B4

RADIO-LISTS: BBC FOUR
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC 4 — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/

SATURDAY 26 JANUARY 2019

SAT 19:00 Wild Brazil (p01npl5v)
A Dangerous World

Three charismatic animal families, capuchin monkeys, giant otters and coatis, strive to raise their families against a backdrop of extraordinary landscapes and huge extremes of weather - a beautiful yet dangerous world full of jaguars and caimans. An intimate journey to the heart of a spectacular country, this first chapter of the trilogy sees the babies taking their first steps during a brief pause between seasonal extremes.

SAT 20:00 Natural World (b01lb4vn)
2012-2013

Tiger Island

Jungle tigers are turning into man-eaters in the exotic island of Sumatra. Now a maverick millionaire is catching the killers and releasing them on his land. Is this madness, or could it save them from extinction?

SAT 21:00 Son of Saul (m00029kr)
1944 Auschwitz - Saul Auslander is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, a unit of concentration camp prisoners forced to work for the Germans as they exterminate their fellow prisoners. One day Saul sees the body of a young child who he believes to be his own son, and he becomes obsessed with rescuing it from suffering the fate of the other murdered prisoners.

In German, Hungarian, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, French, Greek, Slovak and Hebrew - with English subtitles.

Winner of the 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2015.

SAT 22:40 Top of the Pops (m0002704)
Janice Long and John Peel present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 5 February 1987. Featuring The Blow Monkeys, Randy Crawford, The Smiths, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Michael Crawford, and Aretha Franklin and George Michael.

SAT 23:10 Top of the Pops (m00026zx)
Simon Mayo and Peter Powell present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 12 February 1987. Featuring Level 42, Ben E King, Pepsi & Shirlie, Five Star, Carly Simon, Vesta Williams, Aretha Franklin and George Michael, and Taffy.

SAT 23:45 Prog at the BBC (b00g8tfx)
Compilation of some of the greatest names and British bands in what they still dare to call prog rock, filmed live in the BBC studios in the early 1970s. Expect to see stadium names like Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake and Palmer alongside much-loved bands of the era including Caravan, Family, Atomic Rooster and more.

SAT 00:45 Guitar, Drum and Bass (m0002700)
Series 1

On Guitar... Lenny Kaye!

Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s guitarist, explains how the quest for new guitar sounds has driven the history of popular music, from Les Paul’s first guitar to Bo Diddley’s tremolo, Duane Eddy’s whammy bar, Keith Richards’s fuzz pedal, The Who’s feedback, The Byrds’ 12-string, Hendrix’s wah-wah pedal, Uli Roth and Van Halen’s shredding, The Edge’s digital delay, Ry Cooder’s slide, and KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran’s looper pedals. With Duane Eddy, Roger McGuinn, The Edge, Bonnie Raitt, Seasick Steve, KT Tunstall, Joe Bonamassa, Uli Roth, Vernon Reid, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, The Runaways’ Lita Ford and producer Shel Talmy.

SAT 01:45 Wild Brazil (p01npl5v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]

SAT 02:45 Natural World (b01lb4vn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2019

SUN 19:00 Indian Hill Railways (b00r5wk7)
The Kalka-Shimla 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.

Shimla was once the summer capital of the Raj. They built churches, schools, a town hall and the railway and left behind their symbols of empire and an ethos of duty, loyalty and ambition - but they also left a divided subcontinent.

Characters featured include Maqsood, a refugee and a porter from Kashmir, and John Whitmarsh-Knight, a teacher looking for a home. Sanjay the stationmaster is hoping for promotion, and his boss Bataljit is waiting for a transfer, but everybody is waiting for the snow.

SUN 20:00 The Hector: From Scotland to Nova Scotia (b08ww3gh)
Neil Oliver recounts the story of the 1773 highland migrants who left Scotland to settle in Nova Scotia. He uncovers their terrifying journey on a filthy disease-ridden ship - the Hector. Neil describes how the migrants were deceived by speculators and goes on to meet their descendants. For some in Nova Scotia, the Hector has become little short of a Canadian 'Mayflower'.

SUN 21:00 Natural World (b09b68wy)
2017-2018

H is for Hawk: A New Chapter

Following the success of Helen Macdonald's bestselling novel of the same name, H is for Hawk: A New Chapter is an intimate and personal journey. After the loss of her father, Helen trained the hardest bird in falconry, a goshawk. The cathartic experience helped her to grieve and now she is ready to do it again, but this time she hopes it will be her wings to somewhere new. In this beautiful and moving film, Helen trains a new bird and follows a wild goshawk family at the nest, getting closer than ever before to these fiery eyed birds of prey.

SUN 22:00 Speechless (b09cfky7)
Imagine a world in which you can think but cannot speak. For many stroke survivors, like former football star Junior and landlord Barry, this nightmare is a reality.

Inspired by the experience of his brother-in-law, filmmaker Richard Alwyn has made an intensely moving, personal film about language and its loss. Alwyn’s brother-in-law, journalist Dennis Barker, had a stroke in 2011 which left him speaking a bizarre, fluent gibberish – just one manifestation of the condition ‘aphasia’ in which people lose or have a severely impaired ability to use language.

SPEECHLESS tells the powerful stories of two men who can no longer take language for granted. Much of the film is made on the Neuro Rehab Unit of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London’s Queen Square. There, Alwyn meets 55 year old Barry who has been in hospital for 4 months since a stroke left him barely able to speak. Courageous and determined, Barry’s personality constantly triumphs where his language fails. And two years after his stroke when just 35 years-old, former Premier League and international footballer Junior Agogo is still visiting the Unit as he battles to find his way in the world with depleted language. “I had thoughts but I’m saying, where was my voice? I was baffled, man.”

SPEECHLESS raises questions that straddle philosophy and science. Can we understand the world if we don’t have language to name and describe it? Can we think without language? How much is our identity wrapped up in language? These questions are at the heart of conversations that Alwyn has with clinicians and therapists working to get Barry and Junior back into the world.

SPEECHLESS is fascinating and moving, upsetting and uplifting in its depiction of the isolating and estranging condition, aphasia.

SUN 23:00 Timbuktu (m00029l8)
Timbuktu, Mali. With the ancient city having been captured by Islamist militants, its inhabitants are forced to live under new laws that threaten their freedoms and existence. Music, bare flesh and football are forbidden and risk public floggings, or even death. Outside the town, a cattle farmer and his family expect things to return to normal soon but even they are under the watchful eye of the soldiers.

Oscar-nominated foreign drama in French, Arabic and Tamashek with English subtitles.

SUN 00:30 The Riviera: A History in Pictures (b01ps9jr)
Painting Paradise

Two-part sun-filled series in which Richard E Grant follows in the footsteps of artists who have lived, loved and painted on France's glorious Cote d'Azur.

Revealing the intertwined relationship between modern art and the development of the French Riviera as an international tourist haven, Grant explores how impressionist painters Cezanne, Monet and Renoir first discovered the region in the 19th century when the newly built railway arrived there.

Captivated by the light and colour of this undiscovered landscape, the painters immortalised its shores on canvas and in doing so advertised the savage beauty of the region. For neo-impressionists Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, the region provided a vision of utopia, while for Henri Matisse the vivid colours of the area inspired him to adopt a new palette and in doing so set modern art en route to abstraction.

With visits to L'Estaque, St Tropez and Nice, Grant maps the progress of the region from cultural backwater to bohemian hotspot.

SUN 01:30 Andrew Davies: Rewriting the Classics (m0001v0q)
Controversial, witty, irreverent – Britain’s best-known screenwriter, Andrew Davies, has created some of the most iconic small-screen dramas of the past 50 years.

At the age of 82 he is following his smash hit adaptation of War and Peace with another global epic, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

As he watches the production come to life during 2018, he looks back at the influence of his childhood in Cardiff. And he explores how he boils down and spices up his dramas – transforming our best-loved novels into prime-time television. Contributors include Sarah Waters, Helen Fielding and Dominic West.

SUN 02:30 The Hector: From Scotland to Nova Scotia (b08ww3gh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

MONDAY 28 JANUARY 2019

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m00029lf)
Series 1

28/01/2019

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

MON 19:30 Handmade on the Silk Road (b079zyb8)
The Wood Carver

Shavkat Jumanijozov has been working with wood for over 30 years. In his workshop in Khiva in Uzbekistan, he makes doors, chests and impressive wooden columns. Trained by the grandson of a famous 19th-century carver, Shavkat is a proud master of his craft and oversees a team of brothers, sons and nephews, passing on his expertise to the next generation.

In this beautifully filmed portrait of a traditional craftsman at work, we follow the painstaking carving of a wooden pillar, from the first cuts into the wood to its sanding, shaping and varnishing, each stage captured in absorbing detail.

MON 20:00 Fake or Fortune? (b01n39kg)
Series 2

Turner: A Miscarriage of Justice?

In the early years of the 20th century, spinster sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies spent much of their vast fortune buying the cream of European art as a gift to the people of Wales. When Gwendoline died in 1951, all the paintings in her collection were bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales. Amongst the works most proudly displayed were many by JMW Turner, perhaps the nation's best loved artist. These paintings were the pinnacle of the sisters' collection, carefully selected and greatly valued.

Yet within months of this extraordinary act of generosity, the authenticity of the paintings was thrown into doubt by art world experts who branded them fakes. These prized exhibits were deemed 'unfit to hang on the gallery's walls'. For more than half a century a cloud has hung over three of the landscapes, said by experts to be a hand other than Turner's. But Philip believes this may be a miscarriage of justice. As Philip and Fiona investigate, they enter a murky world as they discover the paintings are connected to Turner's secret lover. In the end it will be down to the latest forensic testing in order to prove if the paintings were by Joseph Mallord William Turner. But will the process restore the Davies sisters' reputations as art connoisseurs and allow the pictures to see the light of day once again?

MON 21:00 Art of America (b017sryq)
What Lies Beneath

In the final part of his United States odyssey, Andrew Graham-Dixon feels the pulse of contemporary America. Beginning in Levittown - the first mass-produced suburb - Andrew uncovers the dark side of post-war consumerism and the role artists have played in challenging the status quo.

He visits New York's Metropolitan Museum to see the most subversive artwork of 1950s America, Jasper Johns's White Flag. Pop art defined the 1960s and Andy Warhol was its greatest artist. Andrew examines Warhol's soup can paintings, meets his former lover Billy Name and interviews one of the last great surviving pop artists, James Rosenquist.

He travels west down the open road, exploring its art, arriving in Los Angeles, an artificial dream world that has inspired the graphic style of Ed Ruscha and the city's own unique contribution to 20th century design - Googie architecture.

Back east, Andrew visits the home of one of his favourite 20th century artists, the late Philip Guston, and gets a private view of his work. He drops into the studio of Jeff Koons to learn how the enfant terrible of contemporary art continues to challenge the boundaries of American taste. Finally, he explores the impact 9/11 has had on America and how a new generation of artists, such as Matthew Day Jackson, have made sense of this tragic event.

MON 22:00 Walt Disney (b08605f7)
Episode 1

Documentary about the life and legacy of Walt Disney, featuring archival footage only recently released from the Disney vaults, alongside scenes from some of his greatest films and the sketches from which they were created.

Those who helped turn his dreams into reality - his friends, family, animators and designers - reveal the real man behind the legend. They disclose the previously unknown processes, single-mindedness and sometimes sheer unpleasantness and discrimination that lay behind his seemingly effortless masterpieces.

Through bankruptcy, strikes, great risk and more, Disney's refusal to accept failure and his determined pursuit of his creative vision produced cartoons and movies that would define an entire industry. Both an inspiring story and a cautionary tale about the price of ambition, this film offers an unprecedented look at the man who created a world and built an empire.

Part one explores Disney's early days, when he created Mickey Mouse, through to the triumph of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated film.

MON 23:00 Francesco's Venice (b0078ssj)
Sex

Francesco da Mosto continues his story of Venice with its most outrageous period of partying and licentiousness. This is the age of Casanova, the age of the courtesan - when Venice was the red-light district of Europe, attracting rich and hopeful dandies from across the continent.

Ostensibly the young men would come in search of art - and there was plenty for them, with Vivaldi, Canaletto and Canova at work in the city creating art on a scale never before seen. These were artists who responded directly to their public - Vivaldi churning out score after score as tourist-patrons demanded them, Canaletto painting the most upmarket postcards of the age for the growing number of rich visitors to the city, and Canova taking the human figure in marble to a level of perfection not seen since the time of Michelangelo.

Yet storm clouds were gathering and for the Venetians who saw them coming it could only seem as though the wrath of God was about to descend upon the city. The city had grown decadent and careless of its security. Guaranteed a safe haven for a thousand years by the hidden sandbanks of the lagoon, now new technology gave the enemies of Venice long-distance guns that could hit the city from beyond the shallows.

A new monster was rising in Europe - Napoleon Bonaparte, who saw Venice as rich pickings with which to fund his revolution. He would bring disaster to the city beyond any other it had known in its thousand-year history.

MON 00:00 Dan Cruickshank: At Home with the British (b07d7sdp)
The Flat

If modern Britain lives in a terrace house and loves a cottage, it cannot make its mind up about the high-rise flat. Is the skyscraper a blot on the landscape, or the answer to the national housing crisis?

For Dan Cruickshank, the idea of living high above the city streets really is the future once again. 21st-century London is the site of an extraordinary building boom. Hundreds of residential high-rise towers are being built at record speed, many hugely controversial, as private developers cotton on to what social housing idealists realised 60 years ago.

Dan is in Bow in east London, charting the extraordinary history of one estate - the Lincoln. Designed in 1960 for the London County Council by a young idealistic architect, the 19-storey Lincoln was once the tallest residential building in London. Inside every flat were the latest space-age gadgets - a lift, a shower and a fitted kitchen. But the dream turned sour. The Lincoln became notorious for drugs and violence. There was even a brutal murder. It was the same all over Britain - the flat was a byword for deprivation and social exclusion. But then, just as everything looked lost, the Lincoln was saved and with, perhaps, the hopes of an entire generation for that most precious of things - a home. For Dan, as perhaps for Britain, 'the only way is up'.

MON 01:00 The Riviera: A History in Pictures (b01pwtvf)
The Golden Era

Richard E Grant explores how modern art and the Riviera grew up together when France's Cote D'Azur became the hedonistic playground and experimental studio for the great masters of 20th-century painting. With Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso resident on the coast, other artists from Jean Cocteau to Henri Lartigue, Raoul Dufy to Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia to Sergei Diaghilev were drawn to the area.

As transatlantic liners brought America's super-rich to the region, art and celebrity became integrally intertwined as cultural gurus and multimillionaires all partied on the beach. In an era of sunshine and bathing, of cinema and fast cars, of the Ballet Russes and Monte Carlo casinos, Grant discovers the extraordinary output of what became briefly the world's creative hub.

MON 02:00 Fake or Fortune? (b01n39kg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

MON 03:00 Art of America (b017sryq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

TUESDAY 29 JANUARY 2019

TUE 19:00 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.

TUE 19:30 Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village (b0bsrqbz)
Series 1

South West

Archaeologist Ben Robinson explores the Cornish fishing village of Port Isaac. Behind the quaint facade lies something far more gritty - a place where people exploited a range of natural resources, on land and at sea, to make a living and find profits far beyond Britain's shores.

TUE 20:00 The Incredible Human Journey (b00kwdgp)
Australia

There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet.

Alice looks at our ancestors' seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe?

The evidence trail is faint and difficult to pick up, but Alice takes on the challenge. In India, new discoveries among the debris of a super volcano hint that our species started the journey much earlier than previously thought, while in Malaysia, genetics points to an ancient trail still detectable in the DNA of tribes today.

Alice travels deep into the Asian rainforests in search of the first cavemen of Borneo and tests out a Stone Age raft to see whether sea travel would have been possible thousands of years ago, before coming to a powerful conclusion.

TUE 21:00 Kate Humble: Living with Nomads (b05y1k47)
Siberia

Kate Humble journeys to the far north of Siberia in the teeth of the Arctic winter to travel with the Nenets. These reindeer herders spend their lives migrating with the seasons up and down the Yamal Peninsula, following their herds from pasture to pasture. But it's a tough and precarious existence, living in temperatures that can drop to -54C. And the extremes soon take a toll on Kate - a lover of warm weather - and her crew, when on the way to meet their Nenets family their vehicle breaks down and they're forced to abandon their plans.

With the chance to regroup at one of the tundra's slaughterhouses, Kate heads out to join a new family, who are migrating to their winter pasture. She finds a small group of Nenets, sharing a herd of over 300 reindeer, surviving in their reindeer-skinned chums (tents), living a harsh yet happy existence. Kate travels with them, sharing their chum by night, and learns about what it means to be a nomad in such an extreme environment.

The Nenets have managed to survive out here for centuries, living symbiotically with their animals. But now they are facing new and seemingly insurmountable threats: changing weather patterns, linked to climate change, are decimating their herds, and the global gas industry is mining the tundra, damaging pasture and blocking the Nenets' migration routes.

TUE 22:00 A Year in the Wild (b01l9z10)
Snowdonia

The breathtaking landscapes and spectacular wildlife of Snowdonia National Park, seen through the eyes of people who know it best.

TUE 23:00 Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities (b04f83xq)
Vienna 1908

Dr James Fox tells the story of Vienna in 1908, a city of amazing creativity and dangerous tension. This was the year Gustav Klimt painted his masterpiece The Kiss, Sigmund Freud revealed the Oedipus complex, Egon Schiele produced startling pictures of humanity stripped to the bare essentials, and both music and architecture took a bold step in a radical new direction. But it was also the year a struggling young artist named Adolf Hitler arrived in the city, a year that would put Vienna and Europe on the road to destruction.

TUE 00:00 The Brits Who Built the Modern World (b03vrz4f)
The Freedom of the Future

How an exceptional generation of British architects, led by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, conquered the globe with their high-tech vision.

The first episode includes glimpses of some of their most stunning recent work, such as London's new 'Cheesegrater' skyscraper, Spaceport America and the KK100 skyscraper in China (the tallest tower ever built by a British architect), before looking in detail at some of their revolutionary projects from the 1960s and 70s.

Foster, Rogers, Nicholas Grimshaw, Michael Hopkins and Terry Farrell were born within six years of each other in the 1930s; shaped by both the optimism of the postwar years and the sixties counterculture, these pillars of today's establishment began their careers as outsiders and radicals. Rogers and his collaborators tell the story of one of the most influential buildings of the 20th century - the Pompidou Centre in Paris - the result of a contest he didn't want to enter and no-one ever thought they would win.

Other early projects featured include Norman Foster's glassy Willis Faber & Dumas Headquarters in Ipswich, Farrell & Grimshaw's corrugated aluminium tower block next to Regent's Park in London and the industrial-style Hopkins House in Hampstead.

TUE 01:00 Genius of the Modern World (b07ht3cd)
Freud

Bettany Hughes travels to Vienna on the trail of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Freud's influence surrounds us. In our vocabulary - repression, penis envy, the Freudian slip - and in the freedom we take for granted, to talk openly about our deepest feelings and insecurities.

A pioneer in the study of the human mind, Freud's psychoanalytic methods addressed emotional issues, seldom even discussed in the 19th century. Talking to his patients inspired his radical understanding of the unconscious mind, as a repository of hidden repressed emotions and irrational primal desires.

TUE 02:00 The Incredible Human Journey (b00kwdgp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

TUE 03:00 Kate Humble: Living with Nomads (b05y1k47)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2019

WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m00029lw)
Series 1

30/01/2019

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

WED 19:30 Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village (b0bsrqch)
Series 1

South

The village of Milton Abbas in Dorset perfectly captures our romantic notion of what the idyllic English village should look like. But as archaeologist Ben Robinson reveals, behind it lurks a history of one man's wealth and power. With help from local historians, Ben learns how the local landowner in the 18th century destroyed a nearby town, uprooting its residents, because it ruined the view from his house. The landscape was transformed and a new village was built as part of his showpiece estate.

WED 20:00 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.

WED 21:00 Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (b007n1dx)
Paradise Lost

Andrew Marr examines the age of Harold Wilson's classless society; a country excited by new technology, modern architecture and the scary futurism of Doctor Who. Wilson attempted to connect with the 60s spirit of progress by conjuring up the image of a future driven by science and the white heat of technology. But while the swinging sixties unleashed dreams of a fairer, liberated future, the Wilson governments presided over years of industrial conflict, stagnation and decline.

By the 1970s, as the sixties dream turned sour, industrial malaise, class and generational conflict, Vietnam, racial unrest, government paranoia and the shadow of the Soviet threat all added up to a sense of national crisis, and there were serious fears for the future of democracy in Britain. Under Edward Heath, British industry was reduced to working a three-day week, and homes were lit by candlelight during an enforced rationing of electricity. As Heath raised the question 'Who governs Britain?', the people's response came: 'Not you, mate!'.

WED 22:00 How We Built Britain (b007nnmy)
The Heart of England: Living It Up

David Dimbleby journeys through Britain, and through 1,000 years of our history, to discover the buildings that have made us who we are.

Dimbleby explores the great country houses of the reign of Elizabeth I. He reveals the exquisite forest of chimneys on the roof of Burghley House, decodes the riddle of the mysterious Triangular Lodge, explores priest holes, knot gardens, a hunting lodge and Shakespeare's schoolroom, ending his journey in a rare Puritan chapel.

WED 23:00 Castles: Britain's Fortified History (b04t6n19)
Instruments of Invasion

Sam Willis looks at the history of the castle from its first appearance with the Normans in 1066 to the longest siege on English soil at Kenilworth Castle 200 years later. The castle arrived as an instrument of invasion but soon became a weapon with which unruly barons challenged the Crown. Tintagel Castle, the place where King Arthur is said to have been conceived, is also on the itinerary. It remains one of the most evocative of castles to this day, drawing visitors from around the world with its tales of myth and legend.

WED 00:00 Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher (b06z8fjn)
Invasion

In the final episode, Joann discovers how Egypt's enemies exploited a country weakened by internal strife, ultimately leading to its destruction.

Joann leaves Egypt and journeys south to Sudan where she finds the remarkable story of the forgotten Nubian kings. For a century, they ruled Egypt from their southern homeland, even building their own pyramids to bury their kings.

Back in upper Egypt, Joann finds the next group of invaders, the Saites, discovering how they had taken the Egyptian tradition of mummification to new extremes by preserving millions of animals. Finally in Luxor temple, she discovers Egypt's saviour and founder of one of the greatest cities on earth - Alexander the Great.

WED 01:00 Hokusai: Old Man Crazy to Paint (b08w9lv6)
The first UK film biography of the world-renowned Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose print The Great Wave is as globally famous as Leonardo's Mona Lisa. With Andy Serkis reading the voice of Hokusai, the film features artists David Hockney and Maggi Hambling, and passionate scholars who study, admire and venerate this great Japanese master.

The film focuses on Hokusai's work, life and times in the great, bustling metropolis of Edo, now modern Tokyo. Using extraordinary close-ups and pioneering 8K Ultra HD video technology, Hokusai's prints and paintings are examined by world experts. In the process they reveal new interpretations of famous works and convey the full extent of Hokusai's extraordinary achievement as a great world artist.

Hokusai spent his life studying and celebrating our common humanity as well as deeply exploring the natural and spiritual worlds, using the famous volcano Mount Fuji as a protective presence and potential source of immortality. He knew much personal tragedy, was struck by lightning and lived for years in poverty, but never gave up his constant striving for perfection in his art. Hokusai influenced Monet, Van Gogh and other Impressionists, is the father of manga, and has his own Great Wave emoji.

WED 02:00 Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village (b0bsrqbz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 on Tuesday]

WED 02:30 Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village (b0bsrqch)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]

WED 03:00 Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (b007n1dx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

THURSDAY 31 JANUARY 2019

THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m00029m5)
Series 1

31/01/2019

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

THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (m00029m7)
Gary Davies presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 19 February 1987. Featuring performances by Westworld, Carly Simon, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish, Duran Duran, Simply Red, Mental as Anything, The Jets, Eric Clapton, Ben E King and Europe.

THU 20:00 Wonders of Life (b01qygxz)
Original Series

Size Matters

In this episode, Brian travels around Australia to explore the physics of the size of life. Beginning with the largest organisms on our planet, a forest of giant eucalyptus trees, he then takes to the seas to get up-close with an ocean giant - the great white shark. From the safety of a steel cage Brian explains how the distinctive streamlined contours of the great white have been shaped by the physics of water.

Back on land, Brian heads out to the dry dusty outback. Here he tracks the largest living marsupial, the red kangaroo, to see how giants on land adapt to gravity. This all pervasive force influences the way in which living things move and the upper limit on how large they become.

Through the myriad species of insects in Queensland's rainforests, Brian begins his journey into the world of the small. At smaller scales, the effects of gravity are negligible and it is another force - the electrostatic force - that is dominant. This explains how flies and other insects can appear to defy gravity, using the traction of the electrostatic force to scale vertical windows.

But as life gets smaller, the very nature of the world appears to change as Brian explains with the aid of the tiny trichogramma wasp. This is one of the smallest multicellular life forms on Earth. For them, the atmosphere is a highly viscose environment - in a similar way to how we experience liquid - and so the trichogramma has to 'swim' through the air.

Even smaller still, are the thrombolites of Lake Clifton, near Perth. These mysterious growths are made up of colonies of bacteria, the smallest free-living life forms on Earth. Here, Brian finds that the size of life has a lower limit that is governed by the size of atoms and fundamental particles, which in turn are subject to the laws of physics.

The size you are not only dictates which forces of nature affect your life, it also influences your 'speed of life'. The tiny southern bent wing bat of South Australia loses heat so fast that they struggle to find enough food to stay alive. But as life gets larger, the pace of life - or metabolism - slows and this has profound consequences on life expectancy.

Brian explores this idea upon the tropical Christmas Island. This is a land of crabs of all different shapes and sizes. The largest - and most distinctive - are the giant robber crabs whose legs can span a metre. Not only are they the largest land invertebrate, they outlive their smaller cousins, some reaching well over 80 years of age. So the physics of size shapes life in many ways, not least the amount of years you get to enjoy it.

THU 21:00 American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m00029m9)
Series 1

Supremacy

In the third and final film in the series, Lucy Worsley reveals the historic myths and deceptions told following the United States’ emergence as a superpower after the Second World War. We often remember the 1950s and early 1960s in America as a golden era of abundance, harmony and the American dream made real. This film reveals that to be a carefully constructed illusion. In truth, the era of America’s supremacy was a time of government deception, racial conflict and fears of nuclear annihilation.

THU 22:00 Britain's Treasure Islands (b07882lk)
Southern Ocean

Stewart McPherson continues his quest to visit all of the UK's Overseas Territories.

His second journey begins on Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island on earth and home to the entire world population of a spectacular albatross. From here, he travels to the Falkland Islands, coming face to face with a fearsomely intelligent bird of prey, and arrives in Stanley, the capital, in time for celebrations following the referendum in which the islanders decided overwhelmingly to remain part of Britain.

Leaving the Falklands, he follows in the wake of Shackleton and his ill-fated Antarctic expedition, first to South Georgia to witness one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on the planet, then on to the frozen wilderness of the Antarctic peninsula.

THU 23:00 Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero (p0160p0s)
Wallace in Borneo

Comedian Bill Bailey heads to the jungles of Indonesia in the footsteps of his hero, Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, to understand how he came up with the theory of evolution independently of Darwin.

Wallace was a brilliantly eccentric British explorer and, unlike Darwin, he came from a humble background and had to pay his own way by collecting animals. He survived months living in the jungle, man-eating tigers and headhunting tribes to scoop Darwin to the theory of evolution.

Wallace changed the way we see life on earth but has since been written out of history. In the first of this two-part series, Bill retraces Wallace's explorations from the jungles of Borneo to the exotic islands of Indonesia, encountering orangutans, flying frogs and extraordinary bugs, on a mission to understand how Wallace came up with the theory of evolution and to win him the recognition he deserves.

THU 00:00 Top of the Pops (m00029m7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]

THU 00:30 Arena (b073rgy1)
Loretta Lynn - Still a Mountain Girl

Legendary country music singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn is loved by fans from across the world. She has sold over 45 million albums worldwide and won more awards than any other female country music star. With affectionate and irreverent contributions from her extended family of self-confessed rednecks, now in her early eighties and still going strong, Loretta looks back at her long and extraordinary life, from being born a coal miner's daughter in Kentucky to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2013. Featuring Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Sissy Spacek and, of course, Loretta herself.

THU 02:00 Wonders of Life (b01qygxz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

THU 03:00 American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m00029m9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

FRIDAY 01 FEBRUARY 2019

FRI 19:00 World News Today (m00029mh)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.

FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m00029mk)
Janice Long and Gary Davies present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 5 March 1987. Featuring performances by The Christians, a-ha, Erasure, Mel and Kim, Jackie Wilson, Freddie Mercury, Boy George, Al Jarreau, Ben E King and Percy Sledge.

FRI 20:00 Classic Albums (b09hqpzz)
Don McLean: American Pie

The story of Don McLean's second album American Pie. Crowned by its titular overture and the song Vincent, McLean's equally moving tribute to Van Gogh, American Pie is a classic of the folk-rock genre, earning its place alongside Carole King's Tapestry, Joni Mitchell's Blue and Neil Young's After The Goldrush as one of the landmark singer-songwriter LPs of 1971, a year recently celebrated in a book by award-winning journalist David Hepworth as 'rock's golden year'. Don McLean features in extensive new interviews, discussing the intricacies of his songs, the sometimes fraught recording process, and the album's legacy.

Forty-five years after its release, there has never been another album quite like American Pie. While a product of its era pinpointing a precise moment of cultural change in the shattered hopes of baby boomers, its impact continues to reverberate down the years with a poignancy and relevance that hasn't diminished.

The questions it raises about its country's past, present and future are as much a part of our cultural dialogue in Trump's 2017 as they were in Nixon's 1971. "I had most of the album written without American Pie," explains McLean. "But I wasn't happy with that. I knew it wasn't finished. I had more to say. I had this this really big song I needed to get out."

Interviewees include producer Ed Freeman and musician Jake Bugg, whose musical path was initiated when hearing Vincent for the first time on the TV, and a poignant archive performance of George Michael performing The Grave.

FRI 21:00 Buddy Holly: Rave On (b08q8f1n)
He was lanky, he wore glasses and he sang as if permanently battling hiccups. Aesthetically, Buddy Holly might have been the most unlikely looking rock 'n' roll star of the 50s. But he was, after Elvis Presley, unquestionably the most influential.

It was an all-too-brief career that lasted barely 18 months from That'll Be The Day topping the Billboard charts to the plane crash in February 1959 in Iowa that took Holly's life. That day was immortalised in Don McLean's 1971 song American Pie, and has become known as 'the day the music died'.

This film tells the story of Buddy Holly's tragically short life and career through interviews with those who knew him and worked with him. This combined with contributions from music fans paints a picture of an artist who changed music. Rock 'n' roll started with Elvis, but pop music started with Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

In an age of solo stars, Holly also led the first recognisable 'pop' group, The Crickets, who in name alone inspired The Beatles. As a songwriter, he revolutionised rock 'n' roll by introducing dynamic new rhythms and unpredictable melodies beyond its traditional blues roots. In his songs, written and recorded in the late 50s, we can already hear the beat group sound of the 60s and beyond.

Buddy Holly's story remains one of the most dramatic tales in rock 'n' roll, one which nearly 60 years after his breakthrough hit That'll Be The Day, deserves to be told again for a new generation. His life was tragically short. His legacy is triumphantly infinite.

FRI 22:00 Friday Night Jukebox Live! - The BBC Four Request Show (p06vl79r)
Phill Jupitus and Clare Grogan want your stories, dedications and memories about a stack of classic BBC Music performances, around the theme of friendship. Check out the selections on the Clips page and email us jukebox@bbc.co.uk to request a song and give us your reason why. Choose from the likes of Carole King, Paul Simon, John Lennon, Tina Turner, Ed Sheeran, Oasis, REM and many, many more. Your pick may feature in the show.

Go on, do it for a friend.

FRI 23:30 How to Make a Number One Record (b05r6q4r)
Great pop records are the soundtrack to our lives, and that is why number one hits hold a totemic place in our culture. This film goes in search of what it takes to get a number one hit single, uncovering how people have done it and the effect it had on their lives. As the exploration moves through the decades, the goal is to trace the various routes that lead to the top of the singles chart and discover the role played by art, science, chance and manipulation in reaching the pinnacle of pop.

FRI 00:30 Top of the Pops (m00029mk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]

FRI 01:00 Popular Voices at the BBC (b09g67lc)
Series 1

Crooners

This compilation is a companion piece to the Crooners episode of Gregory Porter's Popular Voices, revelling in the enigmatic tones of some of popular music's most classic crooners.

From the BBC archives, we bring you the wit and charm of Sammy Davis Jr, the honeyed voice of Nat King Cole, the swagger of Sinatra, the swank of Bryan Ferry and the brooding of Willie Nelson. We also revisit some of the modernisers of crooning, from the theatrics of David Bowie to post-punk Echo and the Bunnymen, right up to the sensual murmurings of Lana Del Rey.

Featuring clips from Twiggs, The Vera Lynn Show, The Late Show, Top of the Pops and Whistle Test, it's time to slide into your favourite lounge suit and dim the lights!

FRI 02:00 Classic Albums (b09hqpzz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

FRI 03:00 Buddy Holly: Rave On (b08q8f1n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)

A Year in the Wild 22:00 TUE (b01l9z10)

American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 21:00 THU (m00029m9)

American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 03:00 THU (m00029m9)

Andrew Davies: Rewriting the Classics 01:30 SUN (m0001v0q)

Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain 21:00 WED (b007n1dx)

Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain 03:00 WED (b007n1dx)

Arena 00:30 THU (b073rgy1)

Art of America 21:00 MON (b017sryq)

Art of America 03:00 MON (b017sryq)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 MON (m00029lf)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 WED (m00029lw)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 THU (m00029m5)

Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero 23:00 THU (p0160p0s)

Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities 23:00 TUE (b04f83xq)

Britain's Treasure Islands 22:00 THU (b07882lk)

Buddy Holly: Rave On 21:00 FRI (b08q8f1n)

Buddy Holly: Rave On 03:00 FRI (b08q8f1n)

Bullets, Boots and Bandages: How to Really Win at War 20:00 WED (b019jsls)

Castles: Britain's Fortified History 23:00 WED (b04t6n19)

Classic Albums 20:00 FRI (b09hqpzz)

Classic Albums 02:00 FRI (b09hqpzz)

Dan Cruickshank: At Home with the British 00:00 MON (b07d7sdp)

Fake or Fortune? 20:00 MON (b01n39kg)

Fake or Fortune? 02:00 MON (b01n39kg)

Francesco's Venice 23:00 MON (b0078ssj)

Friday Night Jukebox Live! - The BBC Four Request Show 22:00 FRI (p06vl79r)

Genius of the Modern World 01:00 TUE (b07ht3cd)

Guitar, Drum and Bass 00:45 SAT (m0002700)

Handmade on the Silk Road 19:30 MON (b079zyb8)

Hokusai: Old Man Crazy to Paint 01:00 WED (b08w9lv6)

How We Built Britain 22:00 WED (b007nnmy)

How to Make a Number One Record 23:30 FRI (b05r6q4r)

Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher 00:00 WED (b06z8fjn)

Indian Hill Railways 19:00 SUN (b00r5wk7)

Kate Humble: Living with Nomads 21:00 TUE (b05y1k47)

Kate Humble: Living with Nomads 03:00 TUE (b05y1k47)

Natural World 20:00 SAT (b01lb4vn)

Natural World 02:45 SAT (b01lb4vn)

Natural World 21:00 SUN (b09b68wy)

Popular Voices at the BBC 01:00 FRI (b09g67lc)

Prog at the BBC 23:45 SAT (b00g8tfx)

Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village 19:30 TUE (b0bsrqbz)

Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village 19:30 WED (b0bsrqch)

Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village 02:00 WED (b0bsrqbz)

Pubs, Ponds and Power: The Story of the Village 02:30 WED (b0bsrqch)

Son of Saul 21:00 SAT (m00029kr)

Speechless 22:00 SUN (b09cfky7)

The Brits Who Built the Modern World 00:00 TUE (b03vrz4f)

The Flying Archaeologist 19:00 TUE (b01s1llz)

The Hector: From Scotland to Nova Scotia 20:00 SUN (b08ww3gh)

The Hector: From Scotland to Nova Scotia 02:30 SUN (b08ww3gh)

The Incredible Human Journey 20:00 TUE (b00kwdgp)

The Incredible Human Journey 02:00 TUE (b00kwdgp)

The Riviera: A History in Pictures 00:30 SUN (b01ps9jr)

The Riviera: A History in Pictures 01:00 MON (b01pwtvf)

Timbuktu 23:00 SUN (m00029l8)

Top of the Pops 22:40 SAT (m0002704)

Top of the Pops 23:10 SAT (m00026zx)

Top of the Pops 19:30 THU (m00029m7)

Top of the Pops 00:00 THU (m00029m7)

Top of the Pops 19:30 FRI (m00029mk)

Top of the Pops 00:30 FRI (m00029mk)

Walt Disney 22:00 MON (b08605f7)

Wild Brazil 19:00 SAT (p01npl5v)

Wild Brazil 01:45 SAT (p01npl5v)

Wonders of Life 20:00 THU (b01qygxz)

Wonders of Life 02:00 THU (b01qygxz)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (m00029mh)