SATURDAY 20 APRIL 2024

SAT 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylb9)
2024

Day 1: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day one of the 2024 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.


SAT 21:00 Wisting (m001xx1q)
Series 3

Episode 3

Still without a good lead in the kidnapping case, Wisting is under pressure to produce results. A surveillance plan results in a chase with devastating consequences. Clifford's parents, awaiting contact from his kidnapper, follow a lead against police advice and make a horrible discovery.


SAT 21:45 Wisting (m001xx1s)
Series 3

Episode 4

A manhunt begins, but it is a race against time. With Clifford's father Andrew having also fallen into the clutches of the kidnappers, Wisting needs to untangle the mysteries of the past to try and bring the boy and his father back to safety.


SAT 22:30 Parkinson (m001ytzq)
Paul Daniels, William Rushton and Engelbert Humperdinck

Michael Parkinson in conversation with Paul Daniels, William Rushton and Engelbert Humperdinck.


SAT 23:30 Parkinson (m001qwqj)
Parkinson Meets Shirley MacLaine

Michael Parkinson interviews American actress Shirley MacLaine.


SAT 00:00 Siân Phillips at 90 (m001ww4q)
Dame Siân Phillips is very much still a working actor, even at the remarkable age of 90. Now, the star of television series I, Claudius and ex-wife of Peter O’Toole opens her heart on camera for the first time about her life and career.

From Hollywood films to theatre, television and radio, Siân has done it all. Her international career highlights include films such as Goodbye Mr Chips and Dune, TV dramas like How Green Was My Valley and Shoulder to Shoulder, as well as acclaimed roles in the musicals Pal Joey and Marlene, where she was Marlene Dietrich in the West End show.

Today, Siân shows no signs of slowing down and is in demand for roles in theatre and film. She’s as busy as ever, and her strict pilates regime keeps her match fit. However, her path to success hasn’t been easy.


SAT 01:00 To the Manor Born (b00788t9)
Series 3

Cosmetics

DeVere negotiates an important business deal with the beautiful Mademoiselle Dutoit, but when she decides to mix business with pleasure, he invents a wife... Audrey!


SAT 01:30 No Place Like Home (p0hl2zyg)
Series 1

Episode 3

Arthur goes on holiday with his neighbour Trevor, hoping to escape the problems of home, but they reach an unexpected destination.


SAT 02:00 Great Australian Railway Journeys (m000b8m9)
Series 1

Adelaide to Perth: The Indian Pacific

Michael Portillo embarks on a rail adventure aboard the transcontinental Indian Pacific Railway, which stretches from the southern port city of Adelaide, South Australia, 1,700 miles deep into the desert, to the gold rush town of Kalgoorlie, before finishing in Perth, Western Australia.

First, Michael explores McLaren Vale, where an enterprising early 19th century Briton with a murky past began to grow vines. Michael enjoys the fruits of his labours and hears his story from his great great great granddaughter.

Boarding the mighty Indian Pacific, Michael embraces the luxury of a previous age as he travels across Australia's notoriously remote and inhospitable Nullarbor Plain. He discovers the 100-year-old history behind the ambitious line and the tremendous feat of engineering it took to deliver it. In the ghost town of Cook, Michael helps to top up the train's water and is rewarded with dinner under the stars at Rawlinna. He strikes gold in one of the most lucrative goldfields in the world and strikes it lucky in the traditional Australian gambling game of 'Two Up'.

He pays a flying visit to the doctor to hear how patients in remote Western Australia are cared for, then takes to the skies to admire Perth, one of the world's most isolated cities, and its port of Fremantle. South of the city, in Pinjarra, he uncovers a dark chapter in the histories of both Britain and Australia – a child migration programme devised at the time of Michael’s Bradshaw's Guide.

Back in Perth, Michael hears how Edward VIII was caught up in a train accident near Bridgetown and is invited to an Aussie barbie.

SUNDAY 21 APRIL 2024

SUN 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylsj)
2024

Day 2: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on the second day of the Snooker World Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


SUN 21:00 Mary Beard Remembers... Civilisation (m001ylsl)
Mary Beard delivers a personal introduction to Kenneth Clark’s landmark 1969 series, Civilisation, which became one of the most acclaimed and influential programmes ever made, bringing art history to the audiences of millions both in the UK and, notably, in America too.

Here, Mary describes the programme’s influence on her as a young girl and how it helped set her on the journey that led to her own highly successful career. She also considers the series from a 21st-century perspective, highlighting the changes that have occurred in the world of academic history since it was first transmitted and revealing how Clark’s conclusions - and even his much-praised performances in front of the camera - can still divide critics and historians to this day.


SUN 21:10 Civilisation (b0074r2x)
The Skin of Our Teeth

Sir Kenneth Clark begins his classic 1969 series by looking at how European art survived the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. He travels from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides, examining aqueducts, cathedrals, the lives of the Vikings and of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.


SUN 22:00 GOOD Starring David Tennant (m001ylsn)
David Tennant makes a much-anticipated return to the West End in a blistering reimagining of CP Taylor’s renowned and powerful political play, filmed on stage by the National Theatre during its sell-out run.

Professor John Halder is a 'good' man. But 'good' men must adapt to survive. As the world faces its second world war, the intelligent and music-loving German professor finds himself pulled into a movement with unthinkable consequences.

Olivier Award winner Dominic Cooke directs British playwright CP Taylor’s chilling tale, with a cast that also features Elliot Levey and Sharon Small.


SUN 23:50 Blood of the Clans (m000lw7z)
Series 1

The Year of Victories

Neil Oliver presents a drama-documentary series telling the tale of Scotland’s 17th-century civil war. When the Scottish Parliament, led by the chief of Clan Campbell, declares war on Charles I, clans loyal to the King rise up in rebellion. At the heart of this epic struggle lies an ancient feud between the Campbells and the MacDonalds, and all hell is unleashed as the royalist clans use the war to wreak bloody vengeance on their rivals in an epic conflict that threatens the stability of the newly emerging British state.


SUN 00:50 Blood of the Clans (m000lykv)
Series 1

The Highland Rogue

Neil Oliver turns his attention to a true Scottish legend - a certain Rob Roy MacGregor. For centuries, Rob has been celebrated as a colourful Highland maverick, as a well-intentioned rogue - Scotland’s answer to Robin Hood. But what is the true story? How did a humble cattle trader, born to an impoverished and disgraced clan, come to be despised by the most powerful noblemen in the land? How did Rob Roy become Britain’s most wanted man?


SUN 01:50 The Bermuda Triangle: Beneath the Waves (b007c68n)
Professor Bruce Denardo attempts to prove whether there is any truth behind the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, where many ships and planes have disappeared in mysterious circumstances. New investigation techniques reveal the truth behind the infamous disappearance of Flight 19. Graham Hawkes is also able to reveal, by using a state-of-the-art submarine, how five wrecks mysteriously wound up 730 feet down in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.


SUN 02:50 Civilisation (b0074r2x)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:10 today]

MONDAY 22 APRIL 2024

MON 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylst)
2024

Day 3: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day three of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


MON 21:00 Gods of Snooker (m000w0ps)
Series 1

Episode 1

The first episode explores how Alex 'The Hurricane' Higgins helped transform snooker from a game played in the backrooms of working men’s clubs to a national sporting obsession.

Interest in the sport had been growing thanks to the new possibilities of colour broadcasting, and in particular the weekly snooker show Pot Black, first commissioned by none other than David Attenborough. But it was the antics of the unpredictable Ulstersman and snooker genius, Higgins, that took the game stratospheric.

Raw and unpredictable on the table, outspoken and badly behaved off it, Higgins declared war on the 1970s snooker establishment, entering into a years-long rivalry with the man who more than anyone embodied the old guard, ex-policeman Ray Reardon. Higgins and Reardon didn’t see eye to eye, but it was well known that Higgins could start a fight in an empty room. As the 70s wore on, the tabloids gleefully reported on a string of on- and off-the-table misdeeds.

Almost inevitably, Reardon and Higgins eventually came face to face in the World Championship final of 1982, in what was by far the biggest tournament to date. The clash of the two snooker titans - the paragon of the establishment against the self-described ‘People’s Champion’ - would be the match that redefined the British public’s relationship with the sport and set the course for a decade where it would become box office gold.


MON 22:00 Civilisation (b0074r34)
The Great Thaw

Kenneth Clark traces the reawakening of European civilisation in the 12th century from its first manifestations in Cluny Abbey to the Basilica of St Denis and, finally, to its high point, the building of Chartres Cathedral.


MON 22:50 Civilisation (b0074r3n)
Romance and Reality

Kenneth Clark journeys from the Loire through Tuscany and Umbria, to the cathedral at Pisa. He explores the aspirations of the later Middle Ages in France and Italy, looking at the work of Giotto and Dante, among other artists.


MON 23:40 Victorian Sensations (m0005hhg)
Series 1

Decadence and Degeneration

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

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

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

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

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

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


MON 00:40 Blood of the Clans (m000m3pr)
Series 1

The Last Rebels

Neil Oliver presents a drama-documentary revealing the divided loyalties of the clans during the 1745 rebellion. When Bonnie Prince Charlie arrives in Scotland to regain the crown of his ancestors the clans are called upon to rise in armed revolt for him. Many do, and they invade England. But others oppose him and join the British side to fight against the rebels. Some though play a cunning double game, pretending to be loyal to the British whilst secretly raising clansmen for the prince…


MON 01:40 The Cult Next Door (b08c3vrx)
This documentary by acclaimed director Vanessa Engle tells the extraordinary story of a strange cult, which came to light in 2013 when a sensational news story broke about three women emerging from a small flat in Brixton in south London after decades in captivity. Tracing the group back to its roots in the 1970s, the film describes how its leader Aravindan Balakrishnan, a student of Indian origin, believed in an international communist revolution and created a tiny political sect that followed the teachings of China's Chairman Mao.

The film features exclusive interviews with two of the women who escaped - Aisha Wahab, a 72-year-old Malaysian woman who was part of Balakrishnan's group for 40 years, and Katy Morgan-Davies, Balakrishnan's daughter, who was born and raised in captivity. The film documents how this left-wing collective evolved into a bizarre pseudo-religious cult, where members were controlled, threatened and brainwashed so that they were too terrified to leave.


MON 02:40 Gods of Snooker (m000w0ps)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

TUESDAY 23 APRIL 2024

TUE 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylt5)
2024

Day 4: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day four of the 2024 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


TUE 21:00 Gods of Snooker (m000w76x)
Series 1

Episode 2

Though snooker was firmly established on our TV screens by the early 80s, the game’s money-spinning potential had not yet been realised.

One of the first to spot a business opportunity was savvy Essex-based sports promoter Barry Hearn, who had recently taken a young hopeful called Steve Davis under his wing. Davis was the polar opposite of people’s champion Alex Higgins: slow, precise and intent on grinding out victories rather than entertaining with risky flair shots. Hearn was certain that his young apprentice was a future world champion, and together, the pair plotted world domination. As Higgins’s career took a downward turn, Davis quickly became a winning machine, bagging trophy after trophy. But his 'robotic' performances failed to win over a crowd who preferred their sporting heroes more flawed and unpredictable.

Capitalising on Davis’s success, Hearn started to build his own snooker empire - the 'Matchroom’- and recruited a small group of players he could mould and market, creating a soap opera out of sporting rivalry, and in the process, bringing lucrative sponsorships (and even hit pop singles) into the game.

By the mid-80s, snooker was at the peak of its powers, and in 1985 nearly 20 million people tuned in to see Steve Davis play Dennis Taylor in the World Championship final. It was an encounter that became known as the 'black ball final’, widely believed to be the best snooker match of all time. After that, Britain really did go 'snooker loopy', and a select group of cue-wielding sportsmen were suddenly the biggest superstars in the country.


TUE 22:00 The 15 Billion Pound Railway (m0002jt4)
Under Pressure, Over Budget

Episode 1

With exclusive access, this returning series follows the construction workers of Crossrail as they battle to finish the final stages of the new Elizabeth Line underground railway beneath the streets of London.

Costing over fifteen billion pounds and stretching 120km across the capital, this extraordinary construction project is one of the biggest in Europe and one of the most ambitious engineering feats in Britain since the time of Brunel.

Our cameras follow the engineers, technicians and train staff who are under pressure to complete their section of the project, including building and fitting out ten brand new stations, learning to drive the new fleet of trains, and testing the 21km twin tunnels beneath London, in a bid to make it safe for the public.

We join Danny O’Connell, Crossrail’s testing manager, as he leads a critical operation to launch the very first train into the new Elizabeth Line tunnels under London. Danny is responsible for trialling and testing all aspects of the railway performance – from communications, CCTV and platform doors, to the trains, tracks and signalling systems. If Danny can’t complete all of the hundreds of tests needed to prove that it's safe and reliable, the railway won’t open on time.

We join charismatic project manager Lih-Ling Highe, who is tasked with finishing construction of the new Tottenham Court Road Station - the largest station on the entire line and future gateway to 200,000 passengers a day. Coming from a long line of engineers, construction is in Lih-Ling’s DNA - in this episode, she must lead a team fitting out the station’s three-tonne platform screen doors to prevent passengers from falling under a train.

In the financial heart of London, the Elizabeth Line’s new Canary Wharf Station looks to welcome up to 100,000 passengers a day. In charge of the station’s mechanical and electrical fit out is young engineer Felix Ahatty, whose biggest task is to transport and install three huge 10-tonne ventilation fans. Hauling them through the city at night, and then getting them down through the station levels, is a complex mission - even with the help of cranes, rail systems, and ‘hover’ pads to push it into position.

We also join new recruit Rochelle as she trains to become a driver of the new 200m-long, 90mph trains that will carry up to 200 million passengers a year. We follow Rochelle through each nail-biting step of the course - from simulator training to getting behind the wheel of a real 265-tonne train.


TUE 23:00 Chasing the Moon (m0006vrs)
Series 1

A Place Beyond the Sky - Part 1

On 4 October 1957, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1 - a beach ball-sized, radio-transmitting aluminium alloy sphere - into orbit. The satellite caused a sensation. Amid Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union’s accomplishment signalled a dramatic technological advantage and American felt it had little choice but to join the Space Race.

Then on 12 April 1961, the Soviets sealed their advantage when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth. John F Kennedy, the newly elected president, was faced with the issue of how to respond. Two days later, he called a meeting to find an American space programme that would promise equally dramatic results. Rocket manufacturer, and former Nazi, Wernher von Braun, convinced Kennedy that the Americans could beat the Russians to the Moon before the decade was out and the Saturn programme was born.

A film By Robert Stone.

A Robert Stone Production for American Experience WGBH/PBS in association with Arte France.


TUE 23:50 Chasing the Moon (m0006vrv)
Series 1

A Place Beyond the Sky - Part 2

Under von Braun’s leadership, America’s technology finally seemed to be catching up with the Soviet Union’s. On 5 May 1961, von Braun’s Redstone rocket successfully launched American navy test pilot Alan Shepard 116 vertical miles up into space. The American space programme grew rapidly.

On 20 February 1962, a marine colonel named John Glenn successfully orbited the Earth. Nasa and Wernher von Braun were at last delivering real results. Sputnik’s challenge and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s groundbreaking feat had been equalled. But the young president would never live to see man walk on the moon. On 22 November 1963 in Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was assassinated and Cape Canaveral, home to US space exploration, was quickly renamed Cape Kennedy, in honour of the fallen visionary.

A film By Robert Stone.

A Robert Stone Production for American Experience WGBH/PBS in association with Arte France.


TUE 00:40 Civilisation (b0074r34)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Monday]


TUE 01:30 Civilisation (b0074r3n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:50 on Monday]


TUE 02:20 Gods of Snooker (m000w76x)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2024

WED 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylsw)
2024

Day 5: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day five of the 2024 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


WED 21:00 Gods of Snooker (p09gt3yd)
Series 1

Episode 3

By the mid-80s, snooker was the biggest sport in the country, but two distinct camps had emerged amongst the players. On one side were Barry Hearn’s ‘Matchroom Mob’, including Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis: clean-living, utterly professional and family friendly. In sharp contrast was a group that included Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Kirk Stevens, who all embraced a more rock-and-roll lifestyle.

With Higgins’s career quickly spiralling out of control, Jimmy White was next in line to take the crown of ‘people’s champion’. But Jimmy also had an insatiable appetite for the highlife and a string of vices – including cocaine and crack - that threatened to overshadow his raw talent and enormous potential.

Twelve years younger than Alex, Jimmy soon realised that Alex’s popularity and ability was at odds with his success in the game, having won only two world championship trophies in a sport many thought he should dominate. Indeed, Steve Davis had quickly become the world number one through practice and discipline and had suddenly become the man to beat. Desperate for success and tempted by the lucrative rewards brought by towing the line, Jimmy joined Barry Hearn in the hope he could be turned into a champion like his new stablemate, Steve Davis.

Jimmy began the 90s clean and well-prepared and got his best opportunity yet to win his first world championship, coming up against a young emerging Scotsman called Stephen Hendry. With White as the hot favourite and with the crowd urging him on, the 1990 final turned out to be a pivotal moment in British snooker and paved the way for what was to come in the next decade.


WED 22:00 Shoulder to Shoulder (p0h84dg1)
Christabel Pankhurst

Black Friday - 18 November 1910. A violent struggle in Parliament Square between suffragettes and police. But why don't the police arrest the suffragettes?


WED 23:15 Shoulder to Shoulder (p0h84h77)
Outrage

The campaign grows. Suffragettes destroy property, and Emily Wilding Davison becomes a martyr to the cause.


WED 00:30 Shoulder to Shoulder (p0h84hw9)
Sylvia Pankhurst

1914: War is declared, and women still do not have the vote.


WED 01:45 Parkinson (m001ytzq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:30 on Saturday]


WED 02:50 Gods of Snooker (p09gt3yd)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

THURSDAY 25 APRIL 2024

THU 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylsg)
2024

Day 6: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day six of the 2024 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


THU 21:00 The Crucible: 40 Golden Snooker Years (b08nt19b)
Steve Davis goes back to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield to celebrate 40 years of the snooker world championships.

If the walls of this famous regional theatre could talk, they would tell tales of tears, triumphs, occasional debauchery, laughter and top-class sport.

With contributions from snooker legends Dennis Taylor, Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White and super-fans Stephen Fry and Richard Osman.


THU 22:00 Philomena (b03ttndm)
Drama recounting the true story of Philomena Lee, a Catholic woman who gives birth out of wedlock in 1950s Ireland. Abandoned by her family, she is forced to live in an abbey, where the nuns sell her infant child for adoption. Philomena keeps her secret for 50 years before eventually enlisting the help of jaded journalist Martin Sixsmith in tracking down her estranged son.


THU 23:30 Dark Waters (m001j65w)
Past ties drag corporate lawyer Rob into conflict with a company blamed for polluting a local creek. But as the case goes on, Rob discovers that the scope of the actual damage is staggeringly vast.


THU 01:30 The 15 Billion Pound Railway (m0002jt4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Tuesday]


THU 02:30 The Crucible: 40 Golden Snooker Years (b08nt19b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]

FRIDAY 26 APRIL 2024

FRI 19:00 Snooker: World Championship (m001ylt0)
2024

Day 7: Evening Session

Coverage of the evening session on day seven of the 2024 World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre.


FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (b08znbn1)
Simon Bates and Janice Long present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 26 April 1984. Featuring Sandie Shaw and The Smiths, Duran Duran, Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Flying Pickets and Lionel Richie.


FRI 21:30 Top of the Pops (b05t9wfw)
Steve Wright presents the programme, first broadcast on 24 April 1980. Featuring performances from Smokie, Paul McCartney, the Cure, Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Sky, Sad Cafe, Cockney Rejects, Bad Manners, David Essex, the Undertones, Johnny Logan, Blondie, and a dance sequence by Legs & Co.


FRI 22:00 BBC Four Sessions (b0074nct)
David Byrne

From the Union Chapel in Islington, an exclusive performance from multitalented former Talking Heads frontman and world music guru, David Byrne. Featuring classic Talking Heads numbers, songs from his solo album Look into the Eyeball, as well as excerpts from the opera La Traviata, Cape Verde's Cesaria Evora and a special version of his hit single with X-Press 2, Lazy.


FRI 23:00 Talking Heads Talking Video (m001ylt2)
Lead singer of Talking Heads, David Byrne, talks about the band's imaginative videos. First shown in 1987.


FRI 23:30 New York Rock at the BBC (b007mwcf)
From the streets of New York City to the studios of the BBC comes the cream of the New York rock scene, including classic archive performances from The Ramones, New York Dolls, Television, Blondie, Lou Reed and many more.


FRI 00:30 6 Music Festival (m001kjj2)
2023

Christine and the Queens

Christine and the Queens introduces his 6 Music Festival performance at Victoria Warehouse, Manchester. Christine and the Queens is a renowned French singer-songwriter, known for his poignant electronic pop music and his ability to juggle English and French in his lyrics. In the nine years following his debut, Chaleur Humaine, he has consistently pushed boundaries. Chris's headline set at this year’s 6 Music Festival is the global premiere of his brand new live show.


FRI 01:00 Eric Burdon: Rock ‘n’ Roll – Animal (m000frfc)
Born in 1941, Eric Burdon was – along with his band The Animals – one of the most important standard bearers of the British Invasion of America, right after The Beatles and ahead of The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks. Their 1964 interpretation of House of the Rising Sun was a global hit and inspired Bob Dylan (who recorded an acoustic version on his first album) to go electric and hit the stage from then on backed by a rock band.

Eric Burdon is a street kid from Newcastle upon Tyne. He burnt the midnight oil in the nightclubs on the docks. Had music not intervened, he might well have slipped into a career as a petty criminal, the kind of English gangster so aptly parodied by Guy Ritchie in films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But Burdon’s voice was his ticket to escape that bleak industrial destiny, and his We Gotta Get out of This Place went on to inspire Springsteen’s Born to Run.

Burdon was always an incurable hothead, prone to rages and no stranger to breaking contracts, a situation that would make him a lifelong underdog and impede his path to world stardom. By the end of the 70s he was so broke that he was living in a car on Sunset Strip.

Burdon regularly changed both his band and musical style. Alongside his passion for original American blues, he got together in the late 60s with black LA band War – itself a political statement in the Black Panther era – and, inspired by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, expanded his musical spectrum with jazz and funk. Burdon was involved in discovering Jimi Hendrix in Greenwich Village and they remained friends right up to the literal end (the pair spent the night before Jimi’s death together).

Eric Burdon’s creative output has made an important and profoundly authentic contribution to popular culture. Together with Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, he counts as one of that legendary generation’s last men standing. This film will convey the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s, while revealing Eric Burdon’s personal vision and moving us all with his retrospective ruminations on triumph and failure.


FRI 02:00 BBC Four Sessions (b0074nct)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]


FRI 03:00 Top of the Pops (b08znbn1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


FRI 03:30 Top of the Pops (b05t9wfw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:30 today]