascinating life story, the film shows how we are all vulnerable to deception - even, in a surprising twist, 'The Amazing' Randi himself.

This documentary is part of Louis Theroux: Docs That Made Me, a collection of his favourite documentaries.
As someone who interviewed Uri Geller a number of times and came close to making a film about him, it's easy to see why this Storyville film grabbed Louis Theroux. The themes of 'fakery and quackery' and the charismatic figure of arch skeptic James Randi make this an entertaining look into how we separate fact from fiction.

Exposed: Magicians, Psychics & Frauds is the winner of multiple awards... The Audience Award (AFI Docs Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Dallas Video Festival, 2014), Best Documentary (Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2014), Jury Prize (Key West Film Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Napa Valley Film Festival, 2014), Jury Award (Newport Beach Film Festival, 2014).


TUE 23:20 Indian Hill Railways (b00qzzlm)
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway

From the Himalayas in the north to the Nilgiris in the south - for a hundred years these little trains have climbed through the clouds and into the wonderful world of Indian Hill Railways.

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is a romantic line, popular with honeymooners and driven by love and devotion as well as steam. It chugs through the south Indian jungle up to a hill station, once known as Snooty Ooty.

The current guard is Ivan. Married for twenty years, he is concerned about his friend Jenni, the ticket inspector, because he's still a bachelor - but Jenni has a secret.

In the engine shed, Shivani, the railway's first female diesel engineer, is working on a steam loco. She has to make it look its best, as in the year of filming, 1999, the railway celebrated its centenary. The high point is the Black Beauty competition to pick the best engine on the line, but rains and landslides threaten the proceedings and the tourist business. Will love win out in the end?


TUE 00:20 The Story of British Pathé (b013rl1w)
The Voice of Pathé

For more than half a century, the film and newsreel company British Pathé documented almost every aspect of life - the remarkable and the run-of-the mill, the extraordinary and the everyday.

The company's output really came into its own during the Second World War, when the distinctively clipped and relentlessly chipper commentaries by its announcer Bob Danvers-Walker provided stirring encouragement during the Blitz - and offered authoritative advice on how housewives struggling to feed their families on the ration could overcome privation and to 'make do and mend'.

As this programme reveals, for generations of cinemagoers it was the voice of British Pathé that expressed the values and the spirit of Britain.


TUE 01:20 The Prosecutors (b072wyvj)
Real Crime and Punishment

The Trial

The Crown Prosecution Service is often under scrutiny for its decision-making. Now for the first time the CPS has allowed cameras in. Filmed over 18 months with prosecutors in Merseyside, Cheshire and the South East, including the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, this groundbreaking series goes behind the scenes to reveal how our criminal justice system really works and what it takes to secure a conviction. Each episode focuses on a different part of the process, following prosecutions and those involved in the case from start to finish.

In the final episode, prosecutors in the Complex Casework units of CPS Mersey-Cheshire and CPS South-East are preparing for trials in separate historic cases.

In 1993, a few days after her 16th birthday, Claire Tiltman was murdered in an alleyway. Since Colin Ash-Smith admitted to other knife attacks in the same area, he has been the main suspect for the crime. In 1996 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for those offences. But without direct evidence, he was not charged with the murder of Claire Tiltman.

Claire's parents died before seeing her killer brought to justice and a group of her school friends took up the campaign to keep the case in the public eye. Now, using a change in the law which might allow the jury to know about Ash-Smith's other attacks and the similarities between them, prosecutor Nigel Pilkington is trying to build a circumstantial case against Colin Ash-Smith.

In Mersey-Cheshire, a non-recent sex abuse case is being prepared for trial. Keith Cavendish Coulson is facing 42 counts of indecent assault on boys in the 1970s and 80s. He says they're lying and that it never happened. The CPS's handling of non-recent sex abuse cases is often highly controversial and Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, is involved in overseeing the case.

Cases committed a long time ago are charged and sentenced according to the law at the time. As Cavendish Coulson's offences were in the 1970s and 80s, they can only charge him under the old law of 1956. Historic cases also present challenges, as the memories of witnesses might have faded and evidence might no longer be available. But moving testimony from Cavendish Coulson's accusers suggests they have far from forgotten these offences.


TUE 02:20 Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made the Movies (b03b965y)
[Repeat of broadcast at 00:40 on Saturday]


TUE 03:20 Britain on Film (b01p2pd4)
Series 1

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

Throughout the 1960s, the Rank Organisation produced hundreds of short, quirky documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. Shot on high-quality colour film stock, they were screened in cinemas, but until now very little of the footage has been shown on television. This series draws on this unique archive to offer illuminating and often surprising insights into a pivotal decade in modern British history.

This episode examines the films that recorded developments in one of 1960s Britain's most dynamic, innovative industries - the glamorous and fast-moving world of fashion.