SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER 2024

SAT 19:00 The Flying Gardener (b007jg8n)
Series 1 Shorts

Lake District

Chris Beardshaw travels around by helicopter on a mission to find Britain's most inspirational gardens. Arriving in the Lake District, Chris dons his waders and goes in search of the ultimate water feature.


SAT 19:20 All Creatures Great and Small (p031d2mw)
Series 1

It Takes All Kinds...

James seems to be falling into the routine of being a country vet, but the peace is shattered when Siegfried employs a secretary and James meets Helen Alderson.


SAT 20:10 All Creatures Great and Small (p031d2n0)
Series 1

Calf Love

Siegfried wins a major victory and Tristan has to deal with pigs in more ways than one. James discovers that he has a rival.


SAT 21:00 Those Who Kill (m0023z7k)
Justice

Episode 1

When a young gang member, Patrick, is released after serving a short stint in prison, he is brutally shot down. Louise Bergstein, who has just started a new job as a teacher in criminal profiling, takes the case alongside her professional, and now romantic, partner Frederik Havgaard. Meanwhile, former gang member Kim Jensen, who is now a family man in Sweden, gets dragged back into his criminal past in Denmark.

In Danish with English subtitles.


SAT 21:45 Those Who Kill (m0023z7m)
Justice

Episode 2

Forensic evidence concludes that Patrick and Pernille were killed by the same person. As Louise and Frederik investigate the link between the two victims, an old gang-related double murder comes to the surface. With a potential quadruple murderer on the loose, Louise entrusts her teaching job to her Swedish colleague and mentor Gunnar and commits herself to the case.

In Danish with English subtitles.


SAT 22:30 Wogan (m0024hny)
Christopher Timothy, Steven Berkoff, Duncan Norvelle, Tom T Hall, Frankie Goes to Hollywood

First broadcast in 1986. Terry Wogan is joined by guests Christopher Timothy, Steven Berkoff, Duncan Norvelle, Tom T Hall and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.


SAT 23:10 Porridge (b007874b)
Series 2

Heartbreak Hotel

Classic comedy series about the inmates of HM Slade Prison. The problems of an anxious father and a pining first offender are solved in the prison waiting room.


SAT 23:40 Hancock's Half Hour (p032kj0j)
The Photographer

Hancock decides to invest in a new camera - which Sid sees as the perfect opportunity to make some money.


SAT 00:10 All Creatures Great and Small (p031d2mw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:20 today]


SAT 01:00 All Creatures Great and Small (p031d2n0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:10 today]


SAT 01:50 The Flying Gardener (b007jg8n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SAT 01:10 Nature and Us: A History through Art (m0010rkc)
Series 1

Episode 2

James Fox uses art to explore how humans began to try to understand nature for the very first time. From the Song dynasty in China and the Islamic world, through to the Scientific Revolution and the advent of the industrial era, James shows the very different ways in which humans came to both appreciate and understand nature, whilst at the very same time beginning to dominate and control it.

With the advent of landscape painting in medieval China, James discovers that these artworks reflect an attitude of harmony and balance with nature that came from a philosophical belief system known as Daoism. We then meet a Zen Buddhist monk Shunmyo Masuno, who is also an internationally renowned garden designer, and learn that Zen gardens are the means to contemplate the unknowable mysteries of nature. James’s story then moves from East Asia to the cultures of the Islamic world. He examines a brightly coloured chameleon painted by Ustad Mansur in 1612 for the Mughal emperor Jahangir - a combination of artistic flair and close observation in which we see the beauty of the natural world closer than ever before.

James also explores the story of one of the first European botanical artists, an extraordinary woman called Maria Sibylla Merian. Her 1705 collection of images from her travels in Suriname was a milestone in natural history. We encounter Nirupa Rao, a contemporary Indian botanical artist who is breathing new life into this traditional art form, working in the jungles of the Western Ghats. From the analytical to the romantic, James’s story then moves to the wild and awesome paintings of JMW Turner, before exploring the advent of landscape photography in the American west. The photography of Carleton Watkins played a part in creating the first protected landscape in the world - Yosemite National Park.

James reveals the many ways in which art illuminates the extraordinary changes that took place in this millennia-long period. From an East Asian acceptance of the unknowability of nature to the drive to understand, classify and appreciate it, each point of view is an attempt to understand our place in nature.

SUNDAY 27 OCTOBER 2024

SUN 19:00 Leeds International Piano Competition (m0024hnn)
2024

Petroc Trelawny and Alexandra Dariescu present highlights from the final of the 2024 Leeds International Piano Competition.

Five outstanding pianists from across the globe compete for one of the most coveted and life-changing prizes in the classical music world, The Leeds gold medal.

Playing concertos by Bartók, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Brahms, and accompanied by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan, this is world-class piano performance at its very best.


SUN 21:00 M.R. James: Ghost Writer (b03n2rnc)
Mark Gatiss steps into the mind of M.R. James, the enigmatic English master of the supernatural story. How did this donnish Victorian bachelor, conservative by nature and a devout Anglican, come to create tales that continue to chill readers more than a century on?

Mark attempts to uncover the secrets of James's inspiration, taking an atmospheric journey from James's childhood home in Suffolk to Eton, Cambridge and France, venturing into ancient churches, dark cloisters and echoing libraries along the way.


SUN 22:00 Stigma (m0012kz0)
A family move into a remote country house on the edge of a stone circle. When they decide to have a stone in their garden moved, they unwittingly unleash an ancient curse.


SUN 22:35 The Ice House (m0012tv3)
Classic chilling tale. In an attempt to come to terms with his recent divorce, a man seeks solace in a countryside retreat, but does not find the comfort he was looking for.


SUN 23:10 The Read (m001x1tn)
Series 2

Frankenstein

Alex Kingston breathes life into Mary Shelley’s timeless gothic horror story.

Young, gifted scientist Victor Frankenstein unwittingly creates a monster. Written more than 200 years ago, the classic masterpiece still resonates today as a tragic romance that examines the battle between ambition and morality.


SUN 00:15 The Secret Life of Books (p025zldt)
Series 1

Frankenstein

Some 200 years since it was written, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is now shorthand for the horrors of science run amok. But when author and anatomist Professor Alice Roberts returns to the 18-year-old Mary's manuscripts, she finds someone concerned with the very act of creation itself. She also discovers clues of another writer's influence, someone very close to Mary.

Alice's travels take her to the Villa Diodati in Geneva, where Mary and her partner Percy spent time with Lord Byron and she conceived the idea of Victor Frankenstein's creature. By showing the disastrous results of the obsessive Victor's attempts to create life, Mary is seen to be critiquing the Romantic ideal of the solitary, creative genius, a notion associated with poets Percy Shelley and Byron. Surprisingly, when examining Mary's original manuscript at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Alice also sees written evidence of Percy's collaborative role in the creation of Victor.

In considering the influence of Mary's parents - her father was the radical philosopher William Godwin and her mother Mary was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women - Alice further shows that the ideas informing Frankenstein make the novel much more than a simple horror story. Mary's account does deal in death, but ultimately it provokes us to ask questions about how we live.

Produced in partnership with the Open University.


SUN 00:45 M.R. James: Ghost Writer (b03n2rnc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


SUN 01:45 Stigma (m0012kz0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]


SUN 02:20 The Ice House (m0012tv3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:35 today]


SUN 02:55 The Secret Life of Books (p025zldt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 00:15 today]

MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 2024

MON 19:00 Frozen Planet (b00zj35r)
Winter

There is no greater test for life than winter as temperatures plummet to 70 below and winds reach 200kph. Darkness and ice extend across the polar regions and only a few remarkable survivors gamble on remaining.

We join a female polar bear trekking into the Arctic mountains to give birth as the first blizzards arrive. Out on the frozen ocean, the entire world's population of spectacled eider ducks brave the winter in a giant ice hole kept open by ferocious currents. Arctic forests transform into a wonderland of frost and snow - the scene of a desperate and bloody battle between wolf and bison, but also where a remarkable alliance between raven and wolverine is made. Beneath the snow lies a magical world of winter survivors. Here, tiny voles dodge the clutches of the great grey owl, but cannot escape the ultimate under-show predator - the least weasel.

Midwinter, and a male polar bear wanders alone across the dark, empty icescape. Below the snow, polar bear cubs begin life in an icy den while fantastical auroras light the night skies above. In Antarctica, we join male emperor penguins in their darkest hour, battling to protect precious eggs from fierce polar storms. Weddell seals escape to a hidden world of jewel-coloured corals and alien-looking creatures, but frozen devastation follows as sinister ice stalactites reach down with deadly effect.

The sun finally returns, and with it come the female emperor penguins, sleek and fat, ready to deliver the first meal to their precious chick. Having survived winter, this ultimate ice family now have a head start in raising baby. The adelies flood back, and as the ice edge bustles with life, male emperor penguins can finally return to the sea.


MON 20:00 Landscape and Memory (p00dw6n1)
Seas

Historian Simon Schama takes a look at the way in which the sea has fired the imagination of writers, painters and explorers.


MON 20:40 City Scapes (b0074pb7)
Las Vegas

Series about the development of cities around the world. This programme celebrates the architectural history of Las Vegas and its diverse influences.


MON 21:00 Call My Bluff (m0024hns)
Frank Muir, Hilary Tindall and Robert Powell play against Patrick Campbell, Dawn Addams and Lord Kearton in a duel of words and wit, refereed by Robert Robinson.


MON 21:30 Face the Music (m0024hnv)
Question master Joseph Cooper invites viewers to match their musical wits against Joyce Grenfell, Robin Ray and Brian Redhead. With guest musician Kenneth McKellar.


MON 22:00 Horizon (m000kqm9)
2020

Pluto: Back from the Dead

The incredible story of how Pluto has been propelled from an unremarkable ball of ice on the edge of the solar system to a world of unimaginable complexity - where some form of alien life might exist.

Featuring first-hand accounts of the incredible discoveries made by New Horizons from many of the scientists involved in the mission.


MON 23:00 Earth from Space (p072n8b8)
Series 1

Colourful Planet

We think of the Earth as a blue planet, but satellite cameras reveal it to be a kaleidoscope. The astonishing colours of the aurora are towering vertical streaks, hundreds of kilometres high, phytoplankton blooms turn the ocean into works of art, triggering a feeding frenzy, and for a few weeks a year China's Yunnan province is carpeted in yellow as millions of rapeseed flowers bloom.

This is our home, as we’ve never seen it before.


MON 00:00 Nature and Us: A History through Art (m0010zff)
Series 1

Episode 3

In the concluding episode of the series, James explores how the art of the last hundred years reflects how we swapped nature for progress in the first half of the 20th century before rediscovering its beauty in the decades following the Second World War, and how today’s artists are re-imagining our future relationship with nature.

The film begins in the first decades of the 20th century, an era of human self-confidence, intent on conquering nature. In the art of Piet Mondrian, James explores how an artist who began life as a landscape painter gradually leaves nature behind, tidying up the messy reality of nature into abstract lines. We meet Chinese artist Yang Yongliang on the streets of New York, whose sprawling digital landscapes ask questions about our drive for rapid urbanisation.

James continues to explore this story through the images of one of the best photographers of the last century – and one of its most brilliant women - Margaret Bourke-White. In 1930, she was the first professional western photographer to be allowed into the Soviet Union, where she captured the rapid transformation of the country from being largely rural into a modern, industrial state. James moves on to explore how the destructive power of the atomic age both terrified and inspired artists in the 1940s and 1950s, from painters like Bittinger to the world of sci-fi films.

We then see the arrival of a new kind of art – land art. In the late 60s and 70s, a growing number of artists left the city and started working not only in nature but with it. We meet two contemporary land artists based in New Zealand: Philippa Jones and Martin Hill, who use natural materials to create sculptures in the landscapes of New Zealand’s South Island. And finally, we explore how artist collective Random International are using technology to explore our future relationship with nature – through a series of mesmerising art works.

James finishes the episode and the series asking questions of the interviewees who have appeared across the series. How do they see our future relationship with nature?

He concludes that on the long journey we humans have been on since our beginnings, artists have played a vital role not only in reflecting but also shaping our attitudes to nature. They’ve helped us understand its intricacy, appreciate its beauty, and now – when the entire planet seems under threat – they can help us forge a new relationship with it.


MON 01:00 Frozen Planet (b00zj35r)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 02:00 Earth from Space (p072n8b8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:00 today]


MON 02:55 Horizon (m000kqm9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]

TUESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2024

TUE 19:00 Frozen Planet (b00zj39x)
The Last Frontier

The documentary series reveals the extraordinary riches and wonders of the polar regions that have kept people visiting them for thousands of years. Today, their survival relies on a combination of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science.

Most Arctic people live in Siberia, either in cities like Norilsk - the coldest city on earth - or out on the tundra, where tribes like the Dogan survive by herding reindeer, using them to drag their homes behind them. On the coast, traditional people still hunt walrus from open boats - it is dangerous work, but one big walrus will feed a family for weeks. Settlers are drawn to the Arctic by its abundant minerals: the Danish Armed Forces maintain their claim to Greenland's mineral wealth with an epic dog-sled patrol, covering 2,000 miles through the winter. Above, the spectacular northern lights can disrupt power supplies so scientists monitor it constantly, firing rockets into it to release a cloud of glowing smoke 100 kilometres high.

In contrast, Antarctica is so remote and cold that it was only a century ago that the first people explored the continent. Captain Scott's hut still stands as a memorial to these men. Science is now the only significant human activity allowed - robot submarines are sent deep beneath the ice in search of new life forms, which may also be found in a labyrinth of ice caves high up on an active volcano. Above, colossal balloons are launched into the purest air on earth to detect cosmic rays.

At the South Pole there is a research base designed to withstand the world's most extreme winters. Cut off from the outside world for six months, the base is totally self-sufficient, even boasting a greenhouse.


TUE 20:00 Porridge (p00bxn9j)
Series 2

Happy Release

A spell in the prison hospital is not as restful as Fletcher hoped, after he finds himself sharing a ward with Blanco.


TUE 20:30 Hancock's Half Hour (p032khyr)
The Lawyer: The Crown v James S

Hancock is a lawyer and defends Sid, who is accused of theft from a jewellery shop - and a further 57 charges to boot.


TUE 21:00 She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (b01dc66v)
Isabella and Margaret

In the medieval and Tudor world there was no question in people's minds about the order of God's creation - men ruled and women didn't. A king was a warrior who literally fought to win power then battled to keep it. Yet despite everything that stood in their way, a handful of extraordinary women did attempt to rule medieval and Tudor England. In this series, historian Dr Helen Castor explores seven queens who challenged male power, the fierce reactions they provoked and whether the term 'she wolves' was deserved.

In 1308 a 12-year-old girl, Isabella of France, became queen of England when she married the English king. A century later another young French girl, Margaret of Anjou, followed in her footsteps. Both these women were thrust into a violent and dysfunctional England and both felt driven to take control of the kingdom themselves. Isabella would be accused of murder and Margaret of destructive ambition - it was Margaret who Shakespeare named the She Wolf. But as Helen reveals, their self-assertion that would have seemed natural in a man was deemed unnatural, even monstrous in a woman.


TUE 22:00 Storyville (m0024hnl)
Eternal You

A Storyville documentary exploring the digital afterlife business.

What if a person's death did not mean the end of their life? What if their loved ones could still talk to them long after their body has been cremated or is lying lifeless in the ground? What sounds like the scenario of a science fiction movie is already offered by companies today. By using AI, these startups create avatars of deceased people to allow their loved ones to interact with them.

Eternal You tells the story of a human experiment: what does it do to people to resurrect their deceased loved ones in order to talk to them? Who takes responsibility for the psychological and ethical consequences? And do we even want all this?


TUE 23:30 Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues (b06rfl46)
Rogues Gallery

Few figures in British history have captured the popular imagination as much as the outlaw. From gentleman highwaymen, via swashbuckling pirates to elusive urban thieves and rogues, the brazen escapades and the flamboyance of the outlaw made them the anti-hero of their time - feared by the rich, admired by the poor and celebrated by writers and artists.

In this three-part series, historian Dr Sam Willis travels the open roads, the high seas and urban alleyways to explore Britain's 17th and 18th-century underworld of highwaymen, pirates and rogues, bringing the great age of the British outlaw vividly to life.

Sam shows that, far from being 'outsiders', outlaws were very much a product of their time, shaped by powerful national events. In each episode, he focuses not just on a particular type of outlaw, but a particular era. The series as a whole offers a chronological portrait of the changing face of crime in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the final episode, Sam looks at urban crime, fraud and corruption in the 18th century, uncovering a fascinating rogues’ gallery of charmers, fraudsters and villains. Charmers like thief and serial escaper Jack Sheppard, so notorious that almost a quarter of a million people turned up to witness his hanging. Almost as controversial in her lifetime was Mary Toft, a fraudster who managed to convince no less than King George I and his surgeon that she had given birth to rabbits, making her, perhaps, the original 'con' artist.


TUE 00:30 Frozen Planet (b00zj39x)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 01:30 She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (b01dc66v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


TUE 02:30 Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues (b06rfl46)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:30 today]

WEDNESDAY 30 OCTOBER 2024

WED 19:00 Frozen Planet (b00zj39j)
On Thin Ice

David Attenborough journeys to both polar regions to investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the people and wildlife that live there, and for the rest of the planet.

David starts out at the North Pole, standing on sea ice several metres thick, but which scientists predict could be open ocean within the next few decades. The Arctic has been warming at twice the global average, and David heads out with a Norwegian team to see what this means for polar bears. He comes face to face with a tranquilised female and discovers that mothers and cubs are going hungry as the sea ice on which they hunt disappears. In Canada, Inuit hunters have seen with their own eyes what scientists have seen from space - the Arctic Ocean has lost 30% of its summer ice cover over the last 30 years. For some, the melting sea ice will allow access to trillions of dollars' worth of oil, gas and minerals. For the rest of us, it means the planet will get warmer, as sea ice is important to reflect back the sun's energy. Next, David travels to see what is happening to the ice on land. In Greenland, he follows intrepid ice scientists as they study giant waterfalls of meltwater, which are accelerating iceberg-calving events and ultimately leading to a rise in global sea levels.

Temperatures have also risen in the Antarctic - David returns to glaciers photographed by the Shackleton expedition and reveals a dramatic retreat over the past century. It is not just the ice that is changing - ice-loving adelie penguins are disappearing and more temperate gentoo penguins are moving in. Finally, we see the first ever images of the largest recent natural event on our planet - the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an ice sheet the size of Jamaica, which shattered into hundreds of icebergs in 2009.


WED 20:00 From Ice to Fire: The Incredible Science of Temperature (b09t9txy)
Series 1

Playing with Fire

Dr Helen Czerksi explores the extraordinary science of heat. She reveals how heat is the hidden energy contained within matter, with the power to transform it from one state to another. Our ability to harness this fundamental law of science has led to some of humanity's greatest achievements, from the molten metals that enabled us to make tools, to the great engines of the Industrial Revolution powered by steam, to the searing heat of plasmas that offer almost unlimited power.


WED 21:00 The Lively Arts (m0024hp5)
Thomas Hardy: A Haunted Man

Drama documentary from 1978 exploring the private feelings of novelist Thomas Hardy through the poems of love and remorse that he wrote after the death of his first wife, Emma.


WED 21:55 Five to Eleven (m0024hpj)
Richard Pasco

Actor Richard Pasco reads some of Thomas Hardy's poems.


WED 22:00 Gemma Arterton Remembers... Tess of the D'Urbervilles (m0024hpl)
David Nicholls's 2008 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles provided Gemma Arterton with her first lead role on television. She joined a cast of young talent, including Eddie Redmayne and Jodie Whitaker, as well as established names like Anna Massey and Kenneth Cranham.

Gemma tells us how she got the part, the research she did for it and the skills she had to learn, such as riding a horse and milking a cow. She talks about her favourite scenes and the day Eddie Redmayne had to repeatedly carry four women across a flooded path. She discusses Nicholls’s adaptation, written before he made his name with novels like One Day and Us, and the book’s central themes: class, faith and misogyny, subjects which still hold relevance to this day.


WED 22:15 Tess of the D'Urbervilles (b00dlpcj)
Episode 1

Four-part drama series based on the novel by Thomas Hardy.

On a fine May afternoon, the beautiful and innocent Tess Durbeyfield spies a handsome young stranger at a village dance, but he ignores her.

Forced by family hardship to seek support from her 'relatives' the D'Urbervilles, apparently an ancient lineage, she falls under the spell of her manipulative 'cousin' Alec - with shocking and lasting consequences.


WED 23:15 Tess of the D'Urbervilles (b00dn8kb)
Episode 2

Second in the four-part drama series based on the novel by Thomas Hardy. Tess returns home in confusion and shame after being seduced by her manipulative 'cousin' Alec D'Urberville.

Her baby, whom she christens Sorrow, is a sickly child, but Tess finds work on a dairy farm where she meets the handsome Angel Clare again. Can he offer her the love and deliverance she craves?


WED 00:15 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000b8mf)
Series 1

A Woman's Place

Ever since Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela, published in 1740, the novel has been a predominantly female literary form, offering far more opportunities to women writers than any other and consistently turning a powerful lens on the full range and depth of women's lives. Yet novels that explore women's stories, characters and emotions have often been attacked as frivolous – and sometimes by women themselves. But they are only frivolous to people for whom love, sex, friendship, family and one's own prospects in life are trivial matters. And there have been plenty of very serious female novelists too, from George Eliot and Middlemarch to Virginia Woolf and Orlando.

Women's rights have always been at the heart of the novel. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a famous rallying cry for feminism. The battle for women's suffrage is the subject of the propagandist novel No Surrender, written by Constance Maud in 1911. Works like this were forgotten until imprints like Virago republished them in the 1970s. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is another case in point - now seen as an icon of African-American women's writing, its reprinting was promoted by one of the most significant novelists of the last few decades, Alice Walker, author of the lacerating The Color Purple. The episode brings the discussion right up to date with a novel from 2019 by a black British writer and about a black British woman, Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie.


WED 01:15 Frozen Planet (b00zj39j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 02:15 From Ice to Fire: The Incredible Science of Temperature (b09t9txy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

THURSDAY 31 OCTOBER 2024

THU 19:00 Life of a Mountain (b08f1cc0)
A Year on Blencathra

The sequel to Life of a Mountain: Scafell Pike sees award-winning film-maker Terry Abraham return to the Lake District to showcase 'the people's mountain' - Blencathra.

This spectacular documentary looks at the lives of local residents, schoolchildren and visitors to the mountain with contributions from comedian Ed Byrne, broadcaster Stuart Maconie, mountaineer Alan Hinkes OBE and record-breaking fell runner Steve Birkinshaw.

Abraham's breathtaking photography and stunning time-lapse sequences of this unique landscape will inspire newcomers and regular visitors alike.


THU 20:00 How the Celts Saved Britain (b00kps7h)
A New Civilisation

Dan Snow blows the lid off the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages, in this provocative, two-part documentary.

Travelling back in time to some of the remotest corners of the British Isles, Dan unravels the mystery of the lost years of 400-800 AD, when the collapse of the Roman Empire left Britain in tatters.

In the first episode, Dan shows how in the 5th century AD Roman 'Britannia' was plunged into chaos by the arrival of Anglo-Saxon invaders. As Roman civilisation disappeared from Britain, a new civilisation emerged in one of the most unlikely places - Ireland. Within a few generations, Christianity transformed a backward, barbarian country into the cultural powerhouse of early medieval Europe.

This is a visually and intellectually stimulating journey through one of the least known chapters of British history.


THU 21:00 Christopher Eccleston Remembers... Jude (m0024hp0)
Thomas Hardy’s classic story of class, love and familial heartbreak was so shocking at the time of its release that Hardy never wrote another novel. Christopher Eccleston looks back on the 1996 film version of Jude and how this tale from 1895 remains as relevant today as it was then. Jude’s struggle to pull himself out of his working class roots to gain a higher education holds real resonance with Christopher as he looks back on his own journey as an actor and reflects on how hard it is for those entering the industry today. Christopher fondly remembers his time working with actress Kate Winslet, at the very cusp of her rise to superstardom, and how director Michael Winterbottom saw the light and shade in this tale of grief and hardship.


THU 21:20 Jude (b0074m37)
Stark adaptation of Thomas Hardy's tragic novel about a 19th-century stonemason whose aspirations are thwarted by unyielding social convention. When his marriage ends, the craftsman finds his dreams of self-improvement rekindled when he settles in a university town. He falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, but, failing to gain a place at university, finds his options diminishing to a point of remorseless despair.


THU 23:15 The Bookworm (m0024hp3)
Thomas Hardy

Griff Rhys Jones goes to Dorset to find out why Thomas Hardy's wife tried to ban his last novel, Jude the Obscure.


THU 23:45 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000b8mf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 00:15 on Wednesday]


THU 00:45 The Lively Arts (m0024hp5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Wednesday]


THU 01:40 Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise (b088pcls)
The Central Heartland

In central Thailand's forests, fertile plains and even city streets, nature finds a way of living alongside people. Spirituality can be found in human and animal relationships, both likely and unlikely. This bustling region is known as the nation's rice bowl - but even here, there are magical places to be found.


THU 02:40 Life of a Mountain (b08f1cc0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]

FRIDAY 01 NOVEMBER 2024

FRI 19:00 Top of the Pops (m0024hp8)
Harry Hill presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 27 September 1996 and featuring Skunk Anansie, Donna Lewis, The Bluetones, BBE, Metallica, The Communards, Dina Carroll, Ocean Colour Scene, The Power Station and Fugees.


FRI 19:35 Top of the Pops (m0024hpb)
Tony Wright presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 4 October 1996 and featuring, Sleeper, Everything but the Girl, Gabrielle, LL Cool J, Rod Stewart, Celine Dion, Longpigs, Boyzone and Deep Blue Something.


FRI 20:10 Top of the Pops (b01p2q00)
Peter Powell the presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 3 November 1977 and featuring The Jam, The Barron Knights, The Carpenters, Queen, Status Quo, David Bowie, Showaddywaddy, Abba and a Legs & Co dance sequence.


FRI 20:40 Top of the Pops (m000k48w)
Anthea Turner and Andy Crane present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 2 November 1989 and featuring Deborah Harry, Phil Collins and Martika.


FRI 21:10 Fleetwood Mac: The Dance (m0014bg7)
Twenty years after the release of the Rumours album, Fleetwood Mac reunite to perform hits such as Rhiannon and Don't Stop. First broadcast in 1998.


FRI 22:55 Sight and Sound in Concert (b00lnbj9)
Santana

Legendary guitarist Carlos Santana leads his band in highlights from a concert recorded in 1976, featuring the classics Black Magic Woman, Oye Como Va and Soul Sacrifice.


FRI 23:25 Rock Goes to College (m0024hpd)
The Motels

Pete Drummond introduces The Motels in concert at Bradford University.


FRI 00:05 The Old Grey Whistle Test (m001q19m)
Average White Band

Bob Harris introduces the Average White Band in concert, recorded on the last night of their 1975 US Tour in Miami.


FRI 00:50 Top of the Pops (m0024hp8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


FRI 01:25 Top of the Pops (m0024hpb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:35 today]


FRI 02:00 Top of the Pops (b01p2q00)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:10 today]


FRI 02:30 Top of the Pops (m000k48w)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:40 today]


FRI 03:00 Sight and Sound in Concert (b00lnbj9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:55 today]