MONDAY 16 MAY 2016

MON 19:00 World News Today (b07blphw)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


MON 19:30 Insect Worlds (b01rd374)
Making Worlds

Steve Backshall reveals the incredible influence that insects and their close relatives have on Earth's many ecosystems. In the grasslands of South America, the landscape has been created almost solely by one team of insects - grass-cutter ants. Across the world's oceans one tiny creature plays such a key role that, without it, the largest animal on our planet, the blue whale, could not exist. And in East Africa the savannah would quickly be swamped in dung were it not for the activities of a certain beetle. Yet the greatest influence of all comes from a group of insects that have ultimately changed the colour and diversity of our planet.


MON 20:00 Madness on Wheels: Rallying's Craziest Years (b01fcncc)
In the 1980s rallying was more popular than Formula 1. 'Group B' machines had taken the world by storm. Deregulation opened the way for the most exciting cars ever to hit the motorsport scene. Nothing like it has ever happened since. 'This is the fastest rallying there has ever been' - Peter Foubister.

For four wild and crazy years manufacturers scrambled to build ever more powerful cars to be driven by fearless mavericks who could handle the extreme power. The sport was heading out of control and the unregulated mayhem ended abruptly in 1986 after a series of horrific tragedies. This is the story of when fans, ambition, politics and cars collided.

'The fans were crazy. As the cars sped by the spectators ran into the road!' - Ari Vatanen. 'They were playing with their lives'.

'To go rallying is madness. This was refined madness' - John Davenport

Featuring world champaions Ari Vatanen, Walter Rohrl, Stig Blomqvist, plus Michel Mouton, Cesar Fiorio, Jean Todt and many many more.

From the producer of Grand Prix: The Killer Years and the Grierson-nominated Deadliest Crash: The 1955 Le Mans Disaster.


MON 21:00 Timewatch (b017ctqp)
Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story

Following on from his documentary Operation Mincemeat, based on his book of the same name, writer and presenter Ben MacIntyre returns to the small screen to bring to life his other bestselling book - Agent Zigzag.

As part of the Timewatch series, MacIntyre reveals the gripping true story of Britain's most extraordinary wartime double agent, Eddie Chapman. A notorious safe-breaker before the war, Chapman duped the Germans so successfully that he was awarded their highest decoration, the Iron Cross. He remains the only British citizen ever to win one.

Including remarkable and newly discovered footage from an interview Chapman gave three years before his death in 1997, the programme goes on the trail of one of Britain's most unlikely heroes - a story of adventure, love, intrigue and astonishing courage.


MON 22:00 The Dark Ages: An Age of Light (b01p96fr)
The Wonder of Islam

The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.

Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.

Along with Christianity, the Dark Ages saw the emergence of another vital religion - Islam. After emerging in the near East it spread across North Africa and into Europe, bringing its unique artistic style with it. In the third episode, Waldemar examines the early artistic explorations of the first Muslims, the development of their mosques and their scientific achievements.


MON 23:00 The Genius of Marie Curie - The Woman Who Lit up the World (b01s954d)
Over 80 years after her death, Marie Curie remains by far the best-known female scientist. In her lifetime, she became that rare thing - a celebrity scientist, attracting the attention of the news cameras and tabloid gossip. They were fascinated because she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and is still the only person to have won two Nobels in two different sciences. But while the bare bones of her scientific life, the obstacles she had to overcome, the years of painstaking research and the penalty she ultimately paid for her discovery of radium have become one of the iconic stories of scientific heroism, there is another side to Marie Curie - her human story.

This multi-layered film reveals the real Marie Curie, an extraordinary woman who fell in love three times, had to survive the pain of loss, and the public humiliation of a doomed love affair. It is a riveting portrait of a tenacious mother and scientist, who opened the door on a whole new realm of physics, which she discovered and named - radioactivity.


MON 00:00 Order and Disorder (p00ynyl9)
Energy

Professor Jim Al-Khalili discovers the intriguing story of how we discovered the rules that drive the universe. Energy is vital to us all, but what exactly is energy? In attempting to answer this question Jim investigates a strange set of laws that link together everything from engines to humans to stars. It turns out that energy, so critical to daily existence, actually helps us make sense of the entire universe.


MON 01:00 Bullets, Boots and Bandages: How to Really Win at War (b019jsls)
Staying Alive

Military historian Saul David explores how wars are really fought - in the backroom of military planning. He begins by looking at how to keep an army fed and housed.


MON 02:00 The High Art of the Low Countries (b01rtf47)
Boom and Bust

Andrew Graham-Dixon looks at how the seemingly peaceful countries of Holland and Belgium - famous for their tulips and windmills, mussels and chips - were in fact forged in a crucible of conflict and division. He examines how a period of economic boom driven for the first time by a burgeoning and secular middle class led to the Dutch golden age of the 17th century, creating not only the concept of oil painting itself, but the master painters Rembrandt and Vermeer combining art and commerce together as we would recognise it today.


MON 03:00 The Genius of Marie Curie - The Woman Who Lit up the World (b01s954d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:00 today]