SATURDAY 19 MARCH 2016

SAT 19:00 Human Planet (b00rrd83)
Jungles - People of the Trees

The rainforest is home to more species of plants and animals than any other habitat on the planet. But for humans, life there is not as easy as it looks. Life in the trees requires great skill, ingenuity and sheer bravery.

The Matis of Brazil carve 4m-long blowpipes to hunt monkeys in near total silence. Deep in the Congo forests, Tete defies death by scaling a giant tree using nothing more than a liana vine and he must then negotiate an angry swarm of bees - all to collect honey for his family.

Three children from Venezuela's Piaroa tribe venture deep into the jungle to hunt tarantulas to toast for lunch. In West Papua the Korowai tribe show off their engineering skills by building a high-rise home 35 metres up in the tree tops.

Most memorable of all, in Brazil we join a unique monitoring flight in search of an uncontacted tribe.


SAT 20:00 Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures (b01bs7jq)
Frozen in Time

It is estimated that 99 per cent of species have become extinct and there have been times when life's hold on Earth has been so precarious it seems it hangs on by a thread.

This series focuses on the survivors - the old-timers - whose biographies stretch back millions of years and who show how it is possible to survive a mass extinction event which wipes out nearly all of its neighbours. The Natural History Museum's Professor Richard Fortey discovers what allows the very few to carry on going - perhaps not forever, but certainly far beyond the life expectancy of normal species. What makes a survivor when all around drop like flies? Professor Fortey travels across the globe to find the survivors of the most dramatic of these obstacles - the mass extinction events.

In episode three, Fortey looks at the ice age. 2.8 million years ago - triggered by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun and shifts in its ocean currents - the world began to cool. Within a few thousand years much of the planet was shrouded in a dense cloak of ice that would come and go until only 10,000 years ago. We call this age of ice - the Pleistocene Age - and it transformed the hierarchy of nature. This is the story of how a few specialist species that evolved to live in the biting cold survived into the present day.


SAT 21:00 Follow the Money (b072hbbl)
Series 1

Episode 1

Danish drama series set in the world of economic crime in the banks, on the stock exchanges, and in the boardrooms. It is the story of speculators, swindlers, corporate moguls and the crimes they commit in their hunt for wealth. It is the story of ambition that corrupts, and of the way organized criminals launder their ill-gotten gains. A story of our world the economic crisis almost overturned five years ago, and which is still holding its breath as it waits for the next bubble to burst and for the next economic tsunami to strike. And of course, it is the story of us human beings - the rich, the poor, the greedy, the fraudulent, the robbers who'll go to any lengths to build the lives of our dreams.

When the body of a man is washed ashore near a wind farm, police detective Mads is called out to investigate. At first, it merely looks like an industrial accident, but the case implicates the upper echelons of Energreen - one of Denmark's most successful and leading energy companies. The CEO of Energreen is the charismatic Sander, and young lawyer Claudia is working hard to advance in the company. Nicky, a former car thief and mechanic, works at his father-in-law's garage. He has put his life of crime behind him for his girlfriend's sake, but his new colleague Bimse tempts Nicky with a chance to make a quick buck.

In Danish with English subtitles.


SAT 22:00 Follow the Money (b072hbbn)
Series 1

Episode 2

Claudia is given new responsibilities at Energreen, starting with a case about insider trading that could damage the company. Mads enlists help from Alf at the fraud squad to find a connection between the death at the wind farm and Alf's impression of Energreen as being a little too clever. At home, Mads is trying to keep his family and home running smoothly despite his wife's recent multiple sclerosis attack. Bimse and Nicky's car theft gives surprising results.

In Danish with English subtitles.


SAT 23:00 Arena (b0074prh)
Ken Dodd's Happiness

A tribute to Liverpudlian comic Ken Dodd, in which he discusses his career and the influences of his comedy style.

Features film clips of his early performances and footage of him on tour in more recent times.


SAT 00:00 The Bee Gees at the BBC... and Beyond (b04v8679)
Classic Bee Gees studio performances from the BBC and beyond including all the big hits, rare 60s performances from European TV, including a stunning I Started a Joke, a rarely seen Top of the Pops performance of World, the big hits of the 70s and some late performances from the 90s, with the brothers Gibb in perfect harmony.


SAT 01:00 The Joy of the Bee Gees (b04v8677)
Guilty pleasure or genius, misfits or mavericks, noble or naff - how do we really feel about the Bee Gees? Are the brothers Gibb a cacophony of falsettos or songwriting maestros, the soundtrack to every office party or masters of melancholy and existential rage? Are they comedy or Tragedy? How deep is our love and how deep are the Bee Gees?

With a back catalogue that includes hits like How Do You Mend a Broken Heart, Massachusetts, Islands in the Stream, Stayin' Alive, Chain Reaction, How Deep Is Your Love, Gotta Get a Message to You, Words, To Love Somebody and Night Fever, the Bee Gees are second only to the Beatles in the 20th-century songwriting pantheon, but while their pop success spans several decades, there are different Bee Gees in different eras. Is there a central glue that unites the brothers and their music and, if so, what is it?

The Joy of the Bee Gees features a rare interview with the last remaining Bee Gee brother, Barry Gibb, many of those musicians and industry figures who have worked with them closely over the years, and a surprising cast of Bee Gees aficionados including John Lydon, Ana Matronic, Guy Chambers, Mykaell Riley and Alexis Petridis, who together share their stories and their insights into the band whose music and image moved us in the 60s and defined pop culture in the mid-to-late 1970s.

The film explores how the band were iconoclasts and outsiders, brothers in the family business, who worked best when together but who grew up and played out their fraternal struggles in public. The brothers went from child stars on the Australian variety circuit to competitors with the Beatles in the UK charts in the late 60s, scoring number one hits while still only teenagers.

In the mid-70s, the former 'beat group' reimagined themselves as a close-knit soul boy trio. The Saturday Night Fever album shot them to global superstardom and every radio station played a song written, produced or sung by the Bee Gees. The saturation of their music and their iconic 'medallion man' image would ultimately elbow them out of fashion, even make them figures of fun...

But you can't keep a good band down and in the 80s they became writing guns-for-hire to stars such as Kenny & Dolly, Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross. 1987 saw the band come back yet again and hit the top of the charts. The deaths of Maurice and then Robin brought the Bee Gees' reign to an end, but Barry and their music live on.

Let's enjoy finding out why and how: welcome to The Joy of the Bee Gees.


SAT 02:00 Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made the Movies (b03bm2fy)
New Frontiers

In the last of three programmes in which composer Neil Brand celebrates the art of cinema music, Neil explores how changing technology has taken soundtracks in bold new directions and even altered our very idea of how a film should sound.

Neil tells the story of how the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet ended up with a groundbreaking electronic score that blurred the line between music and sound effects, and explains why Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds has one of the most effective soundtracks of any of his films - despite having no music. He shows how electronic music crossed over from pop into cinema with Midnight Express and Chariots of Fire, while films like Apocalypse Now pioneered the concept of sound design - that sound effects could be used for storytelling and emotional impact.

Neil tracks down some of the key composers behind these innovations to talk about their work, such as Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner), Carter Burwell (Twilight, No Country for Old Men) and Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream, Moon).


SAT 03:00 Top of the Pops (b073rgxz)
Peter Powell introduces the pop programme, featuring Linx, Phil Collins, Odyssey, The Specials, Imagination and Smokey Robinson, and a dance performance from Legs & Co.