Fred traces the development of the production of iron and steel, beginning his journey at Ironbridge. Travelling throughout Britain, he concludes his journey in Sheffield, the home of steel.
Bob Ross uses beautiful shades of green that burst forth in an exciting, realistic display of nature’s wonder.
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
Across the series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
Sam Willis explores how, by the Wars of the Roses, castles were under attack from a new threat - the cannon - but survived into the Tudor era only to find their whole purpose challenged. What had once been strategic seats of power now had to keep up with the fickle fashions of the court and become palaces to impress monarchs such as Elizabeth I.
Just as castles seemed to have lost their defensive function, the English Civil War erupted. The legacy of that tumultuous period resulted in castles no longer being associated with protection. Rather, their ruins took on a unique appeal, embodying a nostalgia for an age of chivalry that became a powerful part of the national psyche.
As it celebrates its 90th birthday, Barbara Flynn narrates the story of the nation's love affair with the Flying Scotsman, the steam locomotive that symbolises all that was great about British engineering.
The surprising story of how Britain entered a new age of steam railways after the Second World War and why it quickly came to an end.
After the war, the largely destroyed railways of Europe were rebuilt to carry more modern diesel and electric trains. Britain, however, chose to build thousands of brand new steam locomotives. Did we stay with steam because coal was seen as the most reliable power source or were the railways run by men who couldn't bear to let go of their beloved steam trains?
The new British locomotives were designed to stay in service well into the 1970s, but in some cases they were taken off the railways and scrapped within just five years. When Dr Richard Beeching took over British Railways in the 1960s the writing was on the wall, and in 1968 the last steam passenger train blew its whistle.
But while steam use declined, steam enthusiasm grew. As many steam engines lay rusting in scrapyards around Britain, enthusiasts raised funds to buy, restore and return them to their former glory. In 2008, the first brand new steam locomotive to be built in Britain in nearly 50 years rolled off the line, proving our enduring love of these machines.
Poet Sue Brown looks at what life was like in the post-war years for Birmingham’s Caribbean community. Sue, whose parents came to Britain in the 50s from Jamaica, meets people who remember and experienced the hostile environment that faced many of the early migrants. She explores her home city to discover the cultural significance of local black churches, music and the rise of Rastafarianism. She also meets legendary singer Jimmy Cliff to discuss his hit song Many Rivers to Cross. Cliff and others have written about the challenges faced by many early ‘settlers’. Sue recalls how migration literally divided families, including her own, and meant people lived thousands of miles apart.
Best known for 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle', which appeared on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, Yinka Shonibare MBE is one of Britain's foremost contemporary artists, rising to fame as part of the 'Sensation' generation along with Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the early 1990s.
Since then Shonibare has created a unique body of work. Often influenced by his Nigerian origins and combining darkness and humour, his art challenges our ideas about cultural identity and the post-colonial world.
For the last 20 years Shonibare has created a series of distinctive 'mannequin' figures - anonymous, headless and dressed in African batik fabrics. This film follows Shonibare creating his latest figure and talking about his life and career.
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER 2020
THU 19:00 Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age (b0074mb5)
Mining
In this programme Fred Dibnah takes a look at mining. His tour takes him from Cornwall to Scotland, exploring how tin, slate, lead, and coal were all extracted from the ground. Along the way he visits old mine workings, drives, winding engines, and descends a mine shaft strapped to the top of the cage.
THU 19:30 The Joy of Painting (m000nnzp)
Series 3
Mountain Summit
Snowy peaks point towards the heavens as Bob Ross surrounds a scene in a happy gathering of landscape finery.
American painter Bob Ross offers soothing words of encouragement to viewers and painting hobbyists in an enormously popular series that has captivated audiences worldwide since 1982. Ross is a cult figure, with nearly two million Facebook followers and 3,000 instructors globally. His soothing, nurturing personality is therapy for the weary, and his respect for nature and wildlife helps heighten environmental awareness.
Across the series, Ross demonstrates his unique painting technique, which eliminates the need for each layer of paint to dry. In real time, he creates tranquil scenes taken from nature, including his trademark ‘happy’ clouds, cascading waterfalls, snow-covered forests, serene lakes and distant mountain summits.
Many of Bob’s faithful viewers are not painters at all. They are relaxing and unwinding with Bob’s gentle manner and encouraging words, captivated by the magic taking place on the canvas.
THU 20:00 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (b007894r)
In the second in John Ford's cavalry trilogy, a US cavalry officer suffers a setback on his last mission and is 'retired' before he can take further action. To avert a full-scale war, he decides to act alone.
THU 21:40 How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears (b045nz9q)
Deserts
Ray Mears looks at how the landscapes of America's five great deserts challenged the westward push of the early pioneers.
As Ray travels through the cold high mountain Great Basin desert and the hot Sonoran desert of southern Arizona, he discovers how their hostile geography and rich geology shaped the stories of fortune hunting and lawlessness in the Wild West, and were the setting for the last wars between the US Army and the Apache warrior tribes.
Ray's journey begins in Monument Valley, whose dramatic desert landscape has become synonymous with the Wild West years. He explores how plants and animals survive in this waterless climate and how the Navajo Indian people adapted to the conditions. In Tucson, he meets up with desert coroners Bruce Anderson and Robin Reineke, who show him how the desert still kills people today.
He explores how the Apache adapted their warfare methods to the desert and how the US cavalry struggled in the hot arid landscape. In Tombstone, he gets to grips with the myths around lawmakers and lawlessness and how it flourished in the remote desert regions of the Old West. He discovers how this forbidding landscape was the perfect refuge for bandits and pursues the outlaw trail to Butch Cassidy's hideout at Robber's Roost. His journey ends with the story of Geronimo's surrender which marked the end of the Indian Wars, and of the Old West.
THU 22:40 Glen Campbell: The Rhinestone Cowboy (b01pwxs8)
In 2011, Glen Campbell announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and that he would be bowing out with a final album and farewell tour across Britain and America. This documentary tells Campbell's remarkable life story, from impoverished childhood in Arkansas to huge success, first as a guitarist and then as a singer, with great records like Wichita Lineman and Rhinestone Cowboy. With comments from friends and colleagues, including songwriter Jimmy Webb and Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees, it is a moving story of success, disgrace and redemption as rich as any of the storylines in Campbell's most famous songs.
The peak of Glen Campbell's career was in 1975, when he topped the charts around the world with Rhinestone Cowboy, but his musical journey to that point is fascinating. A self-taught teenage prodigy on the guitar, by his mid-twenties Campbell was one of the top session guitarists in LA, a key member of the band of session players now known as The Wrecking Crew. He played on hundreds of tracks while working for producers like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, including Daydream Believer by The Monkees, You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling by The Righteous Brothers, Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra and Viva Las Vegas by Elvis Presley.
But Campbell always wanted to make it under his own name. A string of records failed to chart until, in 1967, he finally found his distinctive country pop sound with hits like Gentle on My Mind and By the Time I Get to Phoenix. The latter was written by Jimmy Webb, and together the two created a string of great records like Wichita Lineman and Galveston. Campbell pioneered country crossover and opened the way for artists like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.
By the end of the 1960s, Campbell was the fastest rising star in American pop with his own television show and a starring role in the original version of True Grit. Over the following ten years, he had more success with Rhinestone Cowboy and Southern Nights, but his private life was in turmoil. Divorce, drink and drugs saw this clean-cut all-American hero fall from grace and a tempestuous relationship with country star Tanya Tucker was front-page news.
Despite a relapse in 2003, when he was arrested for drunk driving and his police mug shot was shown around the world, the last two decades have been more settled. He remarried, started a new family and renewed his Christian faith, and was musically rediscovered by a new generation. Like his friend Johnny Cash, he released acclaimed new albums with young musicians, covering songs by contemporary artists like U2 and The Foo Fighters. Therefore the diagnosis with Alzheimer's was all the more poignant, but his dignified farewell has made him the public face of the disease in the USA.
The film includes contributions by many of Campbell's friends and colleagues, including his family in Arkansas, fellow session musicians Carol Kaye and Leon Russell, long-time friend and collaborator Jimmy Webb, former Monkee Mickey Dolenz, broadcaster Bob Harris, lyricist Don Black and country music writer Robert Oermann.
THU 23:40 Blood of the Clans (m000lw7z)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
THU 00:40 Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA (b0b49rq2)
Series 1
Episode 2
This episode is set in the American metropolis - the soaring new cities of the East Coast with their futuristic skylines and lofty skyscrapers. But instead of looking up at the futuristic towers, Waldemar Januszczak explores the squalid boxing rings painted by George Bellows, Reginald Mash's decadent awaydays on Coney Island and the crazy escape into theosophy and abstraction mounted by Thomas Wilfred. The film culminates in the harsh immigrant experience of Ellis Island and the profound impact that rootlessness had on the art of Mark Rothko.
THU 01:40 The Joy of Painting (m000nnzp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 02:10 Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age (b0074mb5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
THU 02:40 How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears (b045nz9q)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:40 today]
FRIDAY 23 OCTOBER 2020
FRI 19:00 The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand (m0001jgs)
Episode 1
In this first episode of a three-part series, presenter and musician Neil Brand argues that the movie musical was the most important form of cinema from the advent of the age of sound. Beginning with the very first film musical, 1929’s Broadway Melody, Brand looks at the huge and lasting impact of the musical and, in his trademark analysis of songs at the piano, takes us through some of the most important numbers in this first golden age.
The remarkable success of Broadway Melody winning one of the first ever Academy Awards meant that film studios were eager to cash in on the possibilities of musical film. But, as Brand reveals, this was not always to guaranteed success. He shows how the first big-budget, all-colour musical, 1930’s King of Jazz, failed to capture the box office. He discusses how its lack of actual African American jazz musicians was one of its problems, by looking at the first dedicated African American musical - King Vidor’s Hallelujah. With the help of a gospel choir from the Mother AME Zion Church in New York, he examines how much Hallelujah actually reflected life in the Deep South in 1920s America.
Continuing the theme, Brand goes on to explain how the Great Depression in 1930s US actually inspired some of the most progressive and memorable examples of the first golden age of movie musicals: MGM’s 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. These were remarkably socially aware films, and as Neil demonstrates, songs such as We’re in the Money and Remember My Forgotten Man were both beautifully tuneful and lyrically poignant.
In an unexpected turn, the programme shifts focus to the USSR, where a little-known story of musical film is uncovered. From the early 1930s, Joseph Stalin actually commissioned a series of film musicals to promote the ideology of the Soviet Union. Beginning with the slapstick of 1934’s The Jolly Fellows, two years later came Circus, one of the most extraordinary musical films in Russian history. A tale of an exiled American woman with a mixed-race child, Circus was a remarkable piece of propaganda promoting the Soviet Union as a country of racial inclusion, exactly as Stalin began his 'great purge' - to silence any dissenters from his communist plan.
Back in Hollywood, the musical was surging forward with a whole new level of song and dance movie star; most significantly, the incredible partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. Brand visits the Royal Ballet in London, where principal dancer Steven McRae dances and analyses one of Astaire’s most jaw-dropping numbers, No Strings. Neil also guides us through the music of Top Hat’s iconic song Cheek to Cheek.
Finally, we explore how the introduction of fantasy and fairy tale invigorated the movie musical in the latter years of the 1930s. Walt Disney’s Snow White was a gamble that took three years to make but became one of the highest grossing films of all time, followed by MGM’s unforgettable The Wizard of Oz, released to cinemas a mere two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.
FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (m000nnyl)
Bruno Brookes presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 2 February 1990 and featuring Sybil, Sinead O'Connor and The House of Love.
FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (m000nnyn)
Gary Davies presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 8 February 1990 and featuring Phil Collins, The Beloved and Beats International.
FRI 21:00 Count Basie Through His Own Eyes (m000nnyq)
Documentary, told in Count Basie’s own words, which reveals for the first time the private passions and ambitions that inspired the world-famous bandleader and pianist.
Until now, little was known about Basie’s private and family life, but director Jeremy Marre has found a treasure trove of home movies and photo albums that show Basie’s remarkable relationship with his wife Catherine, whose pioneering support for African-American causes placed her at the side of Martin Luther King. Through Basie’s intimate footage and letters - and interviews with friends like Quincy Jones and Annie Ross - we discover the count’s protective love for his disabled daughter Diane who ‘was never out of his heart and mind - the hidden core of his creative life’.
Basie’s musical achievements were remarkable. He was the first African-American musician to win a Grammy. He brought the blues to the big band podium. He was ‘King of the Swing Kings’. We see rare performances with Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr and many others. But this film digs deeper, uncovering the inner motivation and passions that drove Basie’s career as he became a unique link between jazz and America’s turbulent social history.
FRI 22:20 Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes (m000b8pd)
A revelatory, thrilling and emotional journey behind the scenes of Blue Note Records, the pioneering label that gave voice to some of the finest jazz artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
When German Jewish refugees Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff started Blue Note in 1939 in New York, the two Berliners allowed their artists complete freedom and encouraged them to compose new music. Their visionary and uncompromising approach led to releases that did not just revolutionise jazz; they left an indelible imprint on art and music, including hip hop.
The present provides a point of departure from which the film recovers the past. Legendary artists Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter come together with today’s generation of groundbreaking Blue Note artists such as Robert Glasper and Ambrose Akinmusire to record an all-stars album.
These reflections lead us back to the highly influential figures of the past on which the legacy of Blue Note has been built, including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Horace Silver and Miles Davis. Rare archival interviews and conversations with Blue Note musicians provide an intimate look into the creation and philosophy behind some of the most seminal tracks in jazz history.
The film reveals the values that jazz embodies and that Blue Note has promoted since its inception: freedom of expression, equality, dialogue - values we can learn from and that are as relevant today as they were when the label was founded.
FRI 23:45 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 00:45 Hot Chocolate at the BBC (b06dl1c5)
Errol Brown, who died aged 71 in May 2015, was probably the most famous and ubiquitous black British pop star of the 70s and early 80s. He co-founded Hot Chocolate with Tony Wilson in 1970 and the band went on to have a hit every year between 1971 and 1984.
This compilation of BBC performances and rare interview extracts celebrates Errol and Hot Chocolate, showcasing their Top 10 hits alongside rarely seen early performances and cult fan favourites.
We journey through over 15 years of chart smashes showcasing all the infectious numbers - Every 1's a Winner, Emma, So You Win Again and It Started With a Kiss - and of course, The Full Monty scene-stealer You Sexy Thing, a song that was in the charts in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
There are reminders of just how many Top 10 moments they had, with Girl Crazy and No Doubt About It, the hit that got away - Mindless Boogie - and their first appearance on BBC television with Love Is Life. Hot Chocolate were that rarity, a 70s British pop band who largely wrote their own tunes and arrangements and a mixed race band who perhaps inadvertently helped foster an early sense of British multi-culturalism. In Errol, they had a frontman who was not only a great singer, songwriter and frontman, but also resolutely and undemonstratively always himself, at ease in his own skin.
FRI 01:45 Count Basie Through His Own Eyes (m000nnyq)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 03:00 The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand (m0001jgs)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 today]
LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)
A Very British History
23:00 WED (b0bty31k)
Arena
23:05 TUE (m000kbk6)
Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA
00:40 THU (b0b49rq2)
Blood of the Clans
21:00 TUE (m000lw7z)
Blood of the Clans
02:25 TUE (m000lw7z)
Blood of the Clans
23:40 THU (m000lw7z)
Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes
22:20 FRI (m000b8pd)
Castles: Britain's Fortified History
20:00 WED (b04v85sy)
Castles: Britain's Fortified History
02:30 WED (b04v85sy)
Collateral
22:00 SUN (b09s7hxt)
Collateral
22:55 SUN (b09sym6m)
Collateral
22:00 MON (b09tqwpx)
Collateral
23:00 MON (b09vg8x7)
Count Basie Through His Own Eyes
21:00 FRI (m000nnyq)
Count Basie Through His Own Eyes
01:45 FRI (m000nnyq)
EastEnders 2008
23:55 SUN (b00csh53)
EastEnders 2008
00:25 SUN (b00cshbz)
EastEnders 2008
00:55 SUN (b00csgxw)
EastEnders 2008
01:25 SUN (b00csgg5)
Fake or Fortune?
20:00 MON (b07ljhsm)
Fake or Fortune?
00:30 MON (b07ljhsm)
Francesco's Venice
19:00 SAT (b0078ssj)
Francesco's Venice
02:35 SAT (b0078ssj)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
19:00 MON (b0074m97)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
02:00 MON (b0074m97)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
19:00 TUE (b0074m9h)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
01:55 TUE (b0074m9h)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
19:00 WED (b0074m9s)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
02:00 WED (b0074m9s)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
19:00 THU (b0074mb5)
Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age
02:10 THU (b0074mb5)
Full Circle with Michael Palin
20:00 SAT (p00xb81f)
Full Circle with Michael Palin
01:45 SAT (p00xb81f)
Full Circle with Michael Palin
21:00 SUN (p00xb849)
Glen Campbell: The Rhinestone Cowboy
22:40 THU (b01pwxs8)
Hot Chocolate at the BBC
00:45 FRI (b06dl1c5)
How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears
21:40 THU (b045nz9q)
How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears
02:40 THU (b045nz9q)
Inside Cinema
00:00 MON (m000ng7r)
Inside Cinema
00:15 MON (m000ng7t)
Inspector Montalbano
21:00 SAT (m000nnzg)
Jazz Piano Gold
23:45 FRI (b01cc76p)
Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture
19:00 SUN (b00jzjs4)
Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture
02:00 SUN (b00jzjs4)
Play For Today
22:00 TUE (p0424x3z)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
20:00 THU (b007894r)
The Billion Dollar Art Hunt
21:00 MON (m000nnzl)
The Billion Dollar Art Hunt
02:30 MON (m000nnzl)
The Billion Dollar Art Hunt
00:00 WED (m000nnzl)
The Bridge
22:40 SAT (b06fh90b)
The Bridge
23:40 SAT (b06gnr77)
The Flying Scotsman: A Rail Romance
21:00 WED (b008m6wb)
The Joy of Painting
19:30 MON (m000nnzj)
The Joy of Painting
01:30 MON (m000nnzj)
The Joy of Painting
19:30 TUE (m000np09)
The Joy of Painting
01:25 TUE (m000np09)
The Joy of Painting
19:30 WED (m000np0k)
The Joy of Painting
01:30 WED (m000np0k)
The Joy of Painting
19:30 THU (m000nnzp)
The Joy of Painting
01:40 THU (m000nnzp)
The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand
19:00 FRI (m0001jgs)
The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand
03:00 FRI (m0001jgs)
Timeshift
22:00 WED (b00dzzdc)
Top of the Pops
00:40 SAT (m000ng79)
Top of the Pops
01:10 SAT (m000ng7c)
Top of the Pops
20:00 FRI (m000nnyl)
Top of the Pops
20:30 FRI (m000nnyn)
Vikings
20:00 TUE (b01ms4xm)
What Do Artists Do All Day?
01:00 WED (b06qnn2d)
Yellow Is Forbidden
00:35 TUE (m000h3dv)
Yellowstone
20:00 SUN (b00jrh7r)
Yellowstone
03:00 SUN (b00jrh7r)