Neil Oliver continues his journey through the world of Ancient Britain as he encounters an age of cosmological priests and some of the greatest monuments of the Stone Age, including Stonehenge itself. This is a time of elite travellers, who were inventing the very idea of Heaven itself.
Rick Stein's series of long weekends across Europe - taking in markets, restaurants and vineyards, the culture, history and scenery, and including fabulous dishes to cook at home.
This time Rick visits Bologna in northern Italy, a city so famous for its food that it's known as the stomach of Italy. He learns how to make the local fresh egg pasta used for tortellini, tagliatelle, ravioli and lasagne. There's stuffed rabbit filled with parma ham and parmesan frittata for dinner. At the market, Rick finds a fish stall and cafe, where he enjoys squid stuffed with mashed potato and capers.
Bologna is a medieval city with a university even older than Oxford, and Rick explores the local cloisters and the Whispering Walls. He even climbs Bologna's famous Asinelli Tower, despite vertigo. He also drives up into the hills to a cheese dairy, where he tastes 13-year-old parmesan. Nearby, there's lunch at a pig farm with restaurant attached. Out in the back, they're making brawn, but for the crew lunch they serve huge pork steaks, grilled over charcoal, with a big glass of local San Giovese wine. Delicious.
Three men who were abused by the same priest as boys begin a fight to expose him and the church administration that has been harbouring and protecting him.
Sir Terry Wogan remembers some memorable moments from the Wogan show. In this episode, he focuses on the biggest names from America who crossed the pond to join him for some conversation. The line-up includes Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Lee Marvin, Willie Nelson and Stevie Wonder, plus stars from the great American soap operas Dallas and Dynasty.
June Whitfield worked alongside the greats Arthur Askey, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Ronnie Barker, Benny Hill, Bob Monkhouse, Terry Scott and Jennifer Saunders.
In this film June tells her own story, from her early days in the West End working with Noel Coward, her ill-fated Broadway debut, and with the help of rarely seen archive, impeccable comedy performances on radio and TV.
June reveals that a lack of confidence about her looks caused her to play it for laughs. She also offers insights into her onscreen relationship with Terry Scott and the secret behind her success.
How does connecting with the images and sounds of the natural world help us gain a greater sense of ease, perspective and connection?
This first episode is about breathing. By immersing ourselves in images of jellyfish floating, elephants swimming and lemurs swinging through the rainforest, we learn to focus on our breathing and are reminded that we are not separate from the world around us.
What is the relationship between each breath and mindfulness, and why is breathing so important to becoming still and being in the moment?
SUNDAY 01 MAY 2022
SUN 19:00 BBC Young Dancer (m001708r)
2022
Episode 3
In the penultimate programme of the series, the ten dancers selected at the auditions continue to be put through their paces at the BBC Young Dancer academy at Dartington in Devon. With the clock ticking down to the end of the week, the pressure is mounting. Ivan Blackstock demands that the competitors focus fully on the task ahead as he races to complete the group dance, work begins on some brand-new duets and trios, and the dancers face the second of their Dartington Challenges.
Clara Amfo is on hand to see how everyone has coped with the demands of the week and to find out how things are progressing. The dance academy draws to a close as everyone’s attention turns to the final where one of the dancers will be crowned BBC Young Dancer 2022.
The BBC Young Dancer team are:
Dancer, choreographer and multi-discipline artist Ivan Blackstock
Australian-born street dancer and freestyler Gianna Gi, in demand as a choreographer and movement director
Award-winning dancer, choreographer and artistic director Dickson MBI
Bharatanatyam and contemporary dancer and choreographer Seeta Patel
Former principal ballerina with the English National Ballet, Begoña Cao
Dancer, choreographer and designer Theo Clinkard
Dancers, choreographers and educators Sade and Kristina Alleyne
BBC Young Dancer’s artistic director Emma Gladstone OBE, former chief executive and artistic director of Dance Umbrella – London’s international dance festival
SUN 20:00 New Generation Artists Presents (m001708t)
Series 1
Episode 1
Georgia Mann introduces the first of two programmes showcasing some of the most talented young musicians in the world, nurtured and promoted by BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists.
Performing in the intimate setting of the Coal Exchange building in Cardiff Bay, Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili plays Rossini’s Petit caprice in the style of Offenbach and Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude from Liszt’s piano cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe performs William Walton’s Five Bagatelles and the Sarabande from JS Bach’s English Suite in E minor. Macedonian-Canadian mezzo Ema Nikolovska, accompanied by Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry, presents a programme featuring Cécile Chaminade’s Ronde d’amour and La lune paresseuse, Dvorak’s Dobrú noc, má mila, and a selection of Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées. And the Aris Quartett from Frankfurt perform Mendelssohn’s final complete composition, his String Quartet in F minor.
SUN 21:00 Prisoner C33 (m001708y)
In 1895, in cell 3, floor 3, in Reading Gaol, we find Prisoner C33. Starved, thin, and with his hair crudely hacked short, he is confined alone in this dark cell, denied water to wash himself with and refused access to a toilet.
Prisoner C33 – real name Oscar Wilde – is a dramatist of genius, poet, wit, novelist, husband, father of two children and, until recently, the darling of London society. He has been imprisoned for the crime of having participated in a homosexual relationship. He is struggling to reconcile his identity as a creative genius with the trauma of his treatment as a despised criminal.
In despair, and fearing the onset of insanity, he fantasises about being in conversation with his former self – the elegant, debonair, famous, popular, long-haired, flamboyant Oscar Wilde before this nightmare began. Their talk, Oscar with Oscar, is full of Wildean wit, mischievous humour, nostalgia, philosophical insight, and sardonic wisdom. But as he contemplates his fall from grace, he agonises over the loss of his wife and sons, and over the conflict between love and hate, aroused in him by the memory of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Prisoner C33 vividly reminds us that only a century ago, a great artist, a genius of the theatre, was imprisoned and then exiled for being gay, in unutterably humiliating national condemnation.
Directed by multi-award winner Trevor Nunn and written by Stuart Paterson.
SUN 22:10 The Importance of Being Oscar (m0004gm6)
A star-studded account of Oscar Wilde’s glittering and controversial career before his trial for homosexual crimes and tragic fall from grace.
Highlights from Oscar’s brilliant comedies such as The Importance of Being Earnest and stories such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost are adapted and performed by a cast including Freddie Fox, Claire Skinner, Anna Chancellor and James Fleet. Wilde enthusiasts and experts, including Stephen Fry, Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland and his latest biographers, provide revelatory accounts of how his own life informed his work. His Irish roots, his early career, his marriage and the importance of women as well as men in his life all combine in a complex and compelling characterisation and celebration that adds flesh to the bones of a man who is too often caricatured.
SUN 23:35 Mindful Escapes: Breathe, Release, Restore (m000mf8s)
Series 1
Episode 3
Mindfulness is the ability to be present with a clear, calm, curious mind - and feelings of joy can be triggered when this happens. How can watching penguins pinching pebbles, seeing antelope leaping in the air or looking at scenes of summer flowers help us to feel more positive emotionally?
Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe takes us on a global journey with imagery that will bring feelings of happiness and wellbeing to the viewer as we immerse ourselves in the sights and sounds of the natural world.
SUN 00:05 Craftivism: Making a Difference (m000rxn0)
Can you use craft to help make the world a better place, one stitch at a time? Writer, comedian and art lover Jenny Eclair meets people doing extraordinary things with knitting, cross-stitch, banners and felt to change hearts and minds.
Hearing stories from craftivists around the UK and beyond, Jenny visits Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire to see how miniature knickers are discreetly placed around the town to encourage screening for cervical cancer, and learns how felt 'graffiti' has a wellbeing message for visitors to a London park.
From banners at Liverpool Football Club's Anfield Stadium to a huge memorial quilt remembering those who lost their lives to Aids, the initiatives all have one thing in common: a painstaking, thoughtful and beautiful way to get heard.
SUN 01:05 New Generation Artists Presents (m001708t)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
SUN 02:05 BBC Young Dancer (m001708r)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
MONDAY 02 MAY 2022
MON 19:00 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b00793st)
Series 1
Birds and Beasts
Gravedigger Johnny Kingdom presents a look at the wildlife of the moors and woodlands of Exmoor. It's early January, normally a quiet time of year for filming wildlife. But suddenly some wild boars are let loose and Johnny and the media descend on Exmoor to try and find them. It's also the time of year to film spoonbills, one of the migrating birds that visit Exmoor in the winter, but to do that he must find a way of getting closer to them.
MON 19:30 Seven Ages of Starlight (p00yb434)
This is the epic story of the stars, and how discovering their tale has transformed our own understanding of the universe.
Once we thought the sun and stars were gods and giants. Now we know, in a way, our instincts were right. The stars do all have their own characters, histories and role in the cosmos. Not least, they played a vital part in creating us.
There are old, bloated red giants, capable of gobbling up planets in their orbit, explosive deaths - supernovae - that forge the building blocks of life and black holes, the most mysterious stellar tombstones. And, of course, stars in their prime, like our own sun.
Leading astronomers reveal how the grandest drama on tonight is the one playing above our heads.
MON 21:00 Brian Cox's Adventures in Space and Time (m000x2sy)
Series 1
What Is Gravity?
Brian takes a fresh look at the concept of gravity, revealing it to be far more than just the force that makes things fall to the ground. Recent scientific breakthroughs are challenging physicists’ ideas of the very nature of reality.
He recalls some of his most iconic TV moments: being first on the scene to meet a space capsule returning three astronauts from the International Space Station; demonstrating how a bowling ball and feather fall at the same speed in the largest vacuum chamber in the world; filming in a prison wired up to explode; and standing on a majestic snowy mountain peak to explain the nature of spacetime.
Whilst revisiting his previous programmes, he takes us on a tour of gravity, explaining how Sir Isaac Newton devised a simple formula to describe gravity as a force that governs both how apples fall and how planets move in the heavens. He explores some of gravity’s stranger features, explaining how this comparatively weak force becomes the most dominant in the universe when it comes to the celestial mechanics of the cosmos: sculpting our solar system and even destroying stars.
Using the world’s largest vacuum chamber in Nasa’s Space Power Facility in Cleveland, Ohio, Brian demonstrates how gravity makes objects fall at the same rate, explaining how this led Einstein to his 'happiest thought' and the radical rethinking of the nature of space and time. Brian also explains how our contemporary study of one of gravity’s strangest creations, black holes, is leading us to yet more revolutionary, and in his words 'bonkers', views of the universe we live in.
MON 22:00 Missions (p0bwsx8h)
Series 3
Dark Clouds
French sci-fi drama. Alice discovers uncomfortable genetic facts, causing emotional confrontations, while Sam’s cause of death is revealed, along with another mystery. In French with English subtitles.
MON 22:20 Missions (p0bwsxdc)
Series 3
Empty-Handed
French sci-fi drama series. A violent encounter lends urgency to Peter’s quest, while Jeanne’s mistrust increases, despite the reassurances of a companion. In French with English subtitles.
MON 22:45 Missions (p0bwsxyx)
Series 3
A Separation
French sci-fi drama series. Jeanne is on the run, with reason to be paranoid. Peter shares his theory on her troubling situation. In French with English subtitles.
MON 23:10 Missions (p0bwsxys)
Series 3
Sanctuary
French sci-fi drama series. Jeanne and Alice are distressed, each trying to make sense of an insane situation, while Peter’s fate is unknown. In French with English subtitles.
MON 23:30 Coast (b083d820)
Series 8 Reversions
The Secret Life of Sea Cliffs 1
Nick Crane explores some of the most spectacular and scary sea cliffs in Britain.
MON 23:50 BBC Proms (b0bb8d8v)
2018
Jacob Collier and Friends
Jacob Collier's musical career has been meteoric. Still only 23, the multi-instrumentalist has been hailed as a musical genius and jazz prodigy, picking up two Grammy awards for his debut album last year. And now he has his own Prom.
Jacob's solo talents first came to light when he became an internet sensation with his unique covers of songs such as Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing and Fascinating Rhythm. He's since been mentored by some of his heroes, including Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, and in 2016 Jacob made a guest appearance at the Quincy Jones Prom.
Jacob Collier and Friends sees him team up once again with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest, joined by special guests, including Take 6, Sam Amidon, Becca Stevens and Hamid El Kasri, for a Prom that features songs from Jacob's debut album, new tracks and their unique reimagining of well-known classics.
MON 01:55 Mindful Escapes: Breathe, Release, Restore (m000mf8z)
Series 1
Episode 2
Join mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe as he focuses on change and what we can learn from how animals adapt to changes in the world around them. Why is a chameleon's ability to alter its appearance crucial to its survival and what lessons are there from understanding how elephants grieve?
Learning to be mindful can help us cope with life’s stresses, and Andy shows how focusing on the sights and sounds of the natural world can help us deal with change in our lives and how to live in the moment.
MON 02:25 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b00793st)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
MON 02:55 Brian Cox's Adventures in Space and Time (m000x2sy)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
TUESDAY 03 MAY 2022
TUE 19:00 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b00793xh)
Series 1
New Life and Old Friends
Grave-digger Johnny Kingdom presents a look at the wildlife of the moors and woodlands of Exmoor. Spring has finally arrived on Exmoor and it's Johnny's busiest time of year for filming. But he's very worried about his three-legged pet deer Bambi who he rescued 12 years ago. She is not well and Johnny knows that the day is fast approaching when he'll have to make a very difficult decision about her future.
TUE 19:30 A Pembrokeshire Farm (b007hzj1)
Episode 5
Griff faces some big decisions and last-minute disasters. A celebratory party is planned and the first guests are due to arrive. But will the house be finished in time?
TUE 20:00 Keeping Up Appearances (b007b6dq)
Series 3
Iron Age Remains
Sitcom about an upwardly mobile housewife and her long-suffering husband. Hyacinth has to put her plans for Richard's retirement on hold when Rose starts behaving outrageously.
TUE 20:30 Yes, Prime Minister (b0074s27)
Series 2
A Conflict of Interest
Classic sitcom. When a scandal breaks in the City, Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey cannot agree on who should be the new governor of the Bank of England.
TUE 21:00 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000bpvx)
Series 1
The Class Ceiling
Class is present from the time the very first novels in English appeared. This episode begins with one of the most famous portrayals of the fate of the poor and the destitute - Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, published in 1837. The ‘Condition of England’ novel, by writers such as Dickens, Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, whose Mary Barton is set in industrial Manchester, drew attention to and invoked pity for the lives lived by the have-nots in a ‘two-nation’ society. But, though sympathetic, they fell short of offering support for the aims of working-class movements. By the turn of the next century, though, these had grown in strength. Novels like Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, published in 1914, pressed not just for reform, but for socialism to take root. In the USA, meanwhile, class was thought by some not to exist. F Scott Fitzgerald’s high society The Great Gatsby showed that it did, while the sparkling Jeeves and Wooster series of PG Wodehouse showed that it could be funny.
In the late 1950s, DH Lawrence’s infamous adultery-across-the-classes novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was put on trial for obscenity, and a new generation of working-class writers emerged with honest portraits of their own communities. Working-class people could now read novels by and about themselves. The episode closes with two books from recent decades that Charles Dickens would surely have recognised - Irvine Welsh’s incendiary Trainspotting and Avarind Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger. Dickens and Gaskell wrote about the fallout from the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom. The White Tiger shows the fall out from the tech revolution in India. The story of class in the novel has never gone away.
TUE 22:00 Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens (b0195pt7)
Armando Iannucci presents a personal argument in praise of the genius of Charles Dickens. Through the prism of the author's most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, Armando looks beyond Dickens - the national institution - and instead explores the qualities of Dickens's work that still make him one of the best British writers.
While Dickens is often celebrated for his powerful depictions of Victorian England and his role as a social reformer, this programme foregrounds the elements of his writing which make him worth reading, as much for what he tells us about ourselves in the twenty-first century as our ancestors in the nineteenth.
Armando argues that Dickens's remarkable use of language and his extraordinary gift for creating characters make him a startlingly experimental and psychologically penetrating writer who demands not just to be adapted for television but to be read and read again.
TUE 23:00 The Culture Show (b01y7sj4)
2012/2013
Sincerely, F Scott Fitzgerald
Novelist Jay McInerney explores the life and writing of F Scott Fitzgerald, whose masterwork The Great Gatsby has just been filmed for the fifth time.
Fitzgerald captured the reckless spirit of New York life in the roaring twenties - the flappers, the parties, the bootleg liquor, the inevitable reckoning, and the hangover to come. In Gatsby, he created a character who reinvented himself for love - just as Fitzgerald would, not once, but twice. Fitzgerald never wrote an autobiography. He left us something better - letters. Romantic, arrogant, humble letters; letters to editors, publishers, lovers, or friends.
These letters reveal the inner thoughts of a man whose real life was never far from the fiction he wrote.
TUE 00:00 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
Most people thought that when the working traffic on canals faded away after the war, it would be the end of their story. But they were wrong. A few diehard enthusiasts and boat owners campaigned, lobbied and dug, sometimes with their bare hands, to keep the network of narrow canals open.
Some of these enthusiasts filmed their campaigns and their home movies tell the story of how, in the teeth of much political opposition, they saved the inland waterways for the nation and, more than 200 years after they were first built, created a second golden age of the canals.
Stan Offley, an IWA activist from Ellesmere Port, filmed his boating trips around the wide canals in the 40s, 50s and 60s in 16mm colour. But equally charming is the film made by Ed Frangleton, with help from Harry Arnold, of a hostel boat holiday on the Llangollen Canal in 1961. There are the films shot by ex-working boatman Ike Argent from his home in Nottinghamshire and looked after by his son Barry.
There is astonishing film of the last days of working boats, some shot by John Pyper when he spent time with the Beecheys in the 60s, film taken by Keith Christie of the last days of the cut around the BCN, and the films made by Keith and his mate Tony Gregory of their attempts to keep working the canals through their carrying company, Midland Canal Transport.
There is film of key restorations, the Stourbridge 16 being talked about with great wit and affection by one of the leading activists in that watershed of restorations in the mid-60s, David Tomlinson, and John Maynard's beautiful films of the restoration of the Huddersfield, 'the impossible restoration', shot over two decades.
All these and more are in the programme alongside the people who made the films and some of the stars of them. Together they tell the story of how, in the years after 1945, a few people fought the government like David fought Goliath to keep canals open and restore ones that had become defunct, and won against all the odds.
TUE 01:00 Storyville (m000k492)
College Behind Bars
Episode 1
A two-part Storyville documentary that tells the inspiring story of a group of men and women in the USA struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes.
The Bard Prison Initiative is one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programmes in the United States. Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the films tackles a pressing issue - the failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for over two million Americans living behind bars.
Through the stories of the students and their families, we discover many dropped out of high school before being incarcerated and never imagined they would go to college. During four years of study, however, they become accomplished scholars, beat the Harvard debating team, reckon with their pasts and discover how truly transformative education can be.
Incarcerated men and women at Eastern and Taconic Correctional facilities are admitted to the Bard Prison Initiative. When classes begin, they discover they must meet the same high standards as students on Bard College main campus. The debate team prepares to face the University of Vermont.
TUE 01:50 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b00793xh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
TUE 02:20 A Pembrokeshire Farm (b007hzj1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
TUE 02:50 Novels That Shaped Our World (m000bpvx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
WEDNESDAY 04 MAY 2022
WED 19:00 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b007941d)
Series 1
I'd Love to See a Badger
Gravedigger Johnny Kingdom presents a look at the wildlife of the moors and woodlands of Exmoor. Spring is well under way and the bluebells will be out soon at Johnny's new hide, which means he should be filming badger cubs any day now. But there's a problem - there's no sign of any cubs, and the food he's put down for the badgers is being eaten by squirrels, pheasants and rats. Johnny invites Tony Thorne to the hide to see if he'll bring him luck, but he's forgotten that Tony's afraid of rats.
WED 19:30 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00mwx9d)
Episode 1
Griff Rhys Jones embarks on phase two of the restoration of his farm in Pembrokeshire. Having restored the main farmhouse, Griff now turns his attention to two outbuildings - the water mill and the miller's cottage. Both were built at the same time as the farmhouse - around 1820 - and both will be turned into accommodation.
The miller's cottage was used in later years as a cattle shed and is now little more than a derelict ruin. But converting the water mill into a cottage will be much more complicated and will require a planning permission. The person Griff has appointed to design the two buildings is his son George, who is training to be an architect.
WED 20:00 The Story of Scottish Art (b06h7xsm)
Episode 1
The story of Scottish art and its impact on the international art world is celebrated in this four-part series presented by acclaimed artist Lachlan Goudie. The series spans 5,000 years of Scotland's history, from the earliest Neolithic art to the present day.
In the first programme, Lachlan explores Scotland's earliest art. He visits the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, where standing stones have watched the seasons pass for thousands of years. On the island of Westray he encounters an ancient figurine - the Westray Wife - the oldest sculpted human figure in the British Isles. He explores the sophisticated art of the Picts and the Gaels, the exuberant Renaissance period of the early Stewart kings, and the destructive heights of the Reformation, when religious artworks were all but wiped out in Scotland.
WED 21:00 England's Forgotten Queen: The Life and Death of Lady Jane Grey (b09m5rmf)
Series 1
Episode 2
Jane is known as the 'Nine Days Queen' - and three days into her reign the clock is ticking. Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, is determined to seize power. Both women are raising armies.
The manipulative Duke of Northumberland is dispatched from the Tower of London to lead Jane's forces against Mary at her castle at Framlingham. Northumberland sets out for a battle that could descend into civil war. But ordinary people can turn the tide of history. Will they go against the odds and side with the Catholic Mary Tudor?
Jane's military leaders send heavily armed ships to the coast of East Anglia to prevent Mary escaping by sea and to cut her off from any help that might come from Catholic supporters in Europe. But the crews rebel and turn the ships and their weapons over to Mary. Mary and Jane now have armies matched in size and matched in firepower. The future of the country - its religion and its ruler - hangs in the balance.
WED 22:00 Hidden Killers (b050d700)
The Tudor Home
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb takes us back to Tudor times in search of the household killers of the era.
It was a great age of exploration and science where adventurers returned from the New World with exotic goods previously unknown in Europe. An era in which the newly emergent middle classes had, for the first time, money for luxuries and early consumer goods, many of which contained hidden dangers.
The period also saw a radical evolution in the very idea of 'home'. For the likes of Tudor merchants, their houses became multi-room structures instead of the single-room habitations that had been the norm (aristocracy excepted). This forced the homebuilders of the day to engineer radical new design solutions and technologies, some of which were lethal.
Suzannah discovers that in Tudor houses the threat of a grisly, unpleasant death was never far away in a world (and a home) still mired in the grime and filth of the medieval period - and she shows how we still live with the legacy of some of these killers today.
WED 23:00 The 1951 Festival of Britain: A Brave New World (b015d486)
Set against the post war period of debt, austerity and rationing, the 1951 Festival of Britain showed how to carve out a bright new future through design and ingenuity, while still having fun. Told by the people who made it happen and making use of some previously unseen colour footage, this is the story of how an extraordinary event changed Britain forever.
WED 00:00 Mindful Escapes: Breathe, Release, Restore (m000mf8f)
Series 1
Episode 4
The natural world offers a constant source of calm and comfort. How do images of hypnotic starling murmurations or macaques relaxing in hot springs in Japan encourage us to slow down? How can we experience more being and less doing?
Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe talks us through the process and takes us on an immersive journey around the sights and sounds of resting wildlife all over the planet.
WED 00:30 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b007941d)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
WED 01:00 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00mwx9d)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
WED 01:30 The Story of Scottish Art (b06h7xsm)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
WED 02:30 England's Forgotten Queen: The Life and Death of Lady Jane Grey (b09m5rmf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
THURSDAY 05 MAY 2022
THU 19:00 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b0079459)
Series 1
Close Encounters
Gravedigger and amateur cameraman Johnny Kingdom films the wildlife of the moors and woodlands of Exmoor. It's early summer and Johnny is determined to film red deer calves and fox cubs but he's got to find them first. He's soon on the foxes' trail but the deer search leads to a close encounter with an animal that no-one realised was living wild on Exmoor. It's also Revel Week in his home village, Bishops Nympton, and a chance to join in old customs and celebrate a new landlord at the local pub.
THU 19:30 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00n1lvz)
Episode 2
Griff Rhys Jones continues with phase two of the restoration of his farm in Pembrokeshire. Work on the derelict miller's cottage is progressing well, but across the lane there is trouble at the mill, as Griff's plans meet local objections.
Meanwhile, Griff takes on another very unusual restoration project.
THU 20:00 The RKO Story: Tales from Hollywood (b00gdt2j)
Let's Face the Music and Dance
Ed Asner tells the story of RKO Pictures through the eyes of the people who worked there from its inception in the 1920s. He examines the musicals made in the mid 1930s with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Includes interviews with both stars, the producer Pando Berman and choreographer Hermes Pan.
THU 21:00 Top Hat (b0074r4k)
In the quintessential Astaire and Rogers musical, an American dancer staying at a hotel in London falls in love with the guest staying in the room below. However, she gets her wires crossed, convinces herself that the dancer is already hitched and hotfoots it off to Venice. Classic numbers include Cheek to Cheek and Top Hat. This is Fred and Ginger's fourth pairing, but the first with a screenplay written specifically for them.
THU 22:40 The Gay Divorce (b0074r43)
Guy Holden comes to the rescue of a trapped damsel in distress in a crowded customs shed. More frustrating encounters follow until Mimi mistakes Guy for a professional correspondent in a Brighton hotel.
THU 00:20 Talking Pictures (b03dwqfr)
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
A retrospective look at television appearances made over the years by legendary Hollywood double act Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, capturing the milestones and highlights of their lives and careers.
THU 01:10 Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor (b0079459)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
THU 01:40 Return to Pembrokeshire Farm (b00n1lvz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 02:10 The RKO Story: Tales from Hollywood (b00gdt2j)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
FRIDAY 06 MAY 2022
FRI 19:00 Ella Fitzgerald Sings (m000p9v6)
A classic Ella Fitzgerald performance from 1965.
FRI 19:45 Folk America at the Barbican (b00kdm2v)
The Wiyos
Brooklyn's The Wiyos entertain the Barbican audience with their quirky mix of vaudevillian ragtime and finely crafted 1920s style tunes.
FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (m00170d6)
Tony Dortie presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 19 November 1992 and featuring Cathy Dennis, Sonny & Cher, Heaven 17, Madness, The Pasadenas, Whitney Houston, Genesis and Charles & Eddie.
FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (m00170d8)
Mark Franklin presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 19 November 1992 and featuring Guns N’ Roses, Undercover, Carter USM, Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Rod Stewart and Charles & Eddie.
FRI 21:00 Secret Knowledge (b05wps6k)
Nina Simone and Me with Laura Mvula
Over half a century since she first performed her songs, Nina Simone is more popular than ever. From Sinnerman to Mississippi Goddam, Feeling Good to My Baby Just Cares for Me, she is an artist with an extraordinary songbook that mixes jazz, blues, soul and even classical.
British soul singer Laura Mvula travels to New York to celebrate the Nina songs that mean most to her and explore their musical roots. Performing with a Harlem gospel choir, uncovering the influence of Nina's classical training and meeting Simone's long-time guitarist Al Shackman, Laura presents a personal tribute to the genius of her musical hero.
FRI 21:30 Billie: In Search of Billie Holiday (m000t8qv)
Billie Holiday, known one of the greatest voices of all time as well as a woman of breathtaking talent and global popularity, was a figure of controversy throughout her short life - a black woman in a white man’s world, a victim and a rebel. Her infamous Strange Fruit, the first protest song of the civil rights movement, earned her powerful enemies. She was also an enigma, her telling of her own life story a mix of half truths and free-form improvisations.
Then, in the late 1960s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer’s short, tumultuous life.
Raw, emotional and brutally honest, these incredible testimonies ranged from musical greats like Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie to her cousin, schoolfriends, lovers, lawyers, pimps and even the FBI agents who arrested her. But Linda’s book was never finished, and the tapes remained unplayed – until now.
With unprecedented and exclusive access to Linda's astonishing 200 hours of never-before-heard interviews, this documentary showcases an American legend, capturing her depths and complexity through the voices of those who knew her best. Painstakingly restored with footage and stills colourised by one of the world's leading colour artists, it is an arresting and powerful tale of one of the greatest singers who ever lived, and of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, the woman who would sacrifice her life in trying to tell it.
FRI 23:00 Louis Armstrong in Concert (m000yhc4)
First broadcast on the centenary of his birth, legendary jazz trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong in performance.
FRI 00:00 Jazz Piano Gold (b01cc76p)
A real treat for anyone who loves listening to the tinkling of the jazz piano, with classics from Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Abdullah Ibrahim, Stan Tracey and Jacques Loussier to Duke Ellington, Return to Forever and Herbie Hancock. The performances are culled from cult classic programmes such as Jazz 625, Show of the Week, Late Night Line Up, Love You Madly, Birdland, The Late Show and Later... with Jools Holland, and date from 1964 to 2009. Be it bebop, swing or contemporary, Jazz Piano Gold is a must for all jazz piano fans.
FRI 01:00 Top of the Pops (m00170d6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
FRI 01:30 Top of the Pops (m00170d8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
FRI 02:00 Ella Fitzgerald Sings (m000p9v6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
FRI 02:45 Secret Knowledge (b05wps6k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]