The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.

Radio-Lists Home Now on BBC 4 Contact

RADIO-LISTS: BBC FOUR
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC 4 — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/



SATURDAY 19 FEBRUARY 2022

SAT 19:00 Wild (b008tfyt)
2007-08 Shorts

Glacier Mountain Goats

Wildlife documentary. It's spring for the mountain goats of Glacier National Park in Canada's Rocky Mountains. The young goats will have to learn how to survive in this beautiful but treacherous wilderness.


SAT 19:10 Lost Cities of the Ancients (b00792tn)
The Vanished Capital of the Pharaoh

This episode looks at the legendary lost city of Piramesse. This magnificent ancient capital was built 3,000 years ago by the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses the Great, but long ago the whole city disappeared. When it was rediscovered by early archaeologists, it opened up a bizarre puzzle - when Piramesse was finally found it was in the wrong place, somewhere Ramesses the Great could not possibly have built it.

Recreating the stories of both the early archaeologists and the ancient Egyptians, the film enters a lost world, recounting the strange tale of the quest for Piramesse and following the intriguing detective work of modern archaeologists Manfred Bietak and Edgar Pusch as they solve the baffling mystery of how this great lost city could vanish, only to reappear thousands of years later in the wrong place.


SAT 20:10 Around the World in 80 Days (b007895y)
Dateline to Deadline

With only 22 days to go, delays, misunderstandings and a suspect bomb all conspire to impede Michael Palin's journey around the globe.


SAT 21:00 The Promise (p0bfyqgz)
Series 1

Episode 3

Sarah fights to stay on the case after a major setback, which has thrown her personal links to the Charlotte Meyer investigation into sharp relief. In French with English subtitles.


SAT 21:55 The Promise (p0bfyqty)
Series 1

Episode 4

Fouquet has all the traits of a dangerous child predator, and Sarah is sure she has found the man behind both Charlotte Meyer and Fanny Vidal's disappearances. In French with English subtitles.


SAT 22:50 Parkinson: The Interviews (b007448x)
Series 1

Kenneth Williams

In this compilation of clips from five of his eight appearances on Parkinson, Kenneth Williams gives vent to his dislike of theatre critics as well as Michael Parkinson, and gives his rendition of My Crepes Suzette.

Contributors: John Betjeman, Patrick Campbell, Tom Lehrer, Annie Lewis, Tony Moss, Frank Muir, Robin Ray and Maggie Smith.


SAT 23:30 Young Ahmed (m0010rj9)
Film drama. A Belgian teenager sets out to kill his school teacher after adopting an extremist interpretation of the Qur'an. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.


SAT 00:50 Yes, Prime Minister (b0074rtb)
Series 1

A Real Partnership

Classic political sitcom. The government runs into a financial crisis just as MPs are due for a pay rise.


SAT 01:25 Keeping Up Appearances (b007brsg)
Series 2

Problems with Relatives

Sitcom about an irrepressible snob. Hyacinth's quest for perfection is somewhat hampered by the dubious antics of the rest of her family.


SAT 01:55 Around the World in 80 Days (b007895y)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:10 today]


SAT 02:45 Lost Cities of the Ancients (b00792tn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:10 today]



SUNDAY 20 FEBRUARY 2022

SUN 19:00 The Birth of British Music (b00kfqgq)
Purcell - The Londoner

In this series, conductor Charles Hazlewood explores the development of British music through the lives, times and works of four great composers, each with a major anniversary in 2009.

The first programme celebrates the music of Henry Purcell, one of the most seminal but mysterious figures of British musical history. Charles investigates what life would have been like for a composer in 17th-century London through a wide range of Purcell's music, from the vast but often overlooked output of tavern songs to his glorious sacred music and pioneering stage works such as Dido and Aeneas. He discovers how Purcell's work is still central to British life today, visiting the Grenadier Guards at Wellington Barracks and attending the Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph.

Music is performed by Charles Hazlewood's own ensemble, Army of Generals, as well as renowned musicians including Sir John Tomlinson and the Choir of Westminster Abbey.


SUN 20:00 Dance Passion (m0014rg5)
2022

Highlights

Josie d’Arby and Karim Zeroual present highlights from Dance Passion 2022, a UK-wide celebration of dance in all its forms, from ballet and contemporary to ballroom.

Filmed at five locations across the UK, Dance Passion 2022 features a diversity of performances from established companies and emerging talents at the forefront of the British dance scene together with specially commissioned short dance films.

Highlights include:

An extract from Birmingham Royal Ballet’s brand new production Don Quixote, filmed at the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry.

Three innovative films that challenge audiences’ perceptions of how dance is captured.

A performance inspired by boxing legend Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight world champion, recorded at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds.

Simple Cypher’s exciting fusion of hip-hop and circus acrobatics, filmed at Theatre Royal Plymouth’s TR2 centre.

Cardiff-based National Dance Company Wales performing Ludo.

Ballet Black’s stunning Washa from Sadler’s Wells in London.

Dance Passion is a collaboration between BBC Arts and One Dance UK, and supported by Arts Council England.


SUN 21:00 Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra (m0014rg7)
Marking the thirtieth birthday in 2019 of Bangarra Dance Theatre – an Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander organisation, and one of Australia's leading performing arts companies – Firestarter takes audiences on a tour of Bangarra’s birth and spectacular growth. It presents its founders and tells the story of how three young Indigenous Australian brothers – Stephen, David and Russell Page – turned the newly born dance group into a First Nations cultural powerhouse.

Through the eyes of the brothers and company alumni, Firestarter explores the loss and reclaiming of culture, the burden of intergenerational trauma and – crucially – the power of art as a messenger for social change and healing.


SUN 22:00 Dance: BBC Introducing Arts (m0014rf7)
Brenda Emmanus presents an innovative collection of dramatic short films from emerging artists. Compelling stories of identity and isolation, trauma and power combine with the visceral impact of dance to explore our place in today’s world in a thought-provoking and heartfelt way.


SUN 23:00 For Folk’s Sake: Morris Dancing and Me (m0003vhz)
What’s the best way to save the ageing breed of male Morris dancer from extinction? Richard Macer infiltrates the endangered world of bells, beer and beards to discover an unlikely saviour of this ancient masculine tradition in the form of women.

The Morris Ring, the oldest Morris organisation in the country, has voted to admit women dancers for the first time with the hope that its member sides - as the teams are called - might stem the tide of declining numbers. But there are hardliners who believe females will dilute the very essence of what makes men’s Morris great. So, is Morris better when danced just by men or are women and mixed sides just as good?

During this journey, Macer is invited to join his local side the Manchester Morris Men, where the average age is over 70. Macer might represent an injection of youth to this team but does he have the talent to perform at one of the biggest festivals in the Morris Ring calendar?

What emerges during a long hot summer of folk dance is a bitter conflict as one of Britain’s most enduring traditions tries to reconcile itself to the modern world of gender equality. It also becomes a fascinating meditation on the nature of masculinity in a society in thrall to the idea of political correctness. And there is a personal development too for Macer, which sends his journey off in an unexpected direction.


SUN 00:00 Inside America's Treasure House: The Met (m000znv8)
Series 1

Episode 1

The series begins in spring 2019, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art is in its pomp – the coffers full, visitor numbers are up and staff preparing to mark, in one year's time, the museum’s 150th anniversary. The museum has long been planning a series of stand-out exhibitions and events. The art press gather for a breakfast in the American Wing sculpture court, surrounded by treasures reflecting the tastes of the philanthropist founders of the Metropolitan. These were new-money industrialists and financiers, who believed that the lives of New York's teeming millions would be improved by their proximity to beauty. That beauty, however, was vested almost exclusively in the European arts and the artefacts of classical civilisations. The museum is aware that the tastes of the Gilded Age aren't for everyone, and a dance display by the House of Gorgeous shows they're awake to the woke.

In his fifth-floor office sits Met president and CEO Dan Weiss, the art historian recently appointed to steer the largest art museum in the Americas out of a period of falling visitor numbers and financial turbulence. Overlooking Central Park, he revels in a painting by Alfred Sisley, a print of which once graced his college digs. Those who built the Met in 1870 wanted an American Louvre, an audacious vision, he says, considering they had no art. The likes of JP Morgan, a previous president, simply spent and lent big, snapping up artefacts all over the world and donating their own collections. Weiss is also spending big for next year's special exhibitions and, with the Met’s director Max Hollein, planning a slew of great events. He's also splashing out on capital projects like the new six-acre glass roof for the European Paintings gallery, at $150m, just one improvement that will make 2020 a landmark year.

The inner workings of the Met are revealed with excursions into various departments, and the warren of labs, workrooms and archives above and deep below the public areas. In the Arms and Armour workshops, they're repairing gauntlets before sending some of their massive collection off to Vienna, and preparing for the arrival from Europe of new old iron and steel for a great show of German armour, The Last Knight.

There's more quiet frenzy in the Costume Institute. The conservators have just recovered from the 2019 Met Gala, the starry night where celebrities parade for the camera and make the donations that fund this department. Staff have just delivered this year’s annual show, Camp, a pink celebration of costume drama that is pulling in the crowds. In the next room, they're amassing black garments for the monster 2020 show currently being crafted by British uber-designer Es Devlin.

The film drills deepest into preparations for a show about British mercantile expansion and its impact on interior design. Assistant curator Dr Wolf Burchard has been spirited from the National Trust to Fifth Avenue, his mission: to tell a 500-year story of enterprise from the Tudor to Victorian eras. The museum's existing British galleries are being remodelled for the occasion, and Burchard and his team must navigate the construction works to create a display of 700 items. They've got a £20m budget and seven months.

Two floors up, colleagues face similar time challenges as they build the keystone exhibition Making the Met. It tells the tale of the museum's 15 decades using objects from every department, and new ones donated by sponsors and benefactors. Outside, Austrian Max Hollein, only a few months in post, leads the drive to make the Met feel more modern, diverse and inclusive. For the first time since the austere Beaux-Arts building opened, niches in the exterior are filled with art - a series of bronzes by Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu. She tells how groundbreaking this initiative is.

The Met is on a roll. We are with the glitterati flocking across the Upper East Side for a private viewing of the British exhibition. The public opening of the new galleries, on 2 March 2020, heralds the start of the 150th year programme. Curator Burchard says how strange it feels to have his galleries packed with thousands.

That very same night, the first victim of Covid-19 is in hospital. Within days, the Met will be the first large institution in the city to lock down. As New York becomes a ghost town, viewers are on the inside watching the museum trying to protect one million exhibits from light damage and moths, wrestling with 20 per cent staff cuts and losses of $150m, while working towards a reopening, sometime in an uncertain future. When that day comes, we witness emotional scenes that underline a truth: that New Yorkers regard the Met as their own. More than just a museum, it's a resource and a refuge.


SUN 01:00 Inside America's Treasure House: The Met (m000zwpm)
Series 1

Episode 2

The Met's 150th anniversary year has been derailed by Covid-19. Then in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd, only the latest in a litany of killings of African Americans by white police officers, forces America to confront, once again, inequalities in social justice.

At the museum, the executive are examining their historical record on inclusion, exclusion and diversity, in art and staffing, and find it wanting. In an open letter, questions have been raised and accusations levelled about systemic racism at all New York arts institutions. CEO Dan Weiss has been wrong-footed by anger from within the museum about a postcolonial state of mind expressed in some of the Met's most treasured objects.

In the American Wing, Weiss ponders a 21st-century question: some of the art reflects 19th-century tastes and attitudes to other cultures, in particular the First Nations, who were moved off their homelands even as the museum was being built. It's not just indigenous peoples; most citizens of New York are not Caucasian - where are their stories? How do black and brown visitors feel about their representation in an art house that says it wants to be all things to all people?

The programme moves on with a chronicle of a visit to the Met by Connecticut resident and mum of two Tracy-Ann Samuel. The African American community worker grew up in the city. For her and husband Cleon the Met was more than a museum; it was a portal to other cultures, ideas and, of course, beauty. She wants her girls, Kristen, ten, and Kelsie, four, to see positive depictions of people who look like them, and to ask questions about art that makes statements and assumptions about gender, power and race.

The theme of art and politics as indivisible begins. The Samuel family analyses the messaging in one of the Met's keystone treasures, Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware. It's a celebrated depiction of heroism, idealising a pivotal moment in the struggle to create the republic, which forms part of the national narrative displayed in the American Wing. Kristen Samuel is a dispassionate viewer, but finds little to interest her.

In contrast, Wooden Boat People, two works by Cree artist Kent Monkman, speak directly to the family. Provocatively positioned in the Great Hall, the paintings were commissioned by the Met, who invited Monkman to look for inspiration in the collections. Leutze's Washington portrait was his choice. The works feature Monkman's gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Testickle.

We see the Canadian artist in his rural studio near Toronto to hear of his relationship with the Met, colonial attitudes and the activities of the slave-owning, native-baiting Washington.

At the museum, there's more political comment, long hidden but now revealed by x-ray analysis of Jacques-Louis David's portrait of scientists Mr and Mrs Lavoisier. Painted just before the French Revolution, it had depicted the bourgeois couple as clever but chic, but was hurriedly overpainted to save them from the guillotine.

But should stories of the old, white and dead take precedence in the museum? And should it concern itself with anything more than the beauty of the exhibits? These issues are discussed by Head of Modern and Contemporary Art Sheena Wagstaff, who proactively promotes the work of African American and other unrepresented artists. She's just added Rashid Johnson's Five Broken Men to the collection.

The issue, says Mary Rockefeller, whose family have long been Met donors, is respect. Her father Nelson was so obsessed with what was once called ‘Primitive Art’ that he gave the Met his personal collection and then built a vast wing to house it. Named for Mary's twin David, who disappeared in Papua New Guinea, the collection of arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas is the setting for the existential question facing all museums: shouldn't the exhibits be given back?

Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano has taken the discussion a step forward by 3D modelling a 1,000-year-old wooden devotional statue from the Rockefeller collection. He's not for taking it back, but for re-contextualising an object designed to be handled. We are with him as he unveils it to veteran social photographer Hiram Maristany. Luciano is working on a Met programme that aims to use artefacts to build links with communities who might feel that the museum, and its collections, have little to say to them.

At the end of their visit, the Samuel family find that the season's stand-out exhibition, The American Struggle, speaks volumes to them. Thirty panels by Jacob Lawrence, leading African American painter of the postwar period, celebrate the contribution of black citizens to the birth of the nation. Tracy-Ann sees the Met has a long way to go, but the journey to greater diversity, fairer representation and visibility has begun.


SUN 02:00 The Birth of British Music (b00kfqgq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SUN 03:00 Dance Passion (m0014rg5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



MONDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2022

MON 19:00 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009hyp)
Series 1

Episode 1

Gareth Edwards, once voted the greatest rugby player of all time, is not quite so coordinated when put in charge of a seventy-foot narrowboat. Now in his 70s, the rugby legend is busier than ever and constantly racing from one thing to the next. Which is why his wife, childhood sweetheart Maureen, has determined he needs to chill out more. She’s hatched a plan to whisk him away to explore the four Welsh canals. As no narrowboat is allowed to go more than three miles an hour, she figures that exploring the Welsh canals is the one way to finally get him to relax. But the plan is not entirely successful as Gareth’s stress levels go through the roof once he is in charge of his narrowboat. Even though everything around them happens slowly, avoiding hitting obstacles along the way proves no easy feat. Maureen, meanwhile, has some previous experience of driving a barge so knows the perils but also struggles when she jumps in the driving seat. After a pub lunch, Gareth and Maureen return to find their boat has drifted off and blocked the entire canal.

Somehow, Wales’s much-loved couple still find time to appreciate the breathtaking scenery. The Llangollen canal is one of the most scenic canals in Britain, with stunning landscapes and the 300m long Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. The aqueduct was designed by Thomas Telford in 1795 and carries the canal over the River Dee on 19 vast arches. In its day it was radical new technology. Even now it’s not for the faint-hearted, and a good head for heights is needed before setting out to cross the 200-year-old structure.

Gareth takes an opportunity to catch up with an old friend who lives near the canal. Dai Davies was goalkeeper for Wales between 1969 and 1987, but he and Gareth go back further than that. While young men, still dreaming of sporting success, they were flatmates. Now Dai has left international sporting success behind him to focus on alternative therapies. Maureen hopes Dai will finally manage to slow Gareth down. Even if she doesn’t succeed, this warm and funny duo will have still enjoyed some of the best landscapes you can imagine on this spectacular route.


MON 19:30 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078w3r)
Water and Boilers

Documentary series in which Fred Dibnah travels around Britain in his restored traction engine in search of engineering skills and technology from a bygone age, visiting ancient iron foundries, industrial sites and little workshops.

Fred visits Ryhope pumping station in Sunderland and meets the volunteers who maintain the museum, travels across the Middlesborough transporter bridge and sees the Israel Newton boiler works in Bradford.


MON 20:00 Timeshift (b00ff170)
How to Write a Mills and Boon

What happens when a literary novelist tries to write popular romantic fiction? To mark 100 years of romance publishers Mills and Boon, literary novelist Stella Duffy takes on the challenge of writing for them.

Romantic fiction is a global phenomenon, and Mills and Boon are among the biggest names in the business. The company welcomes submissions from new authors, but as Duffy soon finds out, writing a Mills and Boon is harder than it looks.

Help is at hand from the publishers themselves, a prolific Mills and Boon author and some avid romance fans, as Duffy's quest to create the perfect romantic novel takes her from London to Italy on a journey that is both an insight into the art of romantic fiction and the joy and frustration of writing itself.


MON 21:00 The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama (m000mmgx)
Series 1

The Chambers of the Mind

With contributions from Tobias Menzies, Peter Doherty, Piotr Anderszewski and Sir David Attenborough, Simon tells the story of how the romantics - fuelled by the failures of the French Revolution and horrors of the industrial revolution – retreated from the tragic uproar of public life to take a journey into their own minds. Here, long before the invention of modern psychology, they discovered the subconscious, something that would have a profound effect on our modern world.

The film starts with the story of one of France’s most celebrated novelists and poets, Victor Hugo. After falling foul of the French emperor, Louis Napoleon, Hugo fled to the island of Guernsey. Here, he created some of the most haunting images of the romantic age, thousands of drawings plucked from his restless, melancholy mind.

Long before Sigmund Freud and the invention of modern psychoanalysis, it is often forgotten that it was the romantics who became the first intrepid explorers of the deepest, darkest corners of the human mind. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Simon traces the origins of this revolution to the prints of Giambattista Piranesi. His series of Imaginary Prisons are the first images of the inner visions of the mind, and they have had a long-lasting influence in our modern world - not least in modern cinema.

Among those inspired by Piranesi's images was poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, later, one of his disciples, journalist, writer and wannabe-poet Thomas de Quincey. Both of them used opium to open up ‘the apocalypse of the world within’. Simon tells the story of how both artists changed the way we think about the human mind.

Simon then looks at how the romantics changed the way we think about madness. In their craving for deeper experiences, very few romantics - at one stage or other - didn’t think they were going mad.

One, however, found a way to avoid the fate of so many his colleagues and friends: William Wordsworth. He was equally interested in the mapping and exploration of his own mind, but he also realised that it was by attaching it to something bigger that he could escape the irrational forces of darkness and self-obsession that threatened to overwhelm him. Meeting Sir David Attenborough, who also reads lines from Tintern Abbey and Wordsworth’s The Tables Turned, Simon asks whether we need to heed the lessons of the romantics before it is too late.


MON 22:00 Desperate Romantics (b00m0sp9)
Episode 3

The youngest and most talented member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Millais, delights in having landed the influential John Ruskin as his new patron. His friends and fellow artists, Hunt and Rossetti, watch on in bitter envy as Millais begins his rise to fame and fortune.

However, before long Millais realises that Ruskin's patronage comes at a price. Ruskin insists on Millais painting his beautiful, young wife Effie who, it is plain to see, is far from happy. She confesses to Millais that after five years of marriage she is still a virgin. Ruskin cannot or will not lay a finger on her. Effie explains to Millais that he is just another in a long line of men that Ruskin has attempted to lay in her path in order to stop her raising the issue of sex. Horrified, Millais realises what is expected of him: in return for Ruskin's patronage, he is to sleep with his wife.

True to form, Rossetti immediately seizes on the benefits of his friend's predicament. Millais has a rich and influential patron married to a beautiful, young woman who he wants Millais to sleep with as and when he pleases. Where lies the problem in that?

Millais, however, is crestfallen at the idea of sleeping with another man's wife. What of the potential scandal? He resolves to walk away from Ruskin and to leave the whole situation behind altogether. But there is one significant problem with this plan - he is in love with Effie.


MON 23:00 Desperate Romantics (b00m64ms)
Episode 4

While Hunt is far away in the Holy Land, Fred sets out to fulfil his promise to look after Annie and prevent her from getting up to mischief. But Annie proves too hot to handle: before Fred knows what's what, she has seduced him. Hunt returns from the Holy Land none the wiser and is in fact so taken with Annie's improved deportment and education under Fred's care that he asks her to marry him.

Rossetti, meanwhile, receives an encouraging visit from Ruskin who, with Millais no longer on his books, is looking for a new protege. Rossetti is so excited by the prospect of Ruskin's patronage that he finally pops the question to Lizzie, who is as delighted with his proposal as Annie is with Hunt's.

In spite of newlywed Millais's smug insistence that in married life lies true happiness, both Hunt and Rossetti begin to waver at the prospect of what lies ahead. Could it be that Hunt prefers the idea of Annie the whore to that of Annie the wife? Is Rossetti capable of taking on responsibility and a conventional role in life? Fred watches on as his friends start to panic, but can he hold his own nerve and keep his affair with Annie a secret from his friend 'Maniac' Hunt?


MON 00:00 Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon (b070sqb0)
Sam Roddick explores the enduring appeal of Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus, one of the most celebrated paintings in western art and a joyous celebration of female sexuality. Its journey to worldwide fame was far from straightforward and it lay in obscurity for centuries. Artist and entrepreneur Sam explains why Botticelli's nude was so revolutionary and explores its impact on contemporary culture with artists such as Terry Gilliam, who memorably reinvented Venus for his Monty Python's Flying Circus animations.


MON 00:30 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009hyp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


MON 01:00 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078w3r)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


MON 01:30 Timeshift (b00ff170)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


MON 02:30 The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama (m000mmgx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



TUESDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2022

TUE 19:00 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009q7k)
Series 1

Episode 2

Gareth Edwards, once voted the greatest rugby player of all time, is not quite so coordinated when put in charge of a seventy-foot narrowboat. Stress levels are running high from the off when Gareth and his wife, childhood sweetheart Maureen, face their first lock on the Montgomery Canal. Gareth assumes the role of captain, while Maureen takes charge of the heavy lifting.
The intrepid canal explorers discover the incredible story of the narrowboat Cressy as they pass the place it was built. Use of the canals for the transporting of goods was dying out in the latter half of the 20th century. But the writer LTC Rolt took Cressy along the overgrown canal system and wrote the bestselling book Narrow Boat. It's credited with inspiring interest in canals for pleasure not industry, kick-starting the canal leisure industry and saving many old waterways from being lost forever.
Gareth and Maureen get a lift on a horse-drawn narrowboat, finally experiencing the tranquillity of near silence drifting through a pristine landscape without a roaring engine. At a section of canal that is still impassable, they learn of plans underway to restore the canal back to its former glory.
Gareth also manages to hitch a lift on a barge taking schoolchildren deep into the countryside to experience life on the canal. Finally, Gareth is asked to fire the starting gun at a triathlon in which people cycle, run and row the entire length of the canal to raise money to help fund the restoration. The journey along the Montgomery canal with two of Wales' most loved figures delivers plenty of humour and a heart-warming celebration of some of the best landscape the country has to offer.


TUE 19:30 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078w6r)
The Road to Steel City

Documentary series in which Fred Dibnah travels around Britain in his restored traction engine in search of engineering skills and technology from a bygone age, visiting ancient iron foundries, industrial sites and little workshops.

Fred fulfils an ambition by driving across the imposing Scammonden Bridge over the M62. He and Alf also visit the steel city of Sheffield to take a tour round a fascinating forge and watch crucible steel being produced by experts Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.


TUE 20:00 Keeping Up Appearances (b007bg0k)
Series 2

Onslow's Birthday

Hyacinth is dreading being invited to Onslow's birthday party almost as much as he dreads her agreeing to come. However, she changes her mind when she learns that Rose's new boyfriend, a well-to-do Greek businessman, will be picking her and Richard up from their home in his limousine.

In true Hyacinth fashion, she decides to hold a cocktails and canapes party starting an hour before the limousine's planned arrival time so that the invited crowd will see the prestigious form of transport being used. Sadly, things do not go quite as she expected...


TUE 20:30 Yes, Prime Minister (b0074qxj)
Series 1

A Victory for Democracy

Classic sitcom about a beleaguered PM. Jim Hacker begins to wonder whether the government runs the Foreign Office, or vice versa.


TUE 21:00 Rigs of Nigg (m000yybp)
It is the early 70s, and oil has been discovered in the North Sea. The UK needs rigs and needs them fast. Their search for a location to build the platforms settles on the sleepy Highland bay of Nigg on the Cromarty Firth, and a way of life is changed for ever.

Rigs of Nigg is the story of how over 5,000 men, sought locally and from across the globe, came together to create structures previously thought to be unbuildable and to withstand elements considered unsurvivable. But the biggest impact was on Nigg and the surrounding villages. Farm work was no longer the mainstay, jobs in the Nigg yard paid four times as much and nothing would be the same again. Heady days of tough work and hard living set some up for life but also took their toll on many.


TUE 22:00 The Secret Science of Sewage (m000t8zl)
Dr George McGavin and Dr Zoe Laughlin set up base camp at one of the UK's biggest sewage works to investigate the revolutionary science finding vital renewable resources and undiscovered life in human waste.

Teaming up with world-class scientists, they search for biological entities in sewage with potentially lifesaving medical properties, find out how pee can generate electricity, how gas from poo can fuel a car and how nutrients in waste can help solve the soil crisis. They follow each stage of the sewage treatment process, revealing what the stuff we flush can tell us about how we live today, and the mindboggling biotechnology being harnessed to clean it, making the wastewater safe enough to return to the environment


TUE 23:00 Locomotion: Dan Snow's History of Railways (b01qh3z3)
Episode 3

Over just 50 years, Britain's railways grew from a handful of small lines carrying coal to the biggest industry in the strongest nation on the planet. A nation had built the railways and now those railways would build a nation, influencing working conditions for its employees, proving a valuable export across the globe and even changing warfare.

Yet the story of railways up until the beginning of the Second World War concerned who they really belonged to - the private rail companies who were obsessed with profit, the public who rode them, or the government, who needed them at times of crisis but was reluctant to regulate.


TUE 00:00 Railways: The Making of a Nation (b07x4fg9)
Time

Historian Liz McIvor explores how Britain's expanding rail network was the spark to a social revolution, starting in the 1800s and continuing through to modern times. A fast system of transportation shaped so many areas of our industrial nation - from what we eat to where we live, work and play. The railways generated economic activity but they also changed the nature of business itself. They even changed attitudes to time and how we set our clocks. Our railways may have reflected deep class divisions, but they also brought people together as never before, and helped forge a new sense of national identity.

This episode looks at how you organise a rail network in a country made up of separate local time zones and no recognised timetables. Before the railways, our country was divided and local time was proudly treasured. Clocks in the west of the country were several minutes behind those set in the east. The railways wanted the country to step to a new beat in a world of precise schedules and timetables that recognised Greenwich Mean Time. Not everyone was keen to step in line, and some complained about the new world of one single time zone and precise schedules.


TUE 00:30 Dance: BBC Introducing Arts (m0014rf7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Sunday]


TUE 01:30 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009q7k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 02:00 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078w6r)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 02:30 Rigs of Nigg (m000yybp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 23 FEBRUARY 2022

WED 19:00 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009xs7)
Series 1

Episode 3

Rugby legend Gareth Edwards and wife Maureen’s canal adventure continues in style as they are entrusted with a classy craft on which to explore the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. Determined to show that he has mastered the art of narrow-boating, Gareth takes charge of the Bentley of barges. But no amount of determination prevents a few bumps and scrapes along the way. As a reward for their endeavours, the intrepid duo discover a way to make gin with ingredients found in the hedgerows.
Gareth is a lifelong fisherman and loves nothing more than a few hours on a riverbank. When the canal passes the Glanusk Estate, Gareth seizes the chance to meet up with Tiggy Pettifer. Once nanny to the royal princes, Tiggy now runs the estate. Gareth admits that if he had to make a choice between scoring a try for Wales or catching the perfect salmon, it would be catching the fish every time. As Gareth and Maureen pull into Brecon, where the canal ends, they couldn’t have a more appropriate welcoming party. A jazz band – a style of music with which the town is synonymous thanks to its annual festival - is waiting to greet them.


WED 19:30 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078wb3)
Mechanics and Riveters

Documentary series in which Fred Dibnah travels around Britain in his restored traction engine in search of engineering skills and technology from a bygone age, visiting ancient iron foundries, industrial sites and little workshops. Fred stops off at Andy Thornton's, a company that makes ornate carvings, moves on to Worsborough to have a go at making hot forge rivets, then travels down to Derbyshire to visit the Midland Railway Centre.


WED 20:00 Great Barrier Reef (b019851n)
Nature's Miracle

Three-part series exploring Australia's Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world and the largest living structure on our planet.

Monty Halls explores its full 2,000-kilometre length, from the wild outer reefs of the Coral Sea to the tangled mangrove and steaming rainforest on the shoreline, from large mountainous islands to tiny coral cays barely above sea level, from the dark depths of the abyss beyond the reef to colourful coral gardens of the shallows.

Along the way, he experiences the reef at its most dangerous and its most intriguing, and visits areas that have rarely been filmed, from the greatest wildlife shipwreck on earth to the mysterious seafloor of the lagoon, where freakish animals lurk under every rock.

The first film explores the complex structure of the coral reef itself and the wildlife that lives on it. So vast it is visible from space, the reef is actually built by tiny animals in partnership with microscopic plants. It is a place full of surprises that is always changing, responding to the rhythms of weather, tide, sun and moon.

Within this magical and intensely crowded world, this episode reveals how the amazing reef creatures compete and cooperate - from deadly fish-hunting snails to sharks that can walk on land, fighting corals and parrot fish that spin sleeping bags every night.

Remote cameras, cutting-edge underwater macro and digital time-lapse photography have captured many sequences which have never been filmed before, providing completely fresh perspectives on this extraordinary natural wonder.


WED 21:00 Digging for Britain (m000bn2l)
Series 8

West

Professor Alice Roberts returns with the eighth series of BBC Four’s Digging for Britain. In the first episode, we explore this year’s finds in the west of Britain.

A secret location in the Cotswolds, with all the hallmarks of a high-status Anglo Saxon cemetery, gives up a very precious and fragile artefact. And at the site of Shaftesbury Abbey, Dr Naoise MacSweeney joins archaeologist Julian Richards in his hunt for the missing cloister.

We visit the bone cave of Wales once inhabited by Neanderthals and early humans, while on Salisbury Plain archaeologists have a puzzle. Have they found more remains of the mysterious Beaker People, even though there’s no beaker? The programme also follows an archaeological rescue as a team from Cardiff University is called in to investigate medieval bones protruding from cliff face on the Welsh coast.


WED 22:00 Mission: Joy – With Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama (m0014rhk)
Deeply moving and laugh-out-loud funny, Mission: Joy gives unprecedented access to the friendship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Tutu. The self-described ‘mischievous brothers’ were filmed over five days by an award-winning team who captured a relationship built on truth, honesty and, most importantly, joy.

The film goes behind the scenes at the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, where Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama recount stories from their lives, both having lived through periods of incredible difficulty.

With genuine affection, mutual respect and a healthy dose of teasing, the two friends impart lessons gleaned from experience, ancient traditions and cutting-edge science to show that it is possible to live with joy in the face of all of life’s challenges, from the extraordinary to the mundane. Mission: Joy is an antidote for our times.


WED 23:20 Reporting History: Mandela and a New South Africa (m00052bl)
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mandela's election, BBC Correspondent Fergal Keane went back to examine his reports and consider why history did not turn out the way he expected.

At the heart of the film is an interview in which Fergal explores his decades of reporting in South Africa, from the fear being caught up in violent protests to the joy of reporting for BBC Newsbeat as Mandela was sworn in. He also meets historians and other experts as he considers how Mandela’s legacy has played out.


WED 00:20 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m0009xs7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 00:50 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078wb3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 01:20 Digging for Britain (m000bn2l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


WED 02:20 Great Barrier Reef (b019851n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



THURSDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2022

THU 19:00 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m000b4kx)
Series 1

Episode 4

Rugby legend Gareth Edwards and his wife, and childhood sweetheart, Maureen reach the final leg of their round-Wales adventure by canal. And the conclusion of their beautiful but bumpy journey through the most spectacular scenery Wales has to offer has a personal connection for them both. This pair of narrowboat novices grew up at opposite ends of the same street in the village of Gwaun-cae-Gurwen, a few miles from Neath. As children, they would play in the areas by the derelict canals but knew very little of them and their history. Today, though the canals are virtually impassable, they have been cleaned up. Gareth and Maureen discover no fewer than three canals on their doorstep: the Swansea Canal and the Neath and Tennant Canals. The canals reveal a story of industry that once dominated the area, canals being constructed to get coal and iron to the docks. But now there is a plan afoot to give them a new lease of life. Teams of dedicated volunteers are working on the old canals, hoping to restore and reopen them. Gareth and Maureen can’t help but be impressed when they take to the water by motorboat and even canoe to get a sense of what the canals will be like when they reopen.


THU 19:30 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078wfk)
Pattern Making

Fred and the boys are staying with the Howard brothers, some old traction engine friends, and taking a break. The engine is having a few problems so it comes into the shed, where Jack takes the front wheel off to see what the problem is. Luckily there are plenty of helping hands around.

Leaving the engine behind, Fred visits David Ragsdale, a skilled pattern maker who just happens to own six steam engines. David explains how it all works, then they go directly to the foundry to see the next stage in the process.

Steam enthusiasts manage to use steam for all manner of things. Fred visits Tom Nuttall, a man who runs a garden centre and museum - all through the power of steam.

The team take a trip out to Ashbourne to visit a clockmaker. The whole workshop is belt driven, just like Fred's garden, and has been a family business since 1826. Fred marvels at the skills and techniques involved in the delicate processes and watches how the tiny teeth are cut into the cogs.


THU 20:00 The Third Man (b0074qmr)
Classic film noir about an American writer who visits postwar Vienna to see an old friend, but is told that his friend is dead. Incredulous at the suggestion his friend was a criminal, the writer attempts to clear the dead man's name, but soon finds events taking a strange turn - his friend is very much alive, dealing drugs on the black market.


THU 21:40 Coast (b07mhw25)
Series 8 Reversions

Joy of the Coast 1

To discover the pure pleasure of seaside leisure, the team seek out the ideal locations to enjoy their personal passions and experience the joy of the coast.

Nick Crane heads to his beloved Western Isles in Scotland to attempt a daunting, long-coveted mountaineering challenge on the Isle of Skye. For years, Nick has dreamed of climbing the fearsome Cioch. This singular and impressive spear of rock, the scene for a spectacular sword fight in the film Highlander, was only conquered for the first time in 1906. The men who originally attempted the hazardous route to its summit were an unlikely pair - John Mackenzie, a Scottish mountain guide, and Norman Collie, an English professor of chemistry - but their joint endeavour would bind them into a 30-year friendship. Nick uses Victorian mountaineering gear as he attempts to follow in the footsteps of Mackenzie and Collie and climb the Cioch for himself. Along the way, he learns something of the triumph and tragedy of their lives, but Nick's reward at the climax of the hazardous ascent comes with the discovery of a new favourite view - an incredible seascape framed by Britain's most glorious coastal peaks.


THU 22:00 I, Tonya (m000mtlv)
Seeking figure-skating success, Tonya Harding instead finds notoriety in this darkly comic recreation of a sporting scandal.

Featuring a multi-award-winning performance from Allison Janney.


THU 23:55 Storyville (p08yrl5s)
Price of Gold

The world could not keep its eyes off two athletes at the 1994 Winter Games – Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Just weeks before the Olympics in 1994, at the US Figure Skating Championships, Kerrigan was injured by an unknown assailant. Harding's ex-husband had plotted the attack with his misfit friends to eliminate Kerrigan from the competition.

The Price of Gold takes a fresh look at the scandal that elevated the popularity of professional figure skating, with Harding still facing questions over what she knew and when she knew it.


THU 01:10 Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure (m000b4kx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


THU 01:40 Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (b0078wfk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 02:10 The Secret Science of Sewage (m000t8zl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Tuesday]



FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2022

FRI 19:00 An Evening with Sammy Davis Jr (b04w7wn5)
A compilation of the very best of Sammy Davis Jr's famous 1960s performances for the BBC, that leaves no doubt as to why at the time he was billed as the world's greatest living entertainer. This show captures Davis as the ultimate swinger, singer and gunslinger, performing classic songs like My Funny Valentine and Once in a Lifetime, showing how he's quick on the draw with a pistol, and demonstrating his incredible impersonations of some of the best-known stars of the era.


FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (m0014rlk)
Tony Dortie and Claudia Simon present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 4 June 1992 and featuring Take That, Faith No More, Lionel Richie, Richard Marx, Utah Saints, Elton John, Erasure and KWS.


FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (m0014rlm)
Mark Franklin and Sir Bob Geldof present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 18 June 1992 and featuring Take That, The Orb, Sophie B. Hawkins, Utah Saints, Elton John, Def Leppard and Erasure.


FRI 21:00 St David's Day at the BBC (m000sl8d)
To celebrate St David’s Day, this trip through the BBC’s music archives features a selection of tracks from some of the most important and innovative Welsh artists of the past few decades.

The programme includes performances by Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia, Super Furry Animals, Marina and the Diamonds, Stereophonics, Feeder, Shakin’ Stevens, Bonnie Tyler, Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Tom Jones.


FRI 22:00 Tom Jones at 80 (m000jqyk)
To mark his eightieth birthday, the BBC pays tribute to Welsh icon and international superstar Sir Tom Jones with this archive-based celebration.

Looking back over 60 years in showbusiness, the film takes us on a journey through Tom’s career via some of his greatest songs and performances - from Delilah and It’s Not Unusual to The Green, Green Grass of Home and Kiss - many of which will have a special resonance for a Welsh audience.

Additional context to Sir Tom’s incredible longevity is provided through rarely seen archive footage and interviews with the great man himself.


FRI 23:00 Radio 2 Live (p09s4qds)
2021

Manic Street Preachers

James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Sean Moore and their band return to St David’s Hall in Cardiff, where they played some of their earliest busking gigs, but this time to play a brand new show for Radio 2 Live. The band perform live songs from their 35 year back catalogue as well as their new album The Ultra Vivid Lament, all in front of a small and socially distanced audience of fans.

Introduced by Jo Whiley, the show is part of a series of Radio 2 Live 2021 concerts, recorded with some of the first live and intimate audiences at music venues across the UK.

With songs as far back as Motorcycle Emptiness, through to classics such as Design For Life and If You Tolerate This, and all the way up to new and equally poignant tracks including Don’t Let The Night, the men from Blackwood show that their lyrics and music are still as relevant today as they have always been. Plus a few surprise songs, including a duet with Cat Southall on The Secret He Had Missed.


FRI 00:00 BBC One Sessions (b00f2dfx)
Duffy

Series of intimate performances by contemporary performers and musical legends.

Backed by a string section and five-piece band, Duffy runs through songs from her chart-topping debut album, Rockferry. Hits include Mercy, Rockferry and Warwick Avenue.


FRI 00:45 Top of the Pops (m0014rlk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


FRI 01:15 Top of the Pops (m0014rlm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


FRI 01:45 St David's Day at the BBC (m000sl8d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


FRI 02:45 An Evening with Sammy Davis Jr (b04w7wn5)
[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)

An Evening with Sammy Davis Jr 19:00 FRI (b04w7wn5)

An Evening with Sammy Davis Jr 02:45 FRI (b04w7wn5)

Around the World in 80 Days 20:10 SAT (b007895y)

Around the World in 80 Days 01:55 SAT (b007895y)

BBC One Sessions 00:00 FRI (b00f2dfx)

Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon 00:00 MON (b070sqb0)

Coast 21:40 THU (b07mhw25)

Dance Passion 20:00 SUN (m0014rg5)

Dance Passion 03:00 SUN (m0014rg5)

Dance: BBC Introducing Arts 22:00 SUN (m0014rf7)

Dance: BBC Introducing Arts 00:30 TUE (m0014rf7)

Desperate Romantics 22:00 MON (b00m0sp9)

Desperate Romantics 23:00 MON (b00m64ms)

Digging for Britain 21:00 WED (m000bn2l)

Digging for Britain 01:20 WED (m000bn2l)

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra 21:00 SUN (m0014rg7)

For Folk’s Sake: Morris Dancing and Me 23:00 SUN (m0003vhz)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 19:30 MON (b0078w3r)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 01:00 MON (b0078w3r)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 19:30 TUE (b0078w6r)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 02:00 TUE (b0078w6r)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 19:30 WED (b0078wb3)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 00:50 WED (b0078wb3)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 19:30 THU (b0078wfk)

Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain 01:40 THU (b0078wfk)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 19:00 MON (m0009hyp)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 00:30 MON (m0009hyp)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 19:00 TUE (m0009q7k)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 01:30 TUE (m0009q7k)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 19:00 WED (m0009xs7)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 00:20 WED (m0009xs7)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 19:00 THU (m000b4kx)

Gareth Edwards’s Great Welsh Adventure 01:10 THU (m000b4kx)

Great Barrier Reef 20:00 WED (b019851n)

Great Barrier Reef 02:20 WED (b019851n)

I, Tonya 22:00 THU (m000mtlv)

Inside America's Treasure House: The Met 00:00 SUN (m000znv8)

Inside America's Treasure House: The Met 01:00 SUN (m000zwpm)

Keeping Up Appearances 01:25 SAT (b007brsg)

Keeping Up Appearances 20:00 TUE (b007bg0k)

Locomotion: Dan Snow's History of Railways 23:00 TUE (b01qh3z3)

Lost Cities of the Ancients 19:10 SAT (b00792tn)

Lost Cities of the Ancients 02:45 SAT (b00792tn)

Mission: Joy – With Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama 22:00 WED (m0014rhk)

Parkinson: The Interviews 22:50 SAT (b007448x)

Radio 2 Live 23:00 FRI (p09s4qds)

Railways: The Making of a Nation 00:00 TUE (b07x4fg9)

Reporting History: Mandela and a New South Africa 23:20 WED (m00052bl)

Rigs of Nigg 21:00 TUE (m000yybp)

Rigs of Nigg 02:30 TUE (m000yybp)

St David's Day at the BBC 21:00 FRI (m000sl8d)

St David's Day at the BBC 01:45 FRI (m000sl8d)

Storyville 23:55 THU (p08yrl5s)

The Birth of British Music 19:00 SUN (b00kfqgq)

The Birth of British Music 02:00 SUN (b00kfqgq)

The Promise 21:00 SAT (p0bfyqgz)

The Promise 21:55 SAT (p0bfyqty)

The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama 21:00 MON (m000mmgx)

The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama 02:30 MON (m000mmgx)

The Secret Science of Sewage 22:00 TUE (m000t8zl)

The Secret Science of Sewage 02:10 THU (m000t8zl)

The Third Man 20:00 THU (b0074qmr)

Timeshift 20:00 MON (b00ff170)

Timeshift 01:30 MON (b00ff170)

Tom Jones at 80 22:00 FRI (m000jqyk)

Top of the Pops 20:00 FRI (m0014rlk)

Top of the Pops 20:30 FRI (m0014rlm)

Top of the Pops 00:45 FRI (m0014rlk)

Top of the Pops 01:15 FRI (m0014rlm)

Wild 19:00 SAT (b008tfyt)

Yes, Prime Minister 00:50 SAT (b0074rtb)

Yes, Prime Minister 20:30 TUE (b0074qxj)

Young Ahmed 23:30 SAT (m0010rj9)