MONDAY 09 OCTOBER 2017

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b097sn5m)
Series 1

09/10/2017

The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


MON 19:30 The Flying Archaeologist (b01s1llz)
Hadrian's Wall: Life on the Frontier

Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over Hadrian's Wall to reveal a new view of its history. The first full aerial survey of Hadrian's Wall has helped uncover new evidence about the people who once lived there. Carried out over the last few years by English Heritage, it is allowing archaeologists to reinterpret the wall. Across the whole landscape hundreds of sites of human occupation have been discovered, showing that people were living here in considerable numbers. Their discoveries are suggesting that far from being a barren military landscape, the whole area was richly populated before during and after the wall was built. There is also exciting new evidence that the Romans were here earlier than previously thought.


MON 20:00 Ocean Giants (b013wpxz)
Deep Thinkers

Humans have long wondered if the universe may harbour other intelligent life forms. But perhaps we need look no further than our oceans?

Whales and dolphins, like humans, have large brains, are quick to learn new behaviours and use a wide range of sounds to communicate with others in their society. But how close are their minds to ours? In the Bahamas, Professor Denise Herzing believes she is very close to an answer, theorising that she will be able to hold a conversation with wild dolphins in their own language within five years.

In Western Australia, dolphins rely on their versatile and inventive brains to survive in a marine desert. In Alaska, humpback whales gather into alliances in which individuals pool their specialised talents to increase their hunting success. We discover how young spotted dolphins learn their individual names and the social etiquette of their pod, and how being curious about new objects leads Caribbean bottlenose dolphins to self-awareness and even to self-obsession. Finally, the film shows a remarkable group of Mexican grey whales, who seem able to empathize with humans and may even have a concept of forgiveness.


MON 21:00 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097ts08)
Series 1

Dictatorship

Suzy Klein reaches the 1930s, when the totalitarian dictators sought to use and abuse music for ideological ends. She looks at the lives of Richard Strauss, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, who produced some of the 20th-century's best-loved music whilst navigating the precarious tightrope of working for perhaps the most terrifying music lovers ever - Hitler and Stalin.

The political message of the classic musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf is revealed as well as the secret code hidden in Shostakovich's quartets and Strauss's deeply personal reasons for trying to please the Nazis.

Suzy also uncovers why Hitler adored Wagner but banned Mendelssohn's Wedding March, how Stalin used music to subtly infiltrate minds and why Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a Nazi favourite, appeals to our most primitive senses.

Suzy also raises some intriguing questions: can we pin meaning onto music? What are the moral responsibilities of artists? And did the violence and tyranny of those regimes leave an indelible stain on the music they produced?

The stories are brought to life by performances from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its chorus - demonstrating Suzy's argument that music's incredible power to bypass our brains and reach for our hearts makes it a potent and dangerous force.


MON 22:00 The Vietnam War (b097ts0b)
Series 1

This is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967)

American casualties and enemy body counts mount as marines face deadly North Vietnamese ambushes and artillery south of the DMZ and army units chase an elusive enemy in the Central Highlands. Hanoi lays plans for a massive surprise offensive, and the Johnson administration reassures the American public that victory is in sight.


MON 22:55 The Vietnam War (b097ts0d)
Series 1

Things Fall Apart (January 1968-June 1968)

On the eve of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the South, suffering devastating losses but casting grave doubt on promises from the Johnson administration that there is 'light at the end of the tunnel.' The president decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest.


MON 23:45 Timeshift (b08lvtz6)
Series 17

Blazes and Brigades: The Story of the Fire Service

Timeshift looks back on nearly two centuries of British firefighting, and explores how major incidents and the evolution of equipment from manual pumps to motorised fire engines have helped forge the modern fire service.

The founding father of modern firefighting was Scotsman James Braidwood, whose pioneering techniques helped save Westminster Hall when the Houses of Parliament were consumed by fire in 1834. Remarkably, London had no publicly funded fire service at the time - and it was only after Braidwood's death tackling a warehouse blaze nearly 30 years later that the Metropolitan Fire Brigade was created.

The fireman soon became an iconic figure of heroism in Victorian painting and popular literature - but the provision of fire brigades and the standard of their equipment varied widely across the country. Motorised fire engines were available from the beginning of the 20th century, but it took the arrival of World War Two for the fire service to be organised on a national footing. Professional and volunteer firefighters worked side by side to tackle the devastating incendiary bombs dropped on British cities by the Nazis. Doug Lightning, the last surviving firefighter of the Sheffield Blitz in December 1940, recalls his own experience of helping to save key buildings during the attack.

In the post-war years, improvements to the fire service saw the introduction of new equipment, including the state-of-the art Dennis F7 fire engine - we take one of the last surviving examples back on the road in Manchester. Firemen were also called on to help with non-fire-related disasters. Interviewee Brian Sadd recalls the exploits of his father Fred during the floods that hit the east coast of England in 1953. Fred rescued 27 people, was awarded the George Medal and became the star of a comic strip in The Eagle.

A series of tragic incidents in the 1960s raised awareness of the importance not just of tackling blazes but of fire prevention. However, Britain was unprepared for the record hot summer of 1976, when a series of fires swept through the countryside. We speak to Mary-Joy Langdon, who in volunteering to help became Britain's first female firefighter, heralding changes to what was once seen very much as a man's job.

But the service wasn't immune to the industrial unrest of the decade. 1977 saw once tight-knit teams divided by the first national firefighters' strike, the film explores the media and public reaction to this unprecedented event. With the strike resolved, technology and equipment continued to improve in the 1980s, spurred on by a series of high-profile tragedies, culminating in the King's Cross underground station fire of November 1987, in which 31 people lost their lives, including one of the first firemen on the scene.

The King's Cross disaster led to a further overhaul of fire safety regulations. Today there are more than 50 regional fire services in the UK, dealing with nearly 2,000 call-outs a day. Increasingly, fewer of these are to actual fires. Firefighters respond to a range of incidents from road traffic accidents to terrorist attacks and natural disasters, and in recognition of this, in 2004 the service was officially renamed the Fire and Rescue Service.


MON 00:45 Narnia's Lost Poet: The Secret Lives and Loves of CS Lewis (b03jrw5j)
CS Lewis's biographer AN Wilson goes in search of the man behind Narnia - best-selling children's author and famous Christian writer, but an under-appreciated Oxford academic and an aspiring poet who never achieved the same success in writing verse as he did prose.

Although his public life was spent in the all-male world of Oxford colleges, his private life was marked by secrecy and even his best friend JRR Tolkien didn't know of his marriage to an American divorcee late in life. Lewis died on the same day as the assassination of John F Kennedy and few were at his burial - his alcoholic brother was too drunk to tell people the time of the funeral. Fifty years on, his life as a writer is now being remembered alongside other national literary heroes in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.

In this personal and insightful film, Wilson paints a psychological portrait of a man who experienced fame in the public arena, but whose personal life was marked by the loss of the three women he most loved.


MON 01:45 Going Going Gone: Nick Broomfield's Disappearing Britain (b07chym0)
Two iconic British buildings are threatened with demolition and the intrepid Nick Broomfield is on the case. In a pair of documentaries, Broomfield profiles the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool and the Coal Exchange in Cardiff.

The Wellington Rooms, built in 1815 by Edmund Aikin, was originally the social hub for the super-rich, slave traders, businessmen and the elite. The prime minister William Gladstone's family, themselves wealthy slave owners, invested heavily in this magnificent building with the most intricate detailing and proportions. A Wedgwood ceiling and sprung dance floor, with classical columns, create a building of love and light.

Despite the depression in Liverpool's fortunes, it's a building that has brought enormous happiness to many different people over a couple of centuries. Countless people seem to have fallen in love and met their future partners in the assembly room. Now in a rundown state of faded glory, the question is - what to do with the Wellington Rooms?

The Coal Exchange in Cardiff, built in 1883 by Edward Seward, is a magnificent celebration of the industry of coal and its immense wealth. A glass-ceilinged exchange room with galleries on three floors and a unique lowered floor are a remarkable monument to this time.

Now in serious neglect, the whole building, the size of a city block, faces demolition. It signifies the serious lack of resourcefulness on the part of Cardiff Council to celebrate and regenerate not only this building but the whole area. The once great Butetown Docks and the magnificent buildings surrounding the Coal Exchange have also been allowed to crumble and disintegrate. Rather than redevelop the docks in a way that they have been so wonderfully done in Liverpool, the docks in Cardiff have been filled in. Magnificent warehouses have been torn down, and the whole history of coal and the uniqueness of this area have been almost obliterated.


MON 02:45 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b097ts08)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]