SATURDAY 21 OCTOBER 2023

SAT 19:00 Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall (b08jns7w)
Series 1

Episode 1

Adventurer and naturalist Steve Backshall sets out to explore one of the wildest rivers in the world, the mighty Baliem River in the island of New Guinea, just north of Australia. He is on a mission to discover the ancient tribes that live along its banks, explore unknown caves and meet the dangerous animals lurking in the river and surrounding jungle. But the only way to discover these hidden worlds is to travel the river from source to sea - a feat that has never been achieved before.

In this first episode, Steve starts his journey at Lake Habema, the body of water where the Baliem River begins its life. Embarking on a perilous expedition, Steve encounters some of the most extreme white-water rapids seen anywhere on the planet.

Exploring the land alongside the river, Steve uncovers spectacular caves that have never been explored before. He also encounters some of the animals that are unique to this part of the island.

Reaching the Baliem Grand Valley, Steve stays in a Dani village for the night, meeting members of this ancient tribe and sleeping next to the mummified remains of a 200-year-old Dani warrior.


SAT 20:00 The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver (b06jcxg7)
Episode 2

In episode two, we discover the golden age of the La Tene Celtic warrior and reveal how their world extended as far as central Turkey. But by the middle of the first century BC, the Celts were under threat from an expanding Roman Empire, and the Gallic warrior Vercingetorix would challenge Julius Caesar in an epic battle that would shape the future of Europe.


SAT 21:00 Dark Hearts (p0ggjys9)
Series 1

Mosul

Iraq, October 2016. As the war against Isis rages, Martin, the experienced commander of an elite French commando group, is preparing to hand over to his deputy before returning home. His unit is made up of explosives specialist Spit, medic Rimbaud, drone specialist Paco and the latest recruit, Sab, a sniper. Just before Martin heads home, the group captures Zaid, a notorious French jihadist who agrees to cooperate with information if they can rescue his daughter Salwa and grandson Yanis from the fighting.


SAT 22:05 Dark Hearts (p0ggjzyr)
Series 1

Hisba

The day after the launch of the battle of Mosul, commando team 45 returns to the sewers to try to locate Fares. Adele sets out to find Salwa, with the help of Kurdish intelligence.


SAT 22:55 The Hollow Crown (p00s91qj)
Series 1

Henry IV - Part 2

In the aftermath of the Battle of Shrewsbury, Northumberland learns of the death of his son. The Lord Chief Justice attempts on behalf of the increasingly frail king to separate Falstaff from Prince Hal. The rebels continue to plot insurrection. Falstaff is sent to recruit soldiers and takes his leave of his mistress, Doll Tearsheet. The rebel forces are overcome. This brings comfort to the dying king, who is finally reconciled to his son. Falstaff rushes to Hal's coronation with expectations of high office.


SAT 00:50 A Timewatch Guide (b06zdll0)
Series 2

Queen Elizabeth I

Vanessa Collingridge examines the life of Elizabeth Tudor, with particular interest in how documentary television and the BBC has examined her legacy and interrogated her reign. Using Timewatch and other BBC archive stretching back over 60 years, Vanessa looks at her upbringing, her conflicts with her enemies including Mary, Queen of Scots, and her greatest victory against the Spanish Armada. The programme seeks to understand how Elizabeth I created a legacy that we still live with today, and examines how that legacy has changed over the centuries.


SAT 01:50 Yes, Minister (b007845r)
Series 2

The Greasy Pole

Sitcom about a British government minister and the advisers who surround him. Jim Hacker finds himself in the middle of a row over the British Chemical Corporation.


SAT 02:20 Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (b007884y)
Series 2

Father's Class

Frank and Betty try to get some practice at looking after children by taking Judy and Alison for a day out at the zoo. And Frank attends a maternity class - without Betty. He finishes the day off with a rather dangerous rollerskating routine.


SAT 02:55 Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall (b08jns7w)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]

SUNDAY 22 OCTOBER 2023

SUN 19:00 Henry V from Shakespeare’s Globe (m001rrz7)
Shakespeare’s masterpiece about the turbulence of life and war in the 15th century. Filmed on the stage of one of London’s most famous landmarks, it tells the violent, patriotic yet romantic story of Henry’s campaign to recapture the French throne as he leads his outnumbered troops to victory at the Battle of Agincourt.

Henry V, with its famous ‘O for a muse of fire’ opening, celebrates the power of language to summon into life vivid characters caught up in the horrors of war, motivated by an ambitious and charismatic king.
Much loved for his performance as Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Jamie Parker returns to Hal’s journey as Henry V. Directed in 2012 by Shakespeare’s Globe’s former artistic director Dominic Dromgoole.


SUN 21:45 Hugh Quarshie Remembers... Othello (m001rrzf)
Hugh Quarshie looks back on his highly praised interpretation of Othello in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2015 production, directed by Iqbal Khan. He considers the extra responsibility a black actor must take on with a role that for centuries was played only by white performers wearing make-up. He recalls how he made the decision to join the cast after years of turning the play down and examines the frequently asked question ‘Is Othello a racist play?’, drawing on his experiences playing the Moor of Venice for his own conclusion.


SUN 22:00 Culture in Quarantine: Shakespeare (p089zj52)
Othello

Othello is the greatest general of his age. But he is also an outsider whose victories have created enemies of his own. As they plot in the shadows, Othello realises too late that the greatest danger lies not in the hatred of others, but his own fragile and destructive pride.

With Hugh Quarshie as Othello and Joanna Vanderham as Desdemona, Iqbal Khan’s groundbreaking 2015 production was the first by the Royal Shakespeare Company to cast a black actor, Lucian Msamati, as Iago.


SUN 01:00 The Making of Hamlet (m001rrzt)
A revealing location documentary following actor-director Kenneth Branagh and a distinguished cast and crew as they film the first complete text cinema version of Shakespeare's tragedy.


SUN 01:40 Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here (b01pz9d6)
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary periods in British history: the Industrial Revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever.

He traces the unprecedented explosion of new ideas and technological inventions that transformed Britain's agricultural society into an increasingly industrial and urbanised one. The documentary explores two fascinating questions - why did the industrial revolution happen when it did, and why did it happen in Britain?

Professor Black discusses the reasons behind this transformation - from Britain's coal reserves, which gave it a seemingly inexhaustible source of power, to the ascendancy of political liberalism, with engineers and industrialists able to meet and share ideas and inventions. He explains the influence that geniuses like Josiah Wedgewood had on the consumer revolution and travels to Antigua to examine the impact Britain's empire had on this extraordinary period of growth.


SUN 02:40 The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver (b06jcxg7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 on Saturday]

MONDAY 23 OCTOBER 2023

MON 19:00 Africa (b01qmbqn)
The Future

David Attenborough comes face to face with a baby rhino and asks what the future holds for this little one. He meets the local people who are standing side by side with the wildlife at this pivotal moment in their history.

We discover what it takes to save a species, hold back a desert and even resurrect an entire wilderness - revealing what the world was like before modern man.


MON 20:00 Simon Schama's Power of Art (p00b6ccz)
Rembrandt

Why did one of the world's greatest artists end up cutting up his own masterpiece, The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis? Simon Schama tells the story of the rise and fall of Rembrandt van Rijn in glittering 17th-century Amsterdam.


MON 21:00 Art That Made Us (p0bvgvsx)
Series 1

Lights in the Darkness

This episode immerses us in the turbulent era that followed the Roman occupation of Britain. Once known as the ‘dark’ ages, in reality it’s a time of glittering art and extraordinary cultural fusions.

This alternative history of the British Isles, told through art, brings together encounters between contemporary artists and ancient art, and interviews with experts and curators, to trace how Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse peoples fought for supremacy, leaving behind mysterious fragments of art that still haunt our landscapes and imagination.

Sculptor Antony Gormley meets Spong Man, a unique clay figure that once sat on a 5th-century funerary urn, a mysterious glimpse into the mindset of early Anglo-Saxon settlers. Meanwhile, actor Michael Sheen performs the 7th-century Welsh poem of resistance against the Anglo-Saxons, Y Gododdin, and Scottish artists Dalziel & Scullion wonder at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (c.500-800 AD), believed to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom.

Like the stones, the gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard fuse pagan and Christian imagery, and at Stoke’s Potteries Museum artist Cornelia Parker investigates why they were found so broken and twisted. Spreading alongside such Christian symbols was a powerful new language, English, used to gloss over the Latin in the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels explored by the Rev Richard Coles. Maria Dahvana Headley analyses how English was used in the epic poem Beowulf and tells us how she has updated the work with a hip-hop feminist translation.

The Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi reveals a new sense of the Isles’ place in the wider world, and is examined by map artist David McCandless and British Library curator Claire Breay. Graphic novelist Woodrow Phoenix explores how the Anglo-Saxon age came to a dramatic end in 1066 by taking a fresh look at the embroidered propaganda of the Norman conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry.


MON 22:00 When Ireland Was Divided: Border Country (m0003n65)
Since the border between the UK and Ireland was created in 1922, film crews and journalists have descended there to try and make sense of its absurdities and contradictions – as well as the turmoil it can cause.

Border Country: When Ireland Was Divided brings 100 years of archival footage together with the stories of people whose lives have been affected by this crucial dividing line.


MON 23:00 Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost Middleland (b0404r3t)
Episode 1

For historian and MP Rory Stewart, the building of Hadrian's Wall was the single most important event in Britain's history. Meeting experts and local people, and drawing on memories from his life in Iraq and Afghanistan, he explores the impact of Rome's occupation and departure, and tells the story of how the powerful new Kingdom of Northumbria was born in Britain's lost Middleland.


MON 00:00 The Stuarts (b03vhjm8)
A Family at War

The final, dramatic act of the Stuart century saw the Stuarts fatally divided by religion: brother versus brother, and two daughters supporting the overthrow of their father. After Charles II's brother, the Catholic James VII and II, was deposed by protestant William of Orange in 1688, Britain became a constitutional monarchy.

However, the so-called 1688 'Glorious Revolution' came at a price, as Scotland lost her sovereignty and became part of Great Britain in 1707, whilst Ireland had been reduced from a kingdom to a colony. The politics of resentment has continued to trouble Ireland until the present day.


MON 01:00 Africa (b01qmbqn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 02:00 Simon Schama's Power of Art (p00b6ccz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


MON 03:00 Art That Made Us (p0bvgvsx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

TUESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2023

TUE 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vlh5)
Series 12

Oxford to Abingdon

Michael Portillo strikes out on another series of railway journeys, this time through Britain between the world wars, armed with his 1930s Bradshaw’s guide.

He begins with a tour of the Home Counties and beyond, starting in the city of dreaming spires, Oxford, where in 1921 women were awarded degrees for the first time. At Somerville College, Michael finds out about a pioneering crystallographer, Dorothy Hodgkin, the only British woman to win a Nobel prize for chemistry.

Soaking up the glorious sights of the city, Michael is tempted by a fashion trend that reached its height during the interwar period: Oxford bags. At Walters & Co, founded in 1925, he finds just the ticket.

At Garsington Manor, on the outskirts of the city, Michael discovers the risqué activities of a social set centred on the house's owner, Lady Ottoline Morrell, and famous artists and writers of the Bloomsbury Group. Tales of bohemian behaviour, nude frolicking and revelry in the beautiful manorial gardens turned heads as Britain buckled down in the face of impending war with Germany.

Next stop is Culham, en route for Abingdon, where from 1929 the iconic British sports car, the MG, was built. Michael hears about the origins of one of the nation’s best-loved marques and joins the proud owner of a 1938 MG VA for a spin.


TUE 19:30 Climbing Great Buildings (b00ty5r3)
Coventry Cathedral

Dr Jonathan Foyle, architectural historian and novice climber, scales Britain's most iconic structures, from the Normans to the present day, to reveal the buildings' secrets and tell the story of how our architecture and construction have developed over 1,000 years.

The next step of Jonathan Foyle's journey takes him to Coventry Cathedral. Built in 1955 after the original cathedral was bombed in the war, this modernist masterpiece came to symbolise the hope and rebirth of a nation.

Jonathan, aided by top climber Lucy Creamer, abseils 295 feet between the ruins of the old and new cathedrals to explore how Basil Spence's experiences fighting on the beaches of Normandy shaped his design for the cathedral. On his climbs throughout the building, Jonathan scales the cathedral's immense etched window that utilised the most cutting-edge techniques in its creation and reveals why it's called the west window when it sits in the south of the building. He discovers a world-record-breaking 74-foot-high tapestry that weighs nearly three quarters of a ton and incorporates 1,000 different shades of wool, and reveals how a trip to the dentist defined one of Coventry's most striking features.


TUE 20:00 Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (b0078897)
Series 2

The Baby Arrives

After a few false alarms, the great day has arrived and Betty and Frank's baby is due. Betty wakes during the night and Frank must follow his 'routine' to get her to hospital on time. Frank is present at the birth and encourages Betty as only he can!


TUE 20:30 Yes, Minister (b00784dk)
Series 2

The Devil You Know

Classic political sitcom. The minister is upset by rumours of a cabinet reshuffle and decides to take drastic action to keep his post.


TUE 21:00 Lucy Worsley Investigates (p0bvhk3w)
Series 1

The Witch Hunts

We all think we know what we mean by a witch, but behind the clichés of pointy hats and broomsticks lies a terrifying history that’s been largely forgotten. Four hundred years ago, thousands of ordinary people, the vast majority of them women, were hunted down, tortured and killed in witch hunts across Scotland and England. Lucy Worsley investigates what lay behind these horrifying events.

She begins her investigation in North Berwick, a seaside town not far from Edinburgh, where the witch hunting craze began. The story goes that, in 1590, a coven of witches gathered here to cast a spell to try to kill the King of Scotland, James VI. Using an account from the time called Newes from Scotland and other first-hand sources, Lucy uncovers a web of political intrigue that led to a woman called Agnes Sampson, a faith healer and midwife, being investigated. She was accused of witchcraft and interrogated at Holyrood Castle by King James himself before being tortured and executed.

Agnes was caught in a perfect storm: hardline Protestant reformers wanting to make Scotland devout, a king out to prove himself a righteous leader, and a new ideology which claimed the Devil was actively recruiting women as witches. Under torture, Agnes gave the names of her supposed accomplices, some 59 other innocent people, resulting in the first successful large-scale witch hunt in Scotland. Its brutal success made it the model for trials rolled out across Scotland and England for the next hundred years.


TUE 22:00 The Hidden Children of Ruinerwold Farm (p0g1dm04)
Series 1

Episode 1

After escaping the family farm, 24-year-old Israel is reunited with his older brothers, Shin and Edino, and sister Mar Jan. Together they recount their experiences growing up.


TUE 22:50 The Hidden Children of Ruinerwold Farm (p0g1dm2v)
Series 1

Episode 2

Allegations of physical and sexual abuse are discussed, and three of the older children decide to visit their father, who is being held in a secure hospital, following a stroke.


TUE 23:35 imagine... (m000z9bj)
2021

Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up

Alan Yentob explores the remarkable life and work of the trailblazing Anglo-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo, whose Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other has become a global phenomenon in recent years. With great wit and wisdom, Evaristo lays bare her unique approach to creativity across the decades as her latest book, an inspirational non-fiction work called Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, is published.


TUE 00:45 imagine... (b062mp6k)
Summer 2015

Toni Morrison Remembers

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is America's first lady of literature. Her books encompass black American history but live and breathe in the present, rich in vivid characters, haunted by ghosts. Born poor in Ohio in 1931, she now lives in New York.

In a film first shown in 2015, she tells Alan Yentob how her father hated whites so much he wouldn't let them in the house. Her masterpiece, Beloved, shows the horrors of slavery perhaps better than any other artwork. She talks as she writes - with warmth and wit. Contributors include Angela Davis (whose biography she edited) and singer Jessye Norman.


TUE 01:50 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vlh5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 02:20 Climbing Great Buildings (b00ty5r3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 02:50 Lucy Worsley Investigates (p0bvhk3w)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

WEDNESDAY 25 OCTOBER 2023

WED 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vljb)
Series 12

Stoke Mandeville to Beaconsfield

Michael Portillo continues his travels through England's Home Counties at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, where he discovers the legacy of a German Jewish doctor who fled the Nazis to settle in Britain. Dr Ludwig Guttman’s pioneering treatment for spinal injuries sustained on the battlefields of World War II eventually led to what we know today as the Paralympics. European wheelchair basketball silver medallist Ella Beaumont invites Michael to train with her in a wheelchair.

Michael heads through the Chiltern Hills to Princes Risborough, where an infamous motor sports event took place until it was banned in 1925. Michael joins local petrolheads who have recently revived the Kop Hill climb, now with 21st-century health and safety. Michael braves the ascent in a side car.

In one of the most densely wooded areas of England, Michael discovers a beautiful factory that has produced design classics since its foundation in 1920. The grandson of the company’s Italian founder tells Michael about the origins and success of the Ercol brand, and Michael finds out how the furniture is crafted today.

Beaconsfield beckons to Michael’s delight, as he revisits his much-loved childhood haunt, Bekonscot Model Village. With this miniature world frozen in time in the 1930s, he could wish for no better guide than his 1936 Bradshaw’s.


WED 19:30 Climbing Great Buildings (b00v2rld)
Lloyd's Building

Dr Jonathan Foyle, architectural historian and novice climber, scales Britain's most iconic structures, from the Normans to the present day, to reveal the buildings' secrets and tell the story of British architecture and construction's development over the last 1,000 years.

Jonathan's journey takes him to the Lloyd's Building in the heart of the City of London. Built between 1978 and 1986, it is one of the finest examples of high-tech architecture in Britain and one of the great icons of London.

Aided by top climber Lucy Creamer, Jonathan abseils over 300 feet to reveal how this ultra-modern building was inspired by a Gothic castle. He scales the iconic stainless steel exterior to reveal why it is known as the Inside-Out building, and zip-lines across a sheer drop to investigate the building's humble origins as a coffee shop. He also meets Lord Rogers, one of the greatest architects of his generation and the man behind the audacious building.


WED 20:00 Australia: Earth's Magical Kingdom (m000388w)
Series 1

Land

Asked to imagine Australia’s wilderness many people immediately picture its arid outback, but its landscapes are in fact surprisingly varied. Traveling from the peaks of the aptly-named Snowy Mountains - touched by Antarctic winds - to tropical Queensland we discover how animals have learned to thrive across the continent’s harsh and beautiful extremes.

We meet an echidna, a curious creature related to the only other monotreme on the planet, the platypus, that has the rare ability to lower its body temperature to endure icy winters. The Dryandra Woodlands south of Perth provide the last stronghold for a native marsupial that once ranged all across Australia. The charming numbat, now reduced to less than a thousand individuals in the wild, survives on a diet of termites on the forest floor.

Elsewhere, where animals have been able to remain in their forest habitat, tree kangaroos can be found climbing along branches in the forest canopy alongside palm cockatoos, whose intelligence is comparable to that of dolphins. The male palm cockatoo, or 'palmie', breaks off sticks and uses them to beat out rhythmic messages to his partner. Bird intelligence is taken to even greater heights, however, by the black kite. Gathering burning sticks and embers from bush fires, it drops them into dry grass to spread a curtain of flame that flushes out insects and small prey. Only in Australia have these remarkable phenomena been witnessed.


WED 21:00 The Magic of Mushrooms (b041m6fh)
Professor Richard Fortey delves into the fascinating and normally hidden kingdom of fungi. From their spectacular birth, through their secretive underground life to their final explosive death, Richard reveals a remarkable world that few of us understand or even realise exists - yet all life on earth depends on it.

In a specially built mushroom lab, with the help of mycologist Dr Patrick Hickey and some state-of-the-art technology, Richard brings to life the secret world of mushrooms as never seen before and reveals the spectacular abilities of fungi to break down waste and sustain new plant life, keeping our planet alive.

Beyond the lab, Richard travels across Britain and beyond to show us the biggest, fastest and most deadly organisms on the planet - all of them fungi. He reveals their almost magical powers that have world-changing potential - opening up new frontiers in science, medicine and technology.


WED 22:00 Hamish Macbeth (p047c1qy)
Series 1

The Great Lochdubh Salt Robbery

Hamish outwits his superiors when he makes a connection between a salt theft from the grocery store, and a missing wife-abuser.


WED 22:50 Hamish Macbeth (p047c2rm)
Series 1

A Pillar of the Community

Hamish investigates when Vicky Jeffreys, an unpopular, meddling newcomer to the town, receives anonymous threats after taking over the planning for Lochdubh Day.


WED 23:40 Arena (p00lfrwh)
Wisconsin Death Trip

Inspired by the book of the same name, film-maker James Marsh relays a tale of tragedy, murder and mayhem that erupted behind the respectable facade Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the 19th century.


WED 00:55 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vljb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 01:25 Climbing Great Buildings (b00v2rld)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 01:55 When Ireland Was Divided: Border Country (m0003n65)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Monday]


WED 02:55 Australia: Earth's Magical Kingdom (m000388w)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

THURSDAY 26 OCTOBER 2023

THU 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vlmh)
Series 12

West Ruislip to Windsor

Michael Portillo heads for leafy Hatch End, where he investigates an illustrator whose work was so popular in the 1920s and 30s that his name entered the English dictionary. William Heath Robinson’s great-nephew talks Michael through some of the mad contraptions the artist used to satirise technology.

Michael’s next stop is Slough, where after World War I, three businessmen established a world first: an out-of-town trading estate with rail connections, power, water and premises. Today, 350 businesses operate from there, and its success has been replicated across the world. Michael meets one long-standing customer, Mars, who have been manufacturing their chocolate bars in Slough since 1932.

Close by, in Stoke Poges, Michael visits a very different 1930s landmark, a unique and beautiful memorial garden comprising woodlands, rockeries and fountains. The Head Gardener enlists Michael’s help to plant a yew tree.

From Slough, Michael makes tracks along the short branch line, which serves two towns, Windsor and Eton Central. At Windsor, Michael surveys the great walls of the castle, chief residence of the British monarch and the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. He looks back at the tumultuous events within those walls, when in 1936, King Edward VIII renounced the throne to marry an American divorcee.


THU 19:30 Climbing Great Buildings (b00v2rp7)
Imperial War Museum

Dr Jonathan Foyle, architectural historian and novice climber, scales Britain's most iconic structures, from the Normans to the present day, to reveal the buildings' secrets and tell the story of British architecture and construction's development over the last 1,000 years.

The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, built from 2000 and designed by Daniel Libeskind, is an example of a new wave of architectural design that is both dramatic and disturbing, a building that plays with the senses and provokes wonder.

In his final climb of the series, Jonathan, aided by top climber Lucy Creamer, scales over 50 metres up the building to reveal how the museum is designed to reflect war itself. He scales the huge air shard to investigate how the building deliberately disorientates visitors, he finds himself part of the exhibition when he abseils down inside the water shard, and he explores the technological advances that allowed the building, with its 80,000 square feet of aluminium, to be constructed in just two years.


THU 20:00 Julius Caesar (m001rrz0)
Rome, 44 BC. Caesar’s power has grown so great that even his allies in the senate plot his downfall. Classic Hollywood adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play.


THU 22:00 The Shining (m000l4ml)
When writer Jack Torrance, who has a history of alcoholism and child abuse, takes a job as winter caretaker at a hotel high in the Rocky Mountains, the accumulated power of evil deeds committed at the hotel begins to drive him mad. Now there may be no escape for his wife and son in this story of madness, memory and family violence.


THU 23:55 The Magic of Mushrooms (b041m6fh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Wednesday]


THU 00:55 Great British Railway Journeys (m000vlmh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


THU 01:25 Climbing Great Buildings (b00v2rp7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 01:55 imagine... (m000z9bj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:35 on Tuesday]

FRIDAY 27 OCTOBER 2023

FRI 19:00 Top of the Pops (m001rrzj)
Mark Goodier presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 20 April 1995 and featuring Pato Banton with Ranking Roger, Corona, Portishead, M.C. Sar & The Real Mccoy, Bryan Adams, Wet Wet Wet, Björk, Deuce, Take That, Love City Groove.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m001rrzv)
Chris Evans presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 27 April and featuring MN8, Let Loose, Love City Groove, Oasis, Boyzone, Tina Arena, The Wildhearts, Take That and Weezer.


FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (b0btpkyg)
Janice Long presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 30 October 1986. Featuring Mel and Kim, Berlin, Catherine Stock, Gwen Guthrie, Bon Jovi, Kim Wilde, Nick Berry and Status Quo.


FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (b01nzcc9)
27/10/77

David 'Kid' Jensen looks at the weekly pop chart from 1977 and introduces Slade, Mary Mason, Darts, Boney M, the Tom Robinson Band, Smokey Robinson, Rod Stewart, Abba, Baccara and a Legs & Co dance sequence.


FRI 21:00 Weller at the BBC (b01nj61v)
Compilation of performances from the BBC archive spanning 35 years of Paul Weller, from the Jam to the Style Council to his solo career.

From the heady days of mod-punk trio the Jam there's In The City on TOTP, The Eton Rifles on teen pop culture show Something Else and more, up to their final single Beat Surrender.

Jazz-funk-soul collective the Style Council take over with first single Speak Like a Child on Sight & Sound and a storming Walls Come Tumbling Down on the Whistle Test.

Weller's persistently successful solo career is chronicled on Later with Jools Holland - where he's the most frequently featured artist in the show's history - with Sunflower to the Attic (from 2012's Sonik Kicks album), plus an acoustic rendition of the Jam classic That's Entertainment with Noel Gallagher.

Amongst other treats are a rarely-seen performance from the Electric Proms of Etta James's Don't Go to Strangers, where the changingman is joined onstage at the Roundhouse by Amy Winehouse.


FRI 22:00 Paul Weller: Live at the Barbican (m000x9rb)
Paul Weller joins forces with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and multi-talented arranger and conductor Jules Buckley for a special one-off concert of his music.

It features songs drawn from Paul’s long career – with classics from his early days fronting The Jam through the 80s with The Style Council – and majoring on his four decades as a solo artist, including material from his most recent album.

Presented by Edith Bowman and filmed at London’s Barbican Centre, the concert also includes performances of some of Paul’s best-loved songs by three very special guests - Boy George, James Morrison and Celeste. With behind-the-scenes footage and specially shot interviews, this is Paul Weller’s music as never heard before.


FRI 23:30 BBC Four Sessions (b00fh55j)
Paul Weller

In an exclusive BBC4 session filmed at BBC Television Centre, Paul Weller performs numbers from his album 22 Dreams, solo hits including From the Floorboards Up and Peacock Suit, and a couple of classics from The Jam's back catalogue.

Weller performs with his regular five-piece band and is joined on some numbers by the Wired Strings and a brass section. He also has special guests, including Oasis guitarist Gem Archer on Echoes Round the Sun, fiddle player Eliza Carthy on Wild Wood and Where'er You Go and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon on Black River.


FRI 00:30 Arena (m001rs04)
Dire Straits

Arena cameras were on hand to film the return of Dire Straits from their triumphant 1980 Brothers in Arms world tour. The film features a superb concert they played at The Rainbow, and band members talk about their music and the pressures and the consequences of success.


FRI 01:30 Top of the Pops (b0btpkyg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


FRI 02:00 Top of the Pops (b01nzcc9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


FRI 02:35 Weller at the BBC (b01nj61v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]