The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.

Radio-Lists Home Now on BBC 4 Contact

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



SATURDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2020

SAT 19:00 Rick Stein's Long Weekends (b079w1jx)
Berlin

Rick enjoys a long weekend in Berlin, where history and the avant garde dwell enticingly side by side. A city that once made history with its divisive wall teems today with an overwhelming array of innovative chefs offering delicious seasonal creations like pureed sunflower seeds, Jerusalem artichoke flans and crushed frozen pine nuts. Loved by the likes of Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and Escoffier there's still a cornucopia of choice for those with a more traditional temperament, with Eisbein, meatballs and sausages topping every menu in town.


SAT 20:00 South Pacific (b00kjjnx)
Ocean of Islands

The South Pacific islands are the most remote in the world. Their extraordinary isolation has created some of the most curious, surprising and precarious examples of life found anywhere on Earth; from giant crabs that tear open coconuts, to flesh-eating caterpillars that impale their prey on dagger-like claws.

Human culture is different too. The men of Pentecost Island celebrate their annual harvest by leaping from 20-metre high scaffolds, with only forest vines to break their fall. And on the tiny island of Anuta, possibly the most remote community of people on the planet, the locals survive entirely on what they can grow and catch.

The South Pacific's innumerable islands look like pieces of paradise, but the reality of life here is sometimes very different, with waves the size of buildings, brutal tropical storms, and, in the far south, even blizzards. This is the real South Pacific.


SAT 21:00 Hidden (m000fd3l)
Series 2

Episode 1

Cadi and Vaughan are called to investigate when a body is discovered in a house outside Blaenau Ffestiniog. Meanwhile, three youngsters, Mia, Connor and Lee, try to continue their lives as normally as possible.


SAT 22:00 Clive James (m000fj94)
Postcard from Paris

Clive James returns to Paris, the city calls his spiritual home. As a young man he wondered how to meet the women of Paris. This time he does, including writers, models and actresses.


SAT 22:45 The Salesman (m000fj96)
An acting couple find their relationship tested when the wife is attacked in their home as they work on a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The husband is determined to find the assailant, despite his wife's objections.

In Farsi with English subtitles.


SAT 00:45 Top of the Pops (m000f8x5)
Simon Mayo, Sybil Ruscoe and Rod McKenzie present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 16 March 1989 and featuring New Order, Gloria Estefan, Chanelle, Fuzzbox, Madonna, Soul II Soul ft Caron Wheeler, Jason Donovan and Guns N' Roses.


SAT 01:15 Top of the Pops (m000f8x9)
Mark Goodier and Andy Crane present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 23 March 1989 and featuring The Reynolds Girls, Alyson Williams, Donna Summer, Coldcut ft Lisa Stansfield, Pat and Mick, Roachford, The Bangles, Kym Mazelle, Kim Wilde, Paula Abdul, Madonna and Bobby Brown.


SAT 01:45 A Very British History (m000f3xf)
Series 2

Birmingham Irish I Am

Musician Angela Moran, whose grandparents were amongst thousands of Irish to move to Britain’s second city in the 1950s, tells the story of the Birmingham Irish through the memories of local people and rare archive footage.

She hears about life during the 50s and 60s, and also looks at the impact the 1974 terrorist pub bombings had on the city – an act of unimaginable horror in which 21 people were killed and 220 injured. There were consequences for the local Irish community too. The annual St Patrick’s Day Parade was cancelled and people hid their identity.

Angela also shares her own experiences of growing up in the 90s when being Irish was fashionable and something to be celebrated.


SAT 02:45 Rick Stein's Long Weekends (b079w1jx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



SUNDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2020

SUN 19:00 Dangerous Earth (b0824cw7)
Avalanche

Dr Helen Czerski looks at the anatomy of an avalanche. From shocking eyewitness footage from within an avalanche to detailed CT scans showing the microscopic changes that cause them, we can now capture exactly what happens as snow transforms into a deadly and unpredictable danger.


SUN 19:30 Iolo's Snowdonia (b09rjs4p)
Series 1

Episode 3

Over four seasons, Iolo Williams goes to his favourite locations in Snowdonia to look for stunning wildlife, and meets people who help him discover the national park's true nature. In this episode, it is autumn and Iolo takes us to hidden wildernesses with outstanding views of the season's colours and the big mountains of Snowdonia. On the lower slopes of the Carneddau range, red squirrels have returned to the national park after disappearing some 40 years ago. Below the magnificent Aber Falls, with its 37-metre drop from the high peaks, jays collect acorns in an ancient woodland. Iolo finds fascinating old sheepfolds and Wales's native black cattle breed on the high slopes - both relics of a time when many more people lived and worked on the uplands and evidence of Snowdonia's changing nature. However, some things remain the same - wild goats rut on the Rhinog Mountains, a tawny owl and bats take up residence in an old church near Dolgellau and, in a nearby wood, dormice fatten up for hibernation. Also, the first whooper swans arrive back from Iceland to a lake below Snowdon - a sure sign that winter is on its way.


SUN 20:00 Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild (p00zsrqz)
Understanding the Natural World

David Attenborough reviews the most exciting scientific discoveries that have transformed our view of life on earth during his lifetime. How and where did life first begin? How do continents move? How do animals communicate? And why do they behave the way they do?

In a story of individual passions, dedication and ingenious insights he shares his memories of the scientists and the breakthroughs that helped shape his own career. He also recalls some of his more hair-raising attempts to bring new science to a television audience - by standing in the shadow of an erupting volcano as lumps of hot lava crashed around him, by being charged by a group of armed New Guinean tribesmen and the extraordinary sight of chimps hunting monkeys, captured on camera for the first time by Attenborough and his team.


SUN 21:00 Art on the BBC (m000fj9q)
Series 1

Michelangelo: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Michelangelo was not merely a giant of the Renaissance. He was also one of the era’s most controversial personalities. Art historian Sona Datta explores six decades of BBC archive to discover how TV has influenced our understanding of him.

Sona reveals how TV has tried to reconcile Michelangelo’s art with his difficult personality, bringing to life the story of a man who rose from humble beginnings to become the favoured artist of the rich and powerful. He left us with work that was both iconic and divine, but his bitter, jealous temperament earned him more than a few enemies.


SUN 22:00 Britain's Lost Masterpieces (b07xjsqj)
Series 1

Swansea

The Swansea museum store contains everything from a stuffed pigeon to a police car, but can Bendor and Jacky reveal a multimillion-pound lost masterpiece that will not only become a jewel of Swansea museum's collection, but also rewrite art history? Also, a rare appearance at the museum of a giant painting of local coal miners prompts Jacky to re-examine the life of the man who painted them, the renowned Polish artist Josef Herman. She tracks down those who remember him in south Wales.


SUN 23:00 Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens (b0195pt7)
Armando Iannucci presents a personal argument in praise of the genius of Charles Dickens. Through the prism of the author's most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, Armando looks beyond Dickens - the national institution - and instead explores the qualities of Dickens's work that still make him one of the best British writers.

While Dickens is often celebrated for his powerful depictions of Victorian England and his role as a social reformer, this programme foregrounds the elements of his writing which make him worth reading, as much for what he tells us about ourselves in the twenty-first century as our ancestors in the nineteenth.

Armando argues that Dickens's remarkable use of language and his extraordinary gift for creating characters make him a startlingly experimental and psychologically penetrating writer who demands not just to be adapted for television but to be read and read again.


SUN 00:00 Timeshift (b06b36q3)
Series 15

A Very British Map: The Ordnance Survey Story

For over 200 years, Ordnance Survey has mapped every square mile of the British Isles, capturing not just the contours and geography of our nation, but of our lives. Originally intended for military use, OS maps were used during wartime to help locate enemy positions. In peacetime, they helped people discover and explore the countryside.

Today, the large fold-out paper maps, used by generations of ramblers, scouts and weekend adventurers, represent just a small part of the OS output. As Ordnance Survey adjusts to the digital age, Timeshift looks back to tell the story of a quintessentially British institution.


SUN 01:00 A Brief History of Graffiti (b067fxfr)
Dr Richard Clay goes in search of what it is that has made us scribble and scratch mementoes of our lives for more than 30,000 years. From the prehistoric cave paintings of Burgundy in France, through gladiatorial fan worship in Roman Lyons to the messages left on the walls of Germany's Reichstag in 1945 by triumphant Soviet troops, time and again we have wanted to leave a permanent record of our existence for our descendants. And it may be that this is where what today we call art comes from - the humble scratch, graffiti.


SUN 02:00 Raiders of the Lost Past with Janina Ramirez (m0008c5c)
Series 1

The Lion Man

The Lion Man takes Nina deep into the dark heart of Nazi Germany, where in a remote cave in late August 1939, archaeologist Robert Wetzel came across the 40,000-year-old artwork now known as the Lion Man.

Just a week later, WWII broke out, the excavation came to halt and, in one of the great mysteries of archaeology, Wetzel never mentioned his incredible find again.

As Janina discovers, the Lion Man represents a revolution in the human story. Half-man and half-animal, it is the first artwork created from the human imagination, revealing the very origins of human art, religion and culture.

But, in fact, Janina learns that it is almost a miracle the Lion Man came to light at all, because it was not pulled out of the cave as a single artwork but as hundreds of tiny ivory shards, found in numerous chance discoveries across eight decades.

This incredible tale of exploration takes Janina from caves in southern Germany to Arctic Norway, as she finds out how the Lion Man gave us our first understanding of the birth of civilisation.

She also explores how the artwork gives us a disturbing insight into one of the most troubled periods in our recent history, asking how a pioneering archaeologist like Robert Wetzel could also believe that an ice-age artwork like the Lion Man could support the ideology of Nazi Germany.


SUN 03:00 Art on the BBC (m000fj9q)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



MONDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2020

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fj9w)
Series 1

17/02/2020

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


MON 19:30 Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage (b00cp421)
Corfu and Greece

Architect and historian Francesco da Mosto embarks on a journey across the Mediterranean sea. As Francesco and the crew of the Black Swan enter Greek waters, the boat is making the fastest headway since leaving Venice on the long voyage to Istanbul. But disaster strikes as the mainsail rips and they limp into the next port, the island of Corfu. Corfu has more relics of British rule than Venetian, and Francesco is soon drawn into a game of cricket on the island's best cricket pitch.

In the romantic setting of the British Garden Cemetery there are many reminders of British occupation. And Corfu is the island setting of the hugely popular novel, My Family and Other Animals. Author Gerald Durrell is long since dead, but his good friend David Bellamy is there to point Francesco in the direction of the island's animal life. While the Black Swan puts in for repairs Francesco takes the ferry to the Greek coast and heads inland. His first stop is the surprising town of Ioannina - a little bit of Turkey in the middle of Greece. Once it was the stronghold of the evil Ali Pasha whose cruelty was the talk of Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. But peace and hope is restored as Francesco ascends the incredible mountain realm of Meteora - a sacred kingdom in the clouds. Here ancient monasteries perch perilously on the mountaintops with, seemingly, no way to get up to them. Inside are some of the least seen but most brilliant frescoes of the medieval age.


MON 20:00 New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands (b07lp34l)
Cast Adrift

Isolated since the time of the dinosaurs, New Zealand's wildlife has been left to its own devices, with surprising consequences. Its ancient forests are still stalked by predators from the Jurassic era. It's also one of the most geologically active countries on earth.

From Kiwis with their giant eggs, to forest-dwelling penguins and helicopter-riding sheep dogs, meet the astonishing creatures and resilient people who must rise to the challenges of their beautiful, dramatic and demanding home.


MON 21:00 The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook (b07pr1b5)
World in Motion

The third and final programme charts the final years of the decade, looking at a society transformed by an accelerated change. Dominic argues that this change brought opportunities and anxieties that we continue to wrestle with to this day, from significant technological advances and the privatisation of national companies, to the deregulation of the stock market and the growing polarisation of rich and poor.

The late 80s saw Britain transformed beyond measure, from the economic 'Big Bang' in the City of London and the rise of the yuppie to more tangible, everyday signs of household change, such as the impact of Europe on British shopping habits - from German cars to French wine, Italian fashion and Scandinavian interior design. But alongside this transformation was a growing disconnection from the political elite, signified by the rise of rave culture and the poll tax riots. Margaret Thatcher - widely seen as the architect of so much of this change - would ultimately become its biggest victim.


MON 22:00 Storyville (m000flgx)
Fishing for Love: How to Catch a Thai Bride

A Storyville documentary. In a small fishing community on the west coast of Denmark, over 900 Thai women are married to local fishermen. The trend started 25 years ago when Sommai, a former sex worker from north east Thailand, married Niels. She became a matchmaker for lonely Danish locals and impoverished women from her village in Thailand. At first, these stories seem straightforward: white men from a wealthy country marrying Asian women looking for a way out of poverty, but a different, far more complex and surprising tale unfolds in the film.

Over ten years, acclaimed film-maker Janus Metz and film-maker and anthropologist Sine Plambech follow four Thai-Danish couples in an intimate chronicle that explores universal questions of love and romance, while navigating wildly different cultures, and compromises that shift gradually and surprisingly from sacrifice to life choices.


MON 23:30 Art of Germany (b00wlrzx)
In the Shadow of Hitler

Andrew Graham-Dixon concludes his exploration of German art by investigating the dark and difficult times of the 20th century.

Dominating the landscape is the figure of Adolf Hitler - failed artist, would-be architect and obsessed with the aesthetics of his 1,000-year Reich. In a series of extraordinary building projects and exhibitions, Hitler waged a propaganda war against every kind of modern art as a prelude to unleashing total war on the whole of Europe.

After the war the shadow of the Third Reich persisted, Germany remained divided and traumatised. How would artists deal with a past that everybody wanted to forget? From the work of Otto Dix and George Grosz and the age of the Bauhaus to the post-war painters Georg Baselitz, Hilla Becher and the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys is a long strange journey, but the signs are there that art has a place at the heart of the new reunited Germany.


MON 00:30 Abducted - Elizabeth I's Child Actors (b0bdvxzn)
The gripping true story of a boy abducted from the streets of Elizabethan London, and how his father fought to get him back. Presented by acclaimed children's author and academic Katherine Rundell, this intriguing tale is set behind the scenes in the golden age of Shakespeare and sheds a shocking light on the lives of children long before they were thought to have rights.

Thirteen-year-old Thomas Clifton was walking to school on 13 December 1600, when he was violently kidnapped. And what's most extraordinary is that the men who took him claimed that they had legal authority to do so from Queen Elizabeth I herself. Children are so often missing from history, but this tale has survived by the skin of its teeth. This inventive film pieces together Thomas Clifton's story from contemporary accounts, court documents, plays and poetry, with the missing gaps beautifully illustrated by vivid hand-drawn animation.

Shedding light on politics, religion, money and fame at a time when society's anxieties were played out nightly on the stage, it is an unknown slice of British history, both bizarre and sinister. The snatching of Thomas Clifton had been organised by a theatrical impresario, who intended to put him on the stage as part of a company of child actors, who were enormously popular with the Elizabethan theatre. He wasn't the only boy lifted from the streets for this purpose - a whole host of others suffered a similar ordeal. It was a practice known as impressment - forced recruitment into public service - which meant that children could be legally taken without their parents' or their own consent.


MON 01:30 Rams: Principles of Good Design (m0007tp6)
For over fifty years, Dieter Rams has left an indelible mark on the field of product design with his iconic work at Braun and Vitsoe, and his influence on Apple. So, at 87 years old, why does he now regret being a designer?

Rams is a design documentary, but it is also a rumination on consumerism, sustainability and the future of design. Dieter's philosophy is about more than just design. It is about a way to live. The film also features an original score by pioneering musician Brian Eno.


MON 02:30 New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands (b07lp34l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



TUESDAY 18 FEBRUARY 2020

TUE 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fj99)
Series 1

18/02/2020

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


TUE 19:30 The Beauty of Anatomy (b04gbdwt)
The Hunter Brothers

Dr Adam Rutherford investigates the story of the Hunter brothers, the celebrated anatomists who controversially transformed both medicine and art in 18th-century Britain.

Their belief that their students could only learn anatomy by carrying out dissections created an unprecedented demand for dead bodies and a market for the growing trade of body snatching from graveyards.


TUE 20:00 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b03816y5)
Alfred of Wessex

King Alfred the Great fights a desperate guerrilla war in the marshes of Somerset - burning the cakes on the way - before his decisive victory at Edington. Creating towns, trade and coinage, reviving learning and literacy, Alfred then laid the foundations of a single kingdom of 'all the English'. Filmed on location from Reading to Rome, using original texts read in old English, and interviews with leading scholars, Michael Wood describes a man who was 'not just the greatest Briton, but one of the greatest rulers of any time or place'.


TUE 21:00 Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m000fj9c)
Series 1

The Reformation

Lucy Worsley discovers how the history of the English Reformation has been manipulated and mythologised by generations of politicians and writers. It’s usually portrayed as a lusty royal soap opera. But Lucy reveals that it was about far more than just a randy king in pursuit of a younger wife and a long-awaited male heir.

Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, a Catholic, created a religious and political schism between England and Europe that can be still be felt in Britain today. It also laid the foundations for our modern constitution and economic power as an empire.

But this fundamental shift in our cultural, political and economic fortunes wasn’t driven by Henry VIII’s Protestant zeal. Lucy begins by demolishing one of the founding myths about the English Reformation: far from being a ready ally of Martin Luther’s Protestant revolution, Henry remained a Catholic to his death. It was his wife Anne Boleyn and his fixer Thomas Cromwell who championed the Protestant cause.


TUE 22:00 The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story (b09vpgr7)
Series 1

Episode 1

In April 1955 Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakely dead. It's a case that shocked the nation and it still fascinates today. It has its place in ushering in the defence of diminished responsibility and the eventual abolishment of capital punishment. We all think we know the story, but why, when it was seemingly such an open-and-shut case, does it still divide opinion on whether Ruth Ellis got the justice she deserved? Film-maker Gillian Pachter wants to find out. The result is a fresh investigation with fascinating true-crime twists and turns that also shines a unique light on attitudes to class, gender and sex in 1950s London.

In this first episode Gillian takes a forensic look at the police investigation launched just after Ruth's arrest. Gillian is all too aware of the femme fatale persona that has stuck with Ruth since 1955. She wants to build Ruth Ellis back up from the evidence, and this means looking carefully at the police documentation from the time. Gillian begins with Ruth's first statement where she confesses to the crime but intriguingly states that she's 'confused'.

As Gillian follows the course of the investigation, she uncovers some worrying assumptions, problematic omissions and missed opportunities. There's a key witness who was never questioned by the police - Ruth's 10-year old son Andre, who tragically took his own life in the 1980s. He left behind an audio cassette that features a recorded conversation where Andre shares his thoughts on his mother's case. Gillian uses this to piece together what the boy knew. Then there's the murder weapon - one of thousands of guns that flooded Britain during the war. Gillian traces its provenance and it leads her to a shocking conclusion.

Experts in policing shed new light on the involvement of a possible accomplice and Gillian tracks down those who met Ruth and David. A picture begins to build of their relationship and lifestyle and it's a unique snapshot of the complex world of post-war Britain that made and then broke Ruth Ellis.


TUE 23:00 Timeshift (b0105r8x)
Series 10

Crime and Punishment - The Story of Capital Punishment

Timeshift digs into the archive to trace the extraordinary story of the ultimate sanction. At the beginning of the 19th century you could still be hanged in Britain for offences such as stealing a sheep or shooting a rabbit. Even children as young as seven were sent to the gallows. The last hanging in this country took place as recently as 1964.

By opting for a dispassionate history rather than staging the usual polarised debate, the programme breaks new ground with its fascinating attention to detail, such as the protocols of the public execution or the 'science' of hanging. With contributions from both sides of the argument, it provides an essential guide to a subject that still divides us.


TUE 00:00 Inside the Medieval Mind (b009s80l)
Knowledge

Leading authority on the Middle Ages, Professor Robert Bartlett, presents a series which examines the way we thought during medieval times.

To our medieval forebears the world could appear mysterious, even enchanted. Sightings of green men, dog heads and alien beings were commonplace. The world itself was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.


TUE 01:00 Jigs and Wigs: The Extreme World of Irish Dancing (b06zz7t0)
Series 2

Angela's Athletes

Tyrone native and Irish dance fitness coach Angela Mohan puts her army of athletes through the drill in the lead-up to the world championships.


TUE 01:30 Jigs and Wigs: The Extreme World of Irish Dancing (b070w5kk)
Series 2

Made in Belfast

Belfast-born Gavin Doherty is known internationally for his innovative dress designs and teaching techniques. Here, he shares the secrets of his success and introduces us to prodigy Ethan White from Carrickfergus.


TUE 02:00 Me, My Selfie and I with Ryan Gander (m0003g0r)
Celebrated conceptual artist Ryan Gander investigates the selfie – the icon of a new kind of self-regard that hardly existed just ten years ago. He discovers the roots of the selfie go back hundreds of years before smartphones. In the age of social media, when we are told to be our best selves and live our best lives, he investigates what that really means and what technology is doing to our sense of self.


TUE 03:00 Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m000fj9c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2020

WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fj9j)
Series 1

19/02/2020

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


WED 19:30 The Beauty of Anatomy (b04gvbdt)
Gray's Anatomy

The world's most famous study of the human body is Gray's Anatomy. The accuracy of the descriptions and the stark beauty of the illustrations made it an instant bestseller. Adam Rutherford tells the story of how, in just three years, Dr Henry Gray and Dr Henry Carter put it together based on dissections they personally performed.


WED 20:00 World's Busiest Railway 2015 (b0684sg2)
Episode 4

In this final episode, Dan Snow, Anita Rani, Robert Llewellyn and John Sergeant consider the challenges faced by the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai and ask what the future holds. Nine people a day die on Mumbai's railway lines. Anita tackles the railway's head of safety on the measures they're taking to reduce this fatality rate.

Dan meets two eyewitnesses to 2008's terror attacks that claimed the lives of 52 people at the station. He also takes a ride on Mumbai's newly built Metro to consider what the future could hold for the city's 5.5 million rail commuters.

John Sergeant is in the Western Ghats, one of India's biggest mountain ranges, revealing the heavy human cost of building the line that connects Mumbai to the south and east of India.

Robert fulfills a childhood dream and becomes a train driver for a day, and Anita tries her hand at station announcing.


WED 21:00 A Very British History (m000f39b)
Series 2

The British Chinese

British-born Chinese vlogger Shu Lin explores the history of the Chinese community in the UK from the 1950s through to the present day. With film and TV archive, and first-hand accounts, she discovers how Chinese migrants transformed Britain’s bland post-war dining scene. From restaurants to television cooking shows, the eating habits of a nation were changed forever.

Shu Lin finds out how an area of Soho became the vibrant Chinatown we know today and traces how the British Chinese community has gone from relying heavily on the restaurant trade to achieving outstanding business and educational success.


WED 22:00 The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story (b09w3m05)
Series 1

Episode 2

In April 1955 Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakely dead. It's a case that shocked the nation and it still fascinates today. It has its place in ushering in the defence of diminished responsibility and the eventual abolishment of capital punishment. We all think we know the story, but why, when it was seemingly such an open and shut case, does it still divide opinion on whether Ruth Ellis got the justice she deserved?

Film-maker Gillian Pachter wants to find out. The result is a fresh investigation with fascinating true-crime twists and turns that also shines a unique light on attitudes to class, gender and sex in 1950s London.

In episode two Gillian turns her attention to Ruth's trial which took just a day and a half. She starts with a tape-recorded conversation from the 1980s between Ruth's son Andre and the barrister who led the prosecution. Andre expresses doubts about his mother's trial, calling into question her state of mind and whether she was a cold-blooded killer.

Gillian is interested to know whether the defence shared these concerns and she turns her attention to Ruth's solicitor. There are immediate and compelling questions about how he was hired, by whom and why. Ultimately it seems he was determined that the jury should look beyond the tabloid stereotype of Ruth to understand her troubled background - that way, they'd be inclined to recommend mercy and save Ruth from execution. But Ruth and her barrister had other ideas - while she refused to play ball he pursued a defence strategy so risky that the judge was forced to put his foot down.

There's the ongoing question of Ruth's alleged accomplice and how much Ruth's defence team knew of his involvement and continuing revelations from the forgotten witness, Ruth's son Andre. Gillian draws on expert opinion from top legal minds who know the case intimately, and they paint a portrait of a woman trapped not only by the constraints of 1950s society but by the narrow parameters of English law.


WED 23:00 EastEnders: Back to Ours (p02hfc5v)
Series 1

Barbara Windsor & Pam St Clement

To celebrate 30 years of EastEnders, join soap royalty Barbara and Pam as they relive iconic Peggy and Pat moments and share some afternoon tea!


WED 23:25 EastEnders: Iconic Episodes (m000fj9l)
Pat & Frank's Affair

Drama serial about life in an East London square. In a special one-hour slice of Walford life, there are fireworks of a different kind as Albert Square celebrates bonfire night. Originally aired on 2 November 2000.


WED 00:30 Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection (b09qrbvd)
Series 1

Modern Times

Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how royal collecting has changed since the days of Queen Victoria. This is a story of the British monarchy's remarkable survival, while elsewhere the crown heads of Europe crumbled in the face of world wars and revolutions. But it is also an age when women took charge of royal collecting; from Victoria to Elizabeth II, queens and queen consorts have used art to steady the ship of monarchy during this uncertain age.

It's one of the curiosities of the Royal Collection that as the monarchy's power diminished, so too did the objects they collected. Gone were epic canvases, instead came objects of exquisite, delicate and intimate beauty. Andrew marvels at a selection of the royal family's collection of Faberge jewellery - one of the greatest in the world - that includes the Mosaic Egg from 1914. So taken were Edward VII and his wife Queen Alexandria with the works of Peter Carl Faberge, that the jeweller opened a London shop to service the demands of royal clientele.

And then there's Queen Mary's Dolls' House - presented to George V's queen to thank her for her steadfastness during the first world war, the Dolls' House is an astonishing artistic collaboration by over 1,500 people and companies, replete with books containing new stories by authors like Arthur Conan Doyle, tiny champagne bottles filled with real champagne and even mini shotguns that can be broken, loaded and fired. More than just a dolls' house, this is a three-dimensional archive of a vanished artistic age.

The Collection reveals fresh insights into these remarkable women, in particular HM the Queen Mother, who loved art and collected with flair. At Clarence House, Andrew discovers a surprising collection of contemporary British art that she assembled in the 1930s and 1940s, including works by Walter Sickert, LS Lowry, Paul Nash and Augustus John. Andrew traces her greatest commission, a series of 26 paintings of Windsor Castle by John Piper, painted during the Second World War. With Windsor at risk of being bombed, Piper created an eerie dreamscape filled with black skies and foreboding.

Andrew also brings royal collecting up to date. From the outset Elizabeth II's priorities had been focused on preserving and displaying the Collection, and Andrew shows how one of the key events in its recent history - the Windsor Castle fire - was an unlikely catalyst in the reform of the Collection's care. Concluding his exploration, Andrew meets HRH the Prince of Wales to view two of his recent commissions, powerful portraits of veterans of the Battle of Britain and the D-Day landings, and to discuss the continued importance of this remarkable collection.


WED 01:30 Victorian Sensations (m0005hhg)
Series 1

Decadence and Degeneration

The 1890s was the decade when science, entertainment, art and morality collided - and the Victorians had to make sense of it all. Actor Paul McGann discovers how the works of HG Wells, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde were shaped by fears of moral, social and racial degeneration.

Paul, seated in Wells’s time machine, sees how the author’s prophecies of a future in which humanity has decayed and degenerated highlighted the fears of the British Empire. Paul finds out how these anxieties were informed by new scientific theories based on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Paul learns how Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton sought to improve the genetic stock of the nation, through a project he coined as ‘eugenics’.

Another of the decade’s prominent scientific thinkers – Austrian physician Max Nordau – declared that it was art and culture, and their practitioners – the aesthetes and decadents – that were causing Britain’s moral degeneration, singling out Oscar Wilde as the chief corrupting influence. Paul explains how Wilde sought to subvert traditional Victorian values. Tucked away in one of Wilde’s haunts - the famous Cheshire Cheese Pub on Fleet Street - Paul hears from Stephen Calloway about how Aubrey Beardsley – the most decadent artist of the period – scandalised society, in much the same way as Wilde, through his erotic drawings. Wilde and Beardsley were not alone in being parodied by Punch Magazine. Historian Angelique Richardson shows Paul caricatures of a new figure who had begun to worry the sensibilities of Victorian Britain. Known collectively as The New Woman, this was a group of female writers, who in more than 100 novels, portrayed a radical new idea of femininity that challenged the conventions of marriage and motherhood. However, as Paul discovers through reading a short story called Eugenia by novelist Sarah Grand, some advocated the idea of eugenics through their writing.

For eugenicists, if one means of keeping a ‘degenerate’ working class in check was incarceration, then that either meant prison or, increasingly by the 1890s, the asylum. Some lost their freedom due to ‘hereditary influence’, others to so-called sexual transgression. Paul explains how the ‘vice’ of masturbation was seen as sapping the vitality of the nation. The idea of sexual transgression was to intrude into the Victorian consciousness as never before when, in 1895, Oscar Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years in jail.

While Oscar Wilde had made a very public show of defiance, Paul uncovers another leading – and gay - writer of the period, John Addington Symonds, who together with the prominent physician Havelock Ellis, sought to produce a scientific survey of homosexuality. At the London Library, Symonds expert Amber Regis shows Symonds’s rare handwritten memoirs to Paul, which served as a source for the groundbreaking 1897 work, Sexual Inversion. Paul explains how questions of sex and gender also lie at the heart of a very different book, published in the same year - Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Paul explains how Stoker had his finger – or teeth – on the pulse of the 1890s, infusing his novel with many of the decade’s chief preoccupations and growing fears of racial prejudice and immigration.

Paul also meets Natty Mark Samuels (founder of the Oxford African School) reciting a speech by a young West Indian called Celestine Edwards, who took a brave stand against imperial rule and its racist underpinnings. Edwards became the first black editor in Britain, and his pioneering work would be continued by a fellow West Indian, Henry Sylvester Williams, who in 1897 formed the African Association. Outside the former Westminster Town Hall, Paul describes how, in 1900, Williams set up the first Pan-African Conference to promote and protect the interests of all subjects claiming African descent.


WED 02:30 What Do Artists Do All Day? (m0005ws0)
Frank Bowling's Abstract World

Internationally renowned abstract artist Frank Bowling became the first black Royal Academician in 2005. Now 85 years old and the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain, Bowling talks to Brenda Emmanus about his long career. Featuring interviews with critics and fellow artists who discuss the significance of his work in the history of British art.


WED 03:00 A Very British History (m000f39b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



THURSDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2020

THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fj9t)
Series 1

20/02/2020

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


THU 19:30 The Pennine Way (b05sy1ym)
Episode 4

The wilderness of rural Northumberland awaits explorer Paul Rose on the last stage of his Pennine Way journey. Paul makes a remarkable discovery at the Roman archaeological dig at Vindolanda. He also finds out what lies beyond the red flags while on exercise with the Grenadier Guards and why Pennine Way walkers can have a magical experience in the dark skies capital of Europe.


THU 20:00 Walt Disney (b0872yqs)
Episode 2

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 which created them. Those who helped turn his dreams into reality - his friends, family and his 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 single-minded pursuit of his creative vision produced cartoons and movies that would define an entire industry. Both and inspiring story and a cautionary tale about the price of ambition, Walt Disney offers an unprecedented look at the man who created a world and built an empire.

Part two explores Disney's later years as he makes films such as Cinderella and Mary Poppins, and realises his dream project, Disneyland.


THU 21:00 Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb (b08650s6)
Documentary which follows the construction of a trailblazing 36,000-tonne steel structure to entomb the ruins of the nuclear power plant destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It films close up with the team of international engineers as they race to build the new structure before Chernobyl's original concrete sarcophagus - the hastily built structure that covers the reactor - collapses.

Built to last just 30 years, the temporary sarcophagus is now crumbling, putting the world at risk of another release of radioactive dust. Radiation levels make it impossible for workers to build the new shelter directly over the old reactor, so engineers are erecting the new megastructure - taller than the tower of Big Ben and three times heavier than the Eiffel Tower - to one side and will then face the challenge of sliding the largest object ever moved on land into place over the old reactor.


THU 22:00 The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story (b09w8jp0)
Series 1

Episode 3

In April 1955 Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakely dead. It's a case that shocked the nation and it still fascinates today. It has its place in ushering in the defence of diminished responsibility and the eventual abolishment of capital punishment. We all think we know the story, but why, when it was seemingly such an open and shut case, does it still divide opinion on whether Ruth Ellis got the justice she deserved?

Film-maker Gillian Pachter wants to find out. The result is a fresh investigation with fascinating true-crime twists and turns that also shines a unique light on attitudes to class, gender and sex in 1950s London.

In episode three Gillian turns her attention to Ruth's execution and the last-minute attempts to save her life even though Ruth herself was determined to die. Despite this Ruth decides to change her solicitor and Gillian is intrigued as to the reasons why. When Ruth does finally admit that someone else was involved in the murder, her new solicitor races to the Home Office in a bid to stop the execution.

He isn't alone in not wanting to see Ruth hanged. Gillian looks at the hundreds of letters that were sent by the British public to the government asking for Ruth to be reprieved. It's a fascinating snapshot of British attitudes in the 1950s: the letters point to Ruth's mental state, the domestic violence she'd suffered and even the trauma experienced by those who'd lived through the Blitz.

The police are sent to track down Ruth's other lover, Desmond Cussen, who Ruth now claims gave her the gun and drove her to the scene of the murder. But they can't find him and won't take Ruth's word for it. The Home Office decides to press on with the execution; they worry that if they don't follow through on such a high-profile murder case that this will accelerate the abolition of capital punishment.

Ruth is hanged and Gillian explores the role of her case in the introduction of the defence of diminished responsibility in England and its place in the eventual abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1965. But Ruth's personal legacy is much more tragic as Gillian explores the effects of the events of 1955 on Ruth's family. This takes Gillian to a taped conversation recorded by Ruth's son in the 1980s, where his despair at what happened when he was ten is movingly clear; Andre lost his mother and he lost David, whom he loved. He took his own life in the 1980s and today his ashes are close to his mother's in a cemetery in Hertfordshire not far from where David Blakely was buried. Three victims of a truly tragic set of circumstances.


THU 23:00 How We Built Britain (b007r7mf)
The West: Putting on the Style

On his architectural tour of Britain, David Dimbleby discovers how the Georgian dream of order and beauty transformed our buildings and cities. Travelling west, he discovers the grandeur of Blenheim Palace, the man-made paradise of Stourhead garden in Wiltshire and the elegance of Bath. He pays tribute to the terraced house, a great British invention, before discovering the tin mines of Cornwall and crossing the mighty Menai Bridge to the Georgian jewel of Dublin.


THU 00:00 Don McCullin: Looking for England (m0002dv0)
Travelogue that follows photographer Don McCullin, now 83, documenting his country from inner cities to seaside towns, on a journey in search of his own nation. Sixty years after starting out as a photographer, McCullin returns to his old haunts in the East End of London, Bradford, Consett, Eastbourne and Scarborough. Along the way he encounters an array of English characters at the Glyndebourne Festival and Goodwood Revival and photographs a hunt and a group of saboteurs aiming to disrupt them. McCullin’s journey is punctuated by scenes in his darkroom, a place he is allowing cameras into for the first time.


THU 01:00 The Silk Road (p03qb25g)
Episode 2

In the second episode of his series tracing the story of the most famous trade route in history, Dr Sam Willis travels west to Central Asia, a part of the Silk Road often overlooked and yet the place of major innovations, big historical characters and a people - the Sogdians - whose role was pivotal to its success.

In the high mountain passes of Tajikistan, Sam meets the last survivors of that race, who once traded from the Mediterranean to the China Sea. In the Uzbek cities of Samarkand and Bukara, he discovers how they were built by armies of captive craftsmen for one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen - Timur.

From here, Sam follows the flow of goods back towards the markets of the west, showing how their trading culture sparked cultural, technical and artistic revolutions all along the Silk Road, and goes back to school to learn where modern mathematics and astronomy were born.


THU 02:00 Mars Uncovered: Ancient God of War (m0003m0c)
Bettany Hughes investigates the enduring relationship between warfare and worship, by following the trail through time of the ancient god of war, Mars. She begins in Carthage, site of one of the most significant and bloodiest victories in the history of the Roman Empire and explores the vital role of Mars in Rome's imperial expansion.

Visiting the British Museum, Bettany sees, at first hand, the earliest known evidence of human warfare - a 13,000-year-old graveyard in which many of the bodies showed signs of violent deaths. With bodies so carefully buried, Bettany asks if ritualising and celebrating war is a way of bringing societies together – of creating 'them' and 'us'.

Back in North Africa, at the spectacular Roman amphitheatre in El Djem, Bettany examines the symbolic role of the ‘ludi martiales’, or gladiatorial games, and finds out about the challenge posed by early Christianity to this celebration of war and ritualised death. Travelling to Jordan, she then tells the story of one of the bloodiest episodes in Crusader history and examines how the Christian notion of Holy War played out in practice, with Mars still very much a presence. She then tracks how the figure of Mars was used by artists such as Botticelli and Rubens to examine the inevitability of war, and whether peace might not proffer a better option. Following the World Wars, the red scare, and contemporary conflict in the Middle East, Bettany considers how Mars’s dominion has been sustained and asks whether the benefits of war still outweigh the horrors.


THU 03:00 Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb (b08650s6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



FRIDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2020

FRI 19:00 World News Today (m000fjbp)
The news programme for audiences who want more depth to their daily coverage. With a focus on Europe, Middle East and Africa.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m000fjbr)
Gary Davies and Bruno Brookes present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 30 March 1989 and featuring Pat and Mick, Bangles, Roachford, Brother Beyond, Paul Simpson ft Adeva, Transvision Vamp, The The, Guns N' Roses, Fuzzbox, The Cult, Madonna and Kon Kan.


FRI 20:00 ... Sings Disney Songs (b018jpk4)
The BBC takes on the Mouse in a brilliant and sometimes baffling medley of styles and eras blending everything from light entertainment to children's TV, celebrating interpretations of Disney tunes over the last 40 years. The Bare Necessities, When You Wish upon a Star and Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah are standout highlights, with more recent pop hits from Celine Dion and Elton John bringing us up to date. Clips come from archive shows including Shirley Bassey, It's Lulu, Top of the Pops, Blue Peter, Brubeck and Louis Armstrong's Show of the Week.


FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (m000fjbt)
Simon Mayo and Anthea Turner present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 6 April 1989 and featuring Brother Beyond, Kon Kan, Holly Johnson, Paula Abdul, Coldcut ft Lisa Stansfield, Simply Red, Transvision Vamp, Madonna and INXS.


FRI 21:30 Rock Island Line: The Song That Made Britain Rock (m000433l)
In January 1956, a new pop phenomenon appeared in the UK charts: a British artist playing a guitar. His name was Lonnie Donegan and the song he sang was Rock Island Line.

Donegan’s rough-and-ready style was at odds with the polished crooners who dominated the charts. He played the guitar in a way that sounded like anyone could do it. Rock Island Line sounded like nothing else on the radio and it inspired a generation of British youths to pick up guitars and begin a journey that would take them to the top of the American charts.

Rock Island Line, the biggest hit of the skiffle craze, spoke directly to a generation of British teenagers who had grown up during post-war rationing. Within 18 months of its release, sales of acoustic guitars in the UK had rocketed from 5,000 to over 250,000 a year.

The song began its life in the 1920s as a jingle in the workshops of the Rock Island Line railroad in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1933, John A Lomax visited Cummins Prison Farm, south of Little Rock, collecting work songs for the Library of Congress. On the day of the recording, a group of eight prisoners, led by Kelly Pace, came up to Lomax’s mic and sang Rock Island Line. Lomax’s driver was the African-American musician who became the celebrated folk singer Lead Belly. He was so impressed that he learned the tune, added verses and made it a staple of his own repertoire.

In the late 1940s, young music fans in the UK began to seek out recordings from the early years of jazz, becoming obsessed with the New Orleans style (known as Trad Jazz) that favoured collective interaction over the prevailing emphasis on soloists. Blowing on their instruments very hard, they found that their lips were numb after half an hour. So as to not lose their audience, they put down their instruments and picked up guitars, a double bass and a washboard.

These ‘breakdown sessions’ were initiated by Ken Colyer, a trumpet player who sought out his heroes in New Orleans. Because he was so familiar with their recordings, he was able to sit in with them, but a white kid playing with black musicians soon drew attention and when he went to renew his visa, he was arrested and held in jail for over two months. Returning to the UK, his brother pulled together a bunch of musicians to form a band that included Chris Barber on trombone, Monty Sunshine on clarinet and, on banjo, Lonnie Donegan. Lonnie was a natural front man, with a voice that sounded American. He stood at the back with the rhythm section during the jazz numbers, but when he came to the front during the breakdown, he grabbed the audience with his renditions of Lead Belly’s most famous songs, Rock Island Line prominent among them. Asked what kind of music they were playing, they replied that it was skiffle.

Now known as Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, they secured an offer to make a record for Decca. When they gathered in the label’s studios on 13 July 1954, it became apparent that the band did not have enough material to fill an album so it was decided that they should record songs from the band’s popular skiffle breakdown. They cut an incendiary version of Rock Island Line as well as another Lead Belly standard, John Henry.

The British record industry was scrambling to find artists who might jump on the rock bandwagon, and someone at Decca remembered Lonnie Donegan. Here was a chap who looked the part - open-necked shirt, acoustic guitar, sounding like an American cowboy, singing about railroads. More importantly, his song had the word ‘rock’ in the title.

In January 1956, Rock Island Line hit the top ten and the skiffle craze was born. Donegan sent a revolutionary message to the youth of Britain: you don’t have to be a trained musician to play this music. When Lonnie toured in late 1956, he took skiffle to the masses. During his six-night stand at the Liverpool Empire, thirteen-year-old George Harrison went every night. His pal, fourteen-year-old Paul McCartney also saw Donegan and promptly asked his dad to buy him a guitar. It is not known if John Lennon saw the show, but just two weeks later he had formed his own skiffle group, The Quarrymen.

Schoolboys in their thousands picked up guitars and formed skiffle groups. The pop charts began to feature other skiffle artists, mostly following Donegan’s Rock Island Line blueprint by recording songs about the American railroad like Freight Train by Chas McDevitt and Nancy Whiskey.

The skiffle craze was short-lived, lasting barely eighteen months, but in that time it inspired a generation of British boys to pick up a guitar and play. It was DIY, self-empowering and set out to challenge the bland chart music of the day. Skiffle provided a nursery for the British invasion of the American charts in the 1960s. We have taken it for granted that British kids always played guitars and wrote their own songs. It was skiffle that put guitars into the hands of the war babies – and all of skiffle’s influence can be traced back to Rock Island Line.


FRI 22:30 Chas & Dave: Last Orders (b01nkdsv)
Documentary which highlights cockney duo Chas & Dave's rich, unsung pedigree in the music world and a career spanning 50 years, almost the entire history of UK pop. They played with everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Gene Vincent, toured with The Beatles, opened for Led Zeppelin at Knebworth - and yet are known mainly just for their cheery singalongs and novelty records about snooker and Spurs.

The film also looks at the pair's place among the great musical commentators on London life - and in particular the influence of music hall on their songs and lyrics.

The film crew followed Chas & Dave on their final tour, having called it a day after the death of Dave's wife, and blends live concert footage with archive backstory, including some astonishing early performances and duets with the likes of Eric Clapton. Among the experts and zealous fans talking about their love of the duo are Pete Doherty, Jools Holland and Phill Jupitus. Narrated by Arthur Smith.


FRI 23:25 What Ever Happened to Rock 'n' Roll? (b063h4lm)
Lauren Laverne hosts an all-star discussion from London's iconic 100 Club, asking if rock 'n' roll is in crisis and what it now means in the 21st century. Can rock 'n' roll still be as dangerous and subversive as the original or has it become more about lifestyle and decoration? Joining Lauren are Savages' lead singer Jehnny Beth, Dr John Cooper Clarke and former Animal Eric Burdon. Featuring original contributions from Noel Gallagher, Dave Grohl, Sleaford Mods and Alabama Shakes. Music from Mercury-winning Young Fathers and Matthew E White.


FRI 00:25 50s Britannia (b01sgbw2)
Rock 'n' Roll Britannia

Long before the Beatles there was British rock 'n' roll. Between 1956 and 1960 British youth created a unique copy of a distant and scarce American original whilst most parents, professional jazz men and even the BBC did their level best to snuff it out.

From its first faltering steps as a facsimile of Bill Haley's swing style to the sophistication of self-penned landmarks such as Shakin' All Over and The Sound of Fury, this is the story of how the likes of Lord Rockingham's XI, Vince Taylor and Cliff Richard and The Shadows laid the foundations for an enduring 50-year culture of rock 'n' roll.

Now well into their seventies, the flame still burns strong in the hearts of the original young ones. Featuring Sir Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Bruce Welch, Cherry Wainer and The Quarrymen.


FRI 01:25 Arena (b08d80fd)
Alone with Chrissie Hynde

Arena spends the summer with supercool self-confessed rock chick, Chrissie Hynde - shopping for clothes in Paris, hanging out with Sandra Bernhard in New York, life in London and a special trip back to her home town of Akron, Ohio.

A thoughtful and intimate portrait of a 'lone, hungry, irritable wolf', featuring a glorious live performance at one of London's newest venues.


FRI 03:00 Rock Island Line: The Song That Made Britain Rock (m000433l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:30 today]




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

... Sings Disney Songs 20:00 FRI (b018jpk4)

50s Britannia 00:25 FRI (b01sgbw2)

A Brief History of Graffiti 01:00 SUN (b067fxfr)

A Very British History 01:45 SAT (m000f3xf)

A Very British History 21:00 WED (m000f39b)

A Very British History 03:00 WED (m000f39b)

Abducted - Elizabeth I's Child Actors 00:30 MON (b0bdvxzn)

Arena 01:25 FRI (b08d80fd)

Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens 23:00 SUN (b0195pt7)

Art of Germany 23:30 MON (b00wlrzx)

Art on the BBC 21:00 SUN (m000fj9q)

Art on the BBC 03:00 SUN (m000fj9q)

Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection 00:30 WED (b09qrbvd)

Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild 20:00 SUN (p00zsrqz)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 MON (m000fj9w)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 TUE (m000fj99)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 WED (m000fj9j)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 THU (m000fj9t)

Britain's Lost Masterpieces 22:00 SUN (b07xjsqj)

Chas & Dave: Last Orders 22:30 FRI (b01nkdsv)

Clive James 22:00 SAT (m000fj94)

Dangerous Earth 19:00 SUN (b0824cw7)

Don McCullin: Looking for England 00:00 THU (m0002dv0)

EastEnders: Back to Ours 23:00 WED (p02hfc5v)

EastEnders: Iconic Episodes 23:25 WED (m000fj9l)

Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage 19:30 MON (b00cp421)

Hidden 21:00 SAT (m000fd3l)

How We Built Britain 23:00 THU (b007r7mf)

Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb 21:00 THU (b08650s6)

Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb 03:00 THU (b08650s6)

Inside the Medieval Mind 00:00 TUE (b009s80l)

Iolo's Snowdonia 19:30 SUN (b09rjs4p)

Jigs and Wigs: The Extreme World of Irish Dancing 01:00 TUE (b06zz7t0)

Jigs and Wigs: The Extreme World of Irish Dancing 01:30 TUE (b070w5kk)

King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons 20:00 TUE (b03816y5)

Mars Uncovered: Ancient God of War 02:00 THU (m0003m0c)

Me, My Selfie and I with Ryan Gander 02:00 TUE (m0003g0r)

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands 20:00 MON (b07lp34l)

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands 02:30 MON (b07lp34l)

Raiders of the Lost Past with Janina Ramirez 02:00 SUN (m0008c5c)

Rams: Principles of Good Design 01:30 MON (m0007tp6)

Rick Stein's Long Weekends 19:00 SAT (b079w1jx)

Rick Stein's Long Weekends 02:45 SAT (b079w1jx)

Rock Island Line: The Song That Made Britain Rock 21:30 FRI (m000433l)

Rock Island Line: The Song That Made Britain Rock 03:00 FRI (m000433l)

Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 21:00 TUE (m000fj9c)

Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 03:00 TUE (m000fj9c)

South Pacific 20:00 SAT (b00kjjnx)

Storyville 22:00 MON (m000flgx)

The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook 21:00 MON (b07pr1b5)

The Beauty of Anatomy 19:30 TUE (b04gbdwt)

The Beauty of Anatomy 19:30 WED (b04gvbdt)

The Pennine Way 19:30 THU (b05sy1ym)

The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story 22:00 TUE (b09vpgr7)

The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story 22:00 WED (b09w3m05)

The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story 22:00 THU (b09w8jp0)

The Salesman 22:45 SAT (m000fj96)

The Silk Road 01:00 THU (p03qb25g)

Timeshift 00:00 SUN (b06b36q3)

Timeshift 23:00 TUE (b0105r8x)

Top of the Pops 00:45 SAT (m000f8x5)

Top of the Pops 01:15 SAT (m000f8x9)

Top of the Pops 19:30 FRI (m000fjbr)

Top of the Pops 21:00 FRI (m000fjbt)

Victorian Sensations 01:30 WED (m0005hhg)

Walt Disney 20:00 THU (b0872yqs)

What Do Artists Do All Day? 02:30 WED (m0005ws0)

What Ever Happened to Rock 'n' Roll? 23:25 FRI (b063h4lm)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (m000fjbp)

World's Busiest Railway 2015 20:00 WED (b0684sg2)