SATURDAY 05 NOVEMBER 2022

SAT 19:00 Expedition Volcano (b09hv9g1)
Series 1

Episode 2

In the heart of Africa, deep in the Congo, are some of the most spectacular volcanoes on Earth. They threaten the lives of more than a million people, in a region already left shattered by decades of violence.

Now, a team of international and local scientists are here to investigate these rarely visited volcanoes to try and predict when they will next erupt, and to examine how the volcanic forces at work here affect every aspect of life.

For the past week, the expedition has focused on Nyiragongo. Now Chris Jackson and his fellow geologists are heading to the nearby volcano Nyamulagira - one of the most active yet least explored volcanoes on the planet. Few have visited this volcano, for a good reason - the forests that blanket its slopes hide a number of armed groups. The team travel on a UN helicopter flight at treetop level to avoid being hit by groundfire, before landing as close to the active crater as they can. They then have only a few hours to gain as much data as possible to help predict future eruptions.

Beyond Nyamulagira lies a spectacular but dangerous volcanic landscape. The expedition will also explore the hidden dangers and natural wonders contained there - from deadly gases lurking under the vast Lake Kivu, to giant craters left over from sudden explosive eruptions.

Meanwhile, Dr Xand van Tulleken travels across the region to discover how the volcanoes influence every aspect of life here. He sees the legacy of violence created by the volcanic mineral riches. He also explores other natural resources that have the potential to break this cycle of violence, best represented by the mountain gorillas that live on the flanks of the volcanoes. And he meets the people most affected by the ongoing battle to wrest control of these natural resources away from criminal gangs and militias - the widows of park rangers killed in the struggle. Their commitment to protect their natural environment represents the best hope for the future of this troubled region.

Meanwhile, the work the scientists have done will enable local people to better manage the risks of living in such a dangerous part of the world.


SAT 20:00 Treasures of Ancient Egypt (p01mv1kj)
A New Dawn

Alastair Sooke concludes the epic story of Egyptian art by looking at how, despite political decline, the final era of the Egyptian Empire saw its art enjoy revival and rebirth. From the colossal statues of Rameses II that proclaimed the pharaoh's power to the final flourishes under Queen Cleopatra, Sooke discovers that the subsequent invasions by foreign rulers, from the Nubians and Alexander the Great to the Romans, produced a new hybrid art full of surprise. He also unearths a seam of astonishing satirical work, produced by ordinary men, that continues to inspire Egypt's graffiti artists today.


SAT 21:00 Wisting (p0d47tzz)
Series 2

Episode 7

New information takes Wisting and Maggie across the Swedish border, and Wisting begins to suspect that Maggie has a secret.


SAT 21:45 Wisting (p0d48l1p)
Series 2

Episode 8

After Line and Sammy's incredibly close shave, Wisting and the team may finally have what they need to catch their man - but they will have to work fast.


SAT 22:30 Timewatch (b0078yy8)
2005-2006

The Gunpowder Plot

Documentary that re-examines the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 - one of the most famous yet least understood events in British history. It shows how the plot was almost England's 9/11, and asks why a group of young Englishmen became so radicalised and so hell-bent on terrorism. Computer graphics recreate what the Houses of Parliament looked like in 1605, and show just how close the plotters came to success.


SAT 23:20 To the Manor Born (b00786xl)
Series 2

The New Farm Manager

Richard offers Ned's services to Audrey in Brabinger's absence but Ned thinks it is all a plot to remove him from his tied cottage so that the new farm manager can move in. Audrey decides to take her revenge.


SAT 23:50 Ever Decreasing Circles (p00c1kkm)
Series 4

Episode 5

Martin is incensed when Howard and Hilda are denied their right to use a public footpath by a local farmer. Martin decides to champion their cause and wonders whether he should sort out the country's footpath situation in general.


SAT 00:20 The Young Ones (p0067tyd)
Series 1

Demolition

Rick, Neil, Mike and Vyvyan learn that the council plans to rip down their home. Vyvyan tries to demolish it himself from the inside and Neil wants to commit suicide.


SAT 00:50 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.


SAT 01:20 Expedition Volcano (b09hv9g1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SAT 02:20 Treasures of Ancient Egypt (p01mv1kj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

SUNDAY 06 NOVEMBER 2022

SUN 19:00 Play School (b06t3mhg)
A chance to see an episode of the classic children's programme, presented by Carol Leader and Lionel Morton. Featuring the story of the Ugly Duckling and the poem of the week by Robert Graves called Henry Was a Worthy King.


SUN 19:25 Grange Hill (b06th2c8)
Series 9

Episode 14

A memorable episode of the children's drama looking at life in a London comprehensive school. Zammo tries to borrow money from Roly at the arcade. Julia and Laura's attempts to attend the all-night party end in disaster. Originally broadcast in 1986, this is the episode that started the Just Say No campaign.


SUN 19:50 Jackanory (m001dzq1)
Looking-Glass House

First instalment of a special seven-part Jackanory series devoted to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures through the Looking Glass. First broadcast in 2001 and read by writer, dramatist and actor Alan Bennett.


SUN 20:00 The Read (m001dzq5)
Series 1

The Day of the Sardine

The Read is a series of four creative performance readings of iconic British novels. Each episode is directed by exciting, emerging talent from BBC Arts’ and Art Council England's successful New Creatives scheme. The Read gives audiences the chance to discover or reconnect with the novels through some outstanding British performances, the best of literature brought to life on screen.

Set in a working-class community in Newcastle upon Tyne at the very beginning of the 1960s, The Day of the Sardine is a powerful novel of disaffection, which charts a young man's uneasy passage into adulthood. Harsh, and at times comic, the story of its protagonist, Arthur Haggerston, takes place against the background of a young workforce absorbed into tedious, repressive employment where the only outlet comes from street violence and gang warfare.

As Arthur reflects on his search for a moral framework within the anarchy of modern society, he speaks for all of us, poetically and passionately, in a way that feels as true today as the period in which the tale is set.


SUN 21:00 imagine... (b0842jbg)
Autumn 2016

The Triumph and Laments of William Kentridge

Alan Yentob joins South African artist William Kentridge as he prepares an epic frieze along the banks of the river Tiber in Rome. Alan visits him in his hometown of Johannesburg, the inspiration for the magical hand-drawn animated films he calls 'drawings for projection'. Brought up under apartheid, Kentridge has witnessed the fragile transition to a multi-racial democracy, and his art continues to reflect South Africa's turbulent times.


SUN 22:05 imagine... (b083s918)
Shorts (2016/17)

The Handmade Films of William Kentridge - Part 1

A look at the work of South African artist William Kentridge who first became well known for making hand-drawn animations featuring a pair of alter egos, set in the urban-industrial landscape of Johannesburg.

His first film in the series is Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris (1989). The work reflects the oppressive world of the Apartheid era and South Africa's painful transition into a multiracial democracy and was created over many months as Kentridge painstakingly filmed and erased the drawings frame by frame.

Introduced by the artist and Alan Yentob.


SUN 22:15 imagine... (b083wh9p)
Shorts (2016/17)

The Handmade Films of William Kentridge - Part 2

A look at the work of South African artist William Kentridge who first became well known for making hand-drawn animations featuring a pair of alter egos, set in the urban-industrial landscape of Johannesburg.

Felix in Exile (1994) reflects the increasing political violence and civil unrest in South Africa as Apartheid came to an end.

Introduced by the artist and Alan Yentob.


SUN 22:25 Screengrabbed Too: BBC Introducing Arts (m001c94k)
Huw Stephens presents an exciting selection of short films from emerging artists and film-makers from across the UK. Topics are fresh, varied and thought-provoking, including a behind-the-scenes look at a zoo closing for the night, an honest account of farming the land, and a powerful love letter from a son to a mother who has cancer. Expect to be moved and challenged by these short dramas, observations and dance, made by a new generation of storytellers.


SUN 23:25 Inside America's Treasure House: The Met (m000znv8)
Series 1

Episode 1

The series begins in spring 2019, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in its pomp – the coffers full, visitor numbers are up and staff preparing to mark, in one year's time, the museum’s 150th anniversary. The museum has long been planning a series of stand-out exhibitions and events. The art press gather for a breakfast in the American Wing sculpture court, surrounded by treasures reflecting the tastes of the philanthropist founders of the Metropolitan. These were new-money industrialists and financiers, who believed that the lives of New York's teeming millions would be improved by their proximity to beauty. That beauty, however, was vested almost exclusively in the European arts and the artefacts of classical civilisations. The museum is aware that the tastes of the Gilded Age aren't for everyone, and a dance display by the House of Gorgeous shows they're awake to the woke.

In his fifth-floor office sits Met president and CEO Dan Weiss, the art historian recently appointed to steer the largest art museum in the Americas out of a period of falling visitor numbers and financial turbulence. Overlooking Central Park, he revels in a painting by Alfred Sisley, a print of which once graced his college digs. Those who built the Met in 1870 wanted an American Louvre, an audacious vision, he says, considering they had no art. The likes of JP Morgan, a previous president, simply spent and lent big, snapping up artefacts all over the world and donating their own collections. Weiss is also spending big for next year's special exhibitions and, with the Met’s director Max Hollein, planning a slew of great events. He's also splashing out on capital projects like the new six-acre glass roof for the European Paintings gallery, at $150m, just one improvement that will make 2020 a landmark year.

The inner workings of the Met are revealed with excursions into various departments, and the warren of labs, workrooms and archives above and deep below the public areas. In the Arms and Armour workshops, they're repairing gauntlets before sending some of their massive collection off to Vienna, and preparing for the arrival from Europe of new old iron and steel for a great show of German armour, The Last Knight.

There's more quiet frenzy in the Costume Institute. The conservators have just recovered from the 2019 Met Gala, the starry night where celebrities parade for the camera and make the donations that fund this department. Staff have just delivered this year’s annual show, Camp, a pink celebration of costume drama that is pulling in the crowds. In the next room, they're amassing black garments for the monster 2020 show currently being crafted by British uber-designer Es Devlin.

The film drills deepest into preparations for a show about British mercantile expansion and its impact on interior design. Assistant curator Dr Wolf Burchard has been spirited from the National Trust to Fifth Avenue, his mission: to tell a 500-year story of enterprise from the Tudor to Victorian eras. The museum's existing British galleries are being remodelled for the occasion, and Burchard and his team must navigate the construction works to create a display of 700 items. They've got a £20m budget and seven months.

Two floors up, colleagues face similar time challenges as they build the keystone exhibition Making the Met. It tells the tale of the museum's 15 decades using objects from every department, and new ones donated by sponsors and benefactors. Outside, Austrian Max Hollein, only a few months in post, leads the drive to make the Met feel more modern, diverse and inclusive. For the first time since the austere Beaux-Arts building opened, niches in the exterior are filled with art - a series of bronzes by Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu. She tells how groundbreaking this initiative is.

The Met is on a roll. We are with the glitterati flocking across the Upper East Side for a private viewing of the British exhibition. The public opening of the new galleries, on 2 March 2020, heralds the start of the 150th year programme. Curator Burchard says how strange it feels to have his galleries packed with thousands.

That very same night, the first victim of Covid-19 is in hospital. Within days, the Met will be the first large institution in the city to lock down. As New York becomes a ghost town, viewers are on the inside watching the museum trying to protect one million exhibits from light damage and moths, wrestling with 20 per cent staff cuts and losses of $150m, while working towards a reopening, sometime in an uncertain future. When that day comes, we witness emotional scenes that underline a truth: that New Yorkers regard the Met as their own. More than just a museum, it's a resource and a refuge.


SUN 00:25 A Very British History (b0bty2g2)
Series 1

The Jews of Leeds

Film-maker Simon Glass explores his family history and tells the story of the Yorkshire Jews in the early 20th century. Thousands of migrants arrived by boat on the east coast of England and lived in a run-down slum area of Leeds known as the Leylands. Simon discovers stories of hardship and anti-Semitism, but also success and progress as many Jews moved out of the Leylands to the more affluent suburbs. He also travels to eastern Europe where he makes a shocking discovery about what happened to his relatives who did not migrate to Britain.


SUN 01:25 Nolan: Australia’s Maverick Artist (m000264q)
Sidney Nolan is unquestionably one of the best-known names in the history of Australian modern art. His images are iconic treasures of the Australian visual language – everyone feels they know Nolan, but that is far from the truth. He was a restless spirit, boundlessly curious, intellectual and mischievous, and his creativity was unrelenting; he was a genius. This film explores and celebrates the artist and the man, going well beyond his early years to his extraordinary international career and all the success and turmoil that came with it.

The prodigious Nolan came from humble working-class beginnings and from a young age made his way straight to the centre of contemporary artistic and intellectual circles in Melbourne, where he both produced some of his most enduring images and also became tightly enmeshed in the complicated and doomed love affair that was to stay with him for the rest of his life. Restless and on fire with the excitement of the international modernist movement, Nolan created the St Kilda, Wimmera, Ned Kelly and the Central Australia series - passionate responses to the world, and the landscape and national mythology of Australia, but more importantly and more deeply, windows into the poetic psyche of the man.

Fuelled by insatiable curiosity, Nolan became a tireless traveller, settling in London, where he found 'his people', the stellar intellectual circle of artists, musicians, writers, collectors and connoisseurs. While living in London, Nolan continued to visit and travel around Australia because, he said simply, 'he was Australian', and then returned to England to paint what had inspired him here and in other parts of the world. He welcomed artistic challenges; he was an entrepreneur and an unselfconscious-self promoter who threw himself into music, theatre and opera design.

The film shows Nolan’s unexamined work in new light, exploring the range of experimental, innovative qualities that marked him as one of the world’s truly great painters in the 20th century - a man ahead of his time, exploring digital manipulation in its early incarnations, experimenting with desiccated carcasses many decades before Damien Hirst, and taking selfies before Instagram was thought of.


SUN 02:25 imagine... (b0842jbg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

MONDAY 07 NOVEMBER 2022

MON 19:00 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw36m)
Series 3

Boston

Armed with his 19th-century Appleton's guidebook to the United States and Canada, Michael Portillo embarks on a 1,100-mile railroad journey from Boston, Massachusetts, across the border to Toronto in the Canadian province of Ontario. Along the way, he encounters revolutionaries and feminists, pilgrims and witches and rides some of the oldest and most breathtaking railroads in the world.

At risk of being uncovered as a Tory spy, Michael joins the Sons of Liberty aboard ship in Boston harbour. Will he help rebels jettison 112 crates of East India Company tea? Michael rides America's first subway and sups oysters in Boston's oldest restaurant. Heading out of the city along the route of one of the earliest railroads in the United States, Michael reaches Lowell, renowned as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. A historic streetcar conveys him to the Boott Cotton Mills, where he discovers a flagrant act of industrial espionage and militancy among the thousands of women and girls who worked there.

Michael's guide sets him on the trail of the second largest organ in the world, located now in Haverhill. He is rewarded with a rousing rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, courtesy of the 19th-century Handel and Haydn Choir.


MON 19:30 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078yvw)
Secrets of the Tomb Builders

Dan visits the magnificent underground tombs in the Valley of the Kings, in search of clues about the unsung heroes of this ancient world - the mysterious community of craftsmen who spent their lives building lavish burial chambers for the pharaohs.

The tombs are wonderful feats of art and engineering and Dan finds a wealth of intriguing evidence about the lives of the supposedly anonymous people who built them. Given rare access to the most complex tomb of all - the 150-room necropolis built for the sons of Rameses II - Dan speculates on the skill of the men who designed and excavated this tomb thousands of years ago.

In the tomb of Thutmosis III, he discovers an unfinished burial chamber, where the intricate process of tomb building was stopped in its tracks, leaving detailed evidence of the techniques of artwork used by these ancient artisans. Across the dry desert hills beyond the Valley of the Kings, Dan visits the village where the tomb-builders lived, explores their homes and reveals their personal lives through unique written records that have survived for thousands of years.

Were the tomb-builders slaves, forced to use their skills to glorify the dead pharaohs? Dan pieces together the truth, and reveals an unexpectedly intimate picture of these ancient artists and craftsmen.


MON 20:00 Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher (b06wj4bw)
Chaos

In the second episode, Joann explores how the Pyramid Age ended in catastrophe. In one of Saqqara's last pyramid complexes, Joann uncovers evidence of famine as the young Egyptian state suffered a worsening climate and political upheaval. With depleted coffers, Egypt was plunged into the dark ages and civil war. With the land fractured into many small states, Joann tells the story of small-town leaders rising through the ranks.

In a little-known tomb in Thebes, Joann uncovers stories of warriors who fought in the bloody battle which eventually would mark the reunification of Egypt. This burial represents the world's first recorded war cemetery and the rise of Thebes. The country was reborn, resuming grand building projects for Egypt's mighty kings and bejewelled queens.

Joann reveals how settlers known as the Hyksos tried to infiltrate the government and take the throne. But their rule was short-lived as they were ousted by southern rulers who laid the groundwork for Egypt's largest empire.


MON 21:00 Egypt's Lost Cities (b011pwms)
It is possible that only one per cent of the wonders of ancient Egypt have been discovered, but now, thanks to a pioneering approach to archaeology, that is about to change.

Dr Sarah Parcak uses satellites to probe beneath the sands, where she has found cities, temples and pyramids. Now, with Dallas Campbell and Liz Bonnin, she heads to Egypt to discover if these magnificent buildings are really there.


MON 22:30 Horizon (b05vn777)
2014-2015

70 Million Animal Mummies: Egypt's Dark Secret

Investigating the use of modern medical technology to scan Egyptian animal mummies from museums across the world. By creating 3D images of their content, experts are discovering the truth about the strange role animals played in ancient Egyptian belief.

This episode of Horizon also meets the scientists working in Egypt who are exploring the ancient underground catacombs where mummies were originally buried to reveal why the ancient Egyptians mummified millions and millions of animals.


MON 23:30 Nature and Us: A History through Art (m0010jn6)
Series 1

Episode 1

In this first episode, art historian James Fox explores the art of the ancient world to reveal the story of our earliest relationships with nature. From the art of prehistoric hunters and the advent of agriculture and our first cities to the arrival the great faiths, including Hinduism and Christianity, James shows how we began to wrestle with our place in nature and tried to control the great forces that shape our world. Along the way, we journey from Arctic Norway to the jungles of Guatemala and the holy city of Varanasi in India.

Beginning with cave paintings of animals and a fascinating 12,000-year-old carving of a reindeer, James shows how we were once much closer to nature. We meet Nils Peder, a contemporary Sami Reindeer Herder in northern Norway. His way of life is still influenced by a belief in nature’s spiritual energy and power. But then as James studies an ancient Egyptian model of cattle, we reach a dramatic turning point in our relationship with nature - the advent of agriculture. At this point, humans collaborated with nature but ultimately took ‘control’. James takes this a step further with the extraordinary lion hunt carvings from the Assyrian palace of Nineveh. He demonstrates how it was at this time that humans began to set out to conquer nature. James then turns his attention to ways in which religion helped us make sense of the great shifts in our relationship with nature. We see the first human personifications of natural forces: the river Ganga in India and the ancient Greek god of the sky, Zeus. And we see how, in Christian art, nature becomes the backdrop for the very human-focused story of the crucifixion.

In this first great phase in human history, James reveals how we moved from caves to farms, to the emergence of the first civilisations and to global faiths. And through it all, he shows how we struggled to control nature and began to move away from it, no longer living as just one part of the natural world.


MON 00:30 A Very British History (b0btrrzm)
Series 1

Ugandan Asians

Food writer Meera Sodha tells the story of the 1972 refugee crisis, when thousands of Asian people arrived in Britain after being expelled from Uganda by dictator Idi Amin. Meera's own family was caught up in the crisis. She meets Ugandan Asians and examines the archives to discover how the refugees received a mixed reception on arrival in Britain.


MON 01:30 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw36m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 02:00 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078yvw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


MON 02:30 Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher (b06wj4bw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

TUESDAY 08 NOVEMBER 2022

TUE 19:00 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw6cx)
Series 3

Boston to Concord, Massachusetts

Michael Portillo's 19th-century Appleton's guidebook leads him to the Parker House Hotel, where in his best pinny, he whisks up a Boston cream pie.

In the fine dome atop Massachusetts General Hospital, where no-one could hear the screaming, Michael discovers the scene of grisly surgery, first made bearable in 1846 by a miraculous new substance. North of Boston, in Salem, Michael is caught up in a witch hunt. He gets a taste of the hysteria which gripped the town in the 17th century and how events were re-interpreted at the time of his guide.

And in Concord, where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired, Michael discovers the home of the celebrated author of the coming of age classic Little Women and hears the story behind the novel.


TUE 19:30 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078yz1)
The Pharaoh Hunter

Dan traces the unexpected twists and mysteries in the life of Howard Carter, the great British archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, and reveals the hidden legacy of Carter's work. Carter rose from humble origins to become the most famous archaeologist in the world, but despite his spectacular success in discovering Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, Carter was never honoured in this country, and received no official recognition from the British.

Dan travels through Egypt, looking for clues to this mystery as he follows the rollercoaster of Carter's career, from his first visit to Egypt as a teenager hired to copy Egyptian art, right up to the fame of his later years. On the way, Dan finds out that Carter played a crucial role in updating the science of archaeology and unearths his original artwork and his fascinating diary.


TUE 20:00 To the Manor Born (b007871c)
Series 2

The Spare Room

Stately sitcom. One of Audrey's old school friends wants to pay a visit, but she is unaware of the drop in status of the former lady of the manor.


TUE 20:30 Ever Decreasing Circles (p00c1kms)
Series 4

Episode 6

After some poor results in an Open University test, Ann decides it would be a good idea to bounce her ideas off someone in future. However, her choice of study partner causes quite a stir.


TUE 21:00 The Young Ones (p007x7p9)
Series 1

Oil

Mike, Neil, Vyvyan and Rick move into their new home. Vyvyan thinks he has found oil in the basement, and Mike quickly takes control of the situation by ordering the others to do the digging.


TUE 21:30 Storyville (m001dztl)
A House Made of Splinters

Tears turn to soap bubbles, and hugs turn to fights, in this award-winning film about an orphanage in eastern Ukraine, filmed before Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In a large ramshackle house near the front line in war-torn eastern Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian women run an orphanage. Children whose homes have been shattered by poverty, violence and alcohol can safely stay there for up to nine months until a decision is made on whether to return them home, foster them or move them to another orphanage.

When one child checks out of the orphanage, a new one always checks in, missing their parents. Children like Kolya, who smokes cigarettes on the sly, steals, and draws tattoos on his arms, but who also looks after his younger siblings before collapsing, crying, into his drunk mother’s arms.


TUE 22:55 This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting (b01173pk)
Four hundred years of art history in 90 minutes? This film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life, including artists, critics and academics, out into the countryside to take a look at how we have depicted our landscape in art, discovering how the genre carried British painting to its highest eminence and won a place in the nation's heart.

From Flemish beginnings in the court of Charles I to the digital thumbstrokes of David Hockney's iPad, the paintings reveal as much about the nation's past as they do the patrons and artists who created them. Famous names sit alongside lesser-known works, covering everything from the refined sensibilities of 18th-century classicism to the abstract forms of the war-torn 20th century with a bit of love, loss, rivalry and rioting thrown in.

Contributions come from a cast as diverse as the works themselves, including film-maker Nic Roeg, historian Dan Snow and novelist Will Self, who offer a refreshingly wide range of perspectives on a genre of art which we have made very much our own.


TUE 00:25 A Very British History (b0bty2w8)
Series 1

Romany Gypsies

"Welcome to Gypsy Land!" Writer Damian Le Bas invites us to join him as he explores a pivotal decade in the lives of Romany people. In the 1960s many were forced to abandon their nomadic way of life for a more settled existence. Focusing on the Home Counties, Damian draws on his own Romany family background and rich film archive to show how Gypsy people faced becoming outlaws in their own land. Regular stopping places for their caravans were drying up and tighter planning laws put further pressure on finding somewhere to live. Local and national government were slow to react to a mounting crisis for a group of citizens with a distinct culture but living on the margins of society. Breakthrough legislation in 1968 finally compelled councils to provide permanent sites for Gypsy people. It gave hope to many, but at the cost of losing a freedom closely tied to their identity.


TUE 01:25 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw6cx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 01:55 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078yz1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 02:25 Horizon (b05vn777)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:30 on Monday]

WEDNESDAY 09 NOVEMBER 2022

WED 19:00 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw85k)
Series 3

Plymouth to Nantucket

Led by his Appleton's guidebook and tracing the footsteps of the Pilgrim Fathers, Michael Portillo heads for Plymouth, the home town of America. He learns how indigenous tribes of Wamponoag people taught the newly arrived settlers to live off the land, the inspiration for one of the biggest holidays in the American calendar.

Michael boards the vibrant Cape Cod Central heritage railway bound for Hyannis, a favourite spot for vacationing presidents. Catching a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, Portillo discovers that ardent Methodists put the island on the map by establishing the country's first religious summer camp in the early 19th century.

Moving on to the island of Nantucket, Michael discovers how hardy New Englanders made vast fortunes from whale oil at a time when Nantucket was the whaling capital of the world. Out at sea, he joins conservationists and whale spotters hoping for a glimpse these magnificent creatures.


WED 19:30 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078z27)
The Rebel Pharaoh

Dan Cruickshank travels the Nile, from magnificent Karnak to the desolate ruins of El Amarna, in search of the truth about Akhenaten, the most radical and mysterious pharaoh ever to rule Egypt, and his beautiful wife Nefertiti.

They were a golden couple, rich and all-powerful, but when Akhenaten had a personal religious conversion, it changed everything. Akhenaten decided to overturn the entire religious belief system of ancient Egypt and convert the whole nation to his own new religion. He swept aside centuries of worship of many gods and declared that there was only one god, the Sun - the 'Aten'. To the ancient Egyptians this was heresy, but as he was the pharaoh, no-one could stop him. He then built a vast new sacred city in the desert, far away from the ancient capital of Thebes, a city dedicated to the Aten, in which he and Nefertiti lived in splendour.

But, as Dan discovers, the royal couple's dreams would soon come to a tragic end. From the grand temples at Karnak, Dan traces the route of the heretic king and queen along the Nile to the site of their splendid new city at El Amarna, in Middle Egypt - now just a poignant, desolate ruin where Akhenaten and Nefertiti lived out their glorious but doomed lives.


WED 20:00 The Man Who Discovered Egypt (b01f13f4)
Documentary about English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, the pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. Ancient Egypt was vandalised by tomb raiders and treasure hunters until this Victorian adventurer took them on. Most people have never heard of him, but this maverick undertook a scientific survey of the pyramids, discovered the oldest portraits in the world, unearthed Egypt's prehistoric roots - and in the process invented modern field archaeology, giving meaning to a whole civilisation.


WED 21:00 Secrets and Deals: How Britain Left the Middle East (p0cx7c7l)
In 1971, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE ceased to be part of Britain’s empire in the Middle East and became fully independent states. This film, a collaboration between BBC News Arabic and BBC News Persian, uncovers the secrets that lay behind the process of decolonisation.


WED 22:00 How Green Was My Valley (m001dzxv)
Series 1

Episode 4

Saddened by Marged's death and the failure of the strike, Ianto and Owen leave for London. Their first letter home contains a cutting from the Times concerning Angharad and Iestyn.


WED 22:50 How Green Was My Valley (m001dzxz)
Series 1

Episode 5

Angharad leaves the valley to marry Iestyn. Ceinwen takes Huw for a moonlit stroll on the mountain side. Mr Lloyd, suspecting the worst, is looking for his daughter.


WED 23:45 How Green Was My Valley (m001dzy3)
Series 1

Episode 6

Angharad, Owen and Ianto have returned to the valley. The mine is closed and unemployment is rife. Having found work with Ifor nearby, Huw witnesses his brother's death.


WED 00:35 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pw85k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 01:05 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078z27)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 01:35 Secrets and Deals: How Britain Left the Middle East (p0cx7c7l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


WED 02:35 The Man Who Discovered Egypt (b01f13f4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

THURSDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2022

THU 19:00 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pwbxc)
Series 3

Providence, Rhode Island, to New London, Connecticut

Led by his 19th-century Appleton's guidebook, Michael Portillo's railway journey continues through New England. On the banks of the Providence River, he discovers a club that traces its roots and culinary traditions back to the 1840s. Michael joins in with one of its legendary open-air 'clambakes'.

In the Rhode Island capital, Providence, Michael is on the trail of an historic company that counts US presidents among its customers. Portillo practises the art of penmanship at AT Cross, America's oldest manufacturer of writing instruments. Travelling west to New London, Connecticut, Michael visits the elite US Coast Guard Academy. Established around the time of his guidebook in 1876, 300 cadets enrol every year and train to defend more than one hundred thousand miles of American coastline.

On the literary trail, Michael visits the childhood summer home of an American dramatist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Eugene O'Neill's deeply personal and ground-breaking work dealt with human frailty and the struggles of modern life and transformed American theatre.


THU 19:30 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078z5p)
Building for Eternity

Dan Cruickshank discovers the ingenious techniques that the ancient Egyptians used to make their pyramids, temples and mummies last forever, driven by their obsession with magic and the afterlife.

The Egyptians believed they could live forever - that death was not necessarily the end. But to enjoy the afterlife depended on preserving the important things from this life - their bodies, possessions and monuments.

Dan explores how the ancient Egyptians pioneered remarkable ways of preparing for eternity. He visits the colossal, indestructible pyramids at Saqqara and Giza as well as the massive stone temple at Dendera, and examines the mummification process that allowed the Egyptians to keep their bodies intact long after death.

The religious belief in the afterlife dominated the lives and deaths of everyone in the land, and meant that hundreds of monuments were built to survive, and can now help us understand their beliefs. Above all, thousands of mummies found all over Egypt bear witness to how they thought, more than any other culture in history, that the preservation of the human body after death played a part in the everlasting survival of the spirit.


THU 20:00 Wild China (b00c5n6g)
Land of the Panda

China's heartland is the centre of a 5,000-year-old civilization and is home to the giant panda, the golden snub-nosed monkey and the golden takin. China faces environmental problems, but the relationship the Chinese have with their environment is deep and extraordinary. We will understand what this means for the future of China.


THU 21:00 The Lady in the Van (b06wcqyr)
1970s Camden Town. Writer Alan Bennett's neighbours include the outspoken and unconventional Miss Shepherd, proudly residing in a van parked on the street. Offering space on his front drive for her vehicle begins a bizarre arrangement that he feels guilty about later exploiting in print. Acclaimed comedy drama from BBC Films based on actual events.


THU 22:40 My Old Lady (b055d9vt)
Inheriting a Paris apartment, broke Mathias 'Jim' Gold arrives from America to find the place comes with strings attached - tenant-for-life Mathilde Girard and her defensive daughter Chloe. Desperate to sell, his options limited, he is forced to get to know these women better - even if they drive this recovering alcoholic to drink. Comical, poignant relationship drama from BBC Films.


THU 00:20 Civilisations on Your Doorstep (b0b1v41g)
From Roman marbles and Egyptian mummies to Renaissance masterpieces and African sculptures, in this special accompanying programme to Civilisations, Mary Beard goes in search of extraordinary works of art from all over the world that can be seen here in Britain.

Investigating the stories behind them - how they were brought here, why and by whom - Mary also asks some deeper questions about what they say about our relationship to the outside world. Starting with the last surviving cabinet of curiosities from the 17th century, Mary then tells the story of how our national collections came together - from their aristocratic beginnings and their subsequent democratisation to a more public 20th-century debate about what these collections represented and who they were for.

Along the way, Mary tackles some of the debates and controversies embedded in the very idea of what 'civilisation' is and asks some fundamental questions - how were our national collections built up? Through purchase or plunder? By collecting the art of the world, were we taking civilisation to others or civilising ourselves? And, most importantly of all, what do our collections tell us about who we are?


THU 01:20 Great American Railroad Journeys (b09pwbxc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


THU 01:50 Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruickshank (b0078z5p)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 02:20 Wild China (b00c5n6g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

FRIDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2022

FRI 19:00 Top of the Pops (m001dzyf)
Tony Dortie presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 4 November 1993 and featuring Aerosmith, The Time Frequency, Mariah Carey, Pauline Henry, The Shamen, Wet Wet Wet and Meat Loaf.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m001dzyp)
Mark Franklin presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 11 November 1993 and featuring Bryan Adams, Captain Hollywood Project, Soul II Soul, Urban Cookie Collective, Janet Jackson, Elton John and Kiki Dee, and Meat Loaf.


FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (b01n7ptd)
Noel Edmonds presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 10 November 1977 and featuring The Tom Robinson Band, Tina Charles, Darts, Kenny Everett and Mike Vickers, Roxy Music, Boney M., Elvis Costello, Ruby Winters, Santana, Abba and Legs & Co.


FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (b09dbvl0)
Mike Read and Bruno Brookes present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 15 November 1984 and featuring Matt Bianco, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Alvin Stardust, Nik Kershaw and Chaka Khan.


FRI 21:00 Petula Clark at the BBC (m001dzyy)
As the legendary Petula Clark prepares to celebrate her ninetieth birthday, we look back on an extraordinary career that has stretched across eight decades and made her one of our most popular, successful and enduring stars.

This collection of Petula’s finest moments at the BBC ranges from 21st-century performances with Jools Holland on Later right back to the 1940s when ‘Britain’s Shirley Temple’ was just a teenager, showcasing her talents on early broadcasts from Alexandra Palace.

The journey from child star to icon of British entertainment includes years as one of the biggest names in television and West End musicals like The Sound of Music, as well as huge chart success, both in the UK and across Europe, especially in France where her star shone almost as brightly as it did here.

Featuring much-loved classics like Downtown, Don’t Sleep in the Subway, This Is My Song and many more, this is a birthday celebration that Petula fans will not want to miss.


FRI 22:00 Petula Clark in Concert (m001dzz3)
Complete Concert

Petula Clark's 1974 concert at the Royal Albert Hall, accompanied by fellow singer Kay Garner and vocal duo Sue and Sunny.


FRI 23:30 The Sound of Petula (b01pvc6y)
Series 1

Your Kind of Music

Petula Clark presents and stars in her own show from 1973, with backing singers and dancers. Petula sings songs requested by the viewers.


FRI 00:00 Singer-Songwriters at the BBC (b015j8g7)
Series 2

Episode 2

The celebration of the singing songwriting troubadours of the 1960s and 70s continues with a further trawl through the BBC archives for timeless and classic performances.

Tom Paxton starts proceedings with a rare black and white performance of his classic song The Last Thing on My Mind filmed in 1964. Also making an appearance is the 'fifth Beatle', Harry Nilsson, with a performance from his BBC concert in 1972. Other gems from this year include Canadian Gordon Lightfoot, songwriting duo Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan as Stealers Wheel and the most popular acoustic act of the 1970s, the gentle, bespectacled John Denver.

From the Basil Brush Show in 1973, Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance make a surprise appearance. Californian Beach Boy Bruce Johnston offers a sublime version of Disney Girls, and Joan Armatrading injects a bit of brio on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Rounding it all off is six-time Grammy winner Billy Joel.


FRI 01:00 Top of the Pops (m001dzyf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


FRI 01:30 Top of the Pops (m001dzyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


FRI 02:00 Top of the Pops (b01n7ptd)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


FRI 02:30 Top of the Pops (b09dbvl0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]