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 14 MAY 2011

SAT 19:00 Tiger - Spy in the Jungle (b009x107)
Episode 3

The cubs are now a year and a half old and learning to be kings and queens of the jungle. Play is becoming increasingly aggressive as they edge towards independence. But the biggest challenge is learning to hunt for themselves - and their mother soon loses patience with her overgrown family and their hapless attempts at hunting.

One cub turns underwater cameraman when he discovers log-cam on the edge of a lake. Another tries tightrope walking across a flimsy branch. They're even starting to consider the elephants as possible playmates - especially as an elephant's tail to a tiger is like a piece of string to a kitten. There's a new arrival among the camera elephants and many new animal stars make their appearance - including an irresistible jackal family that has to cope when the tiger family invades their backyard, and a flock of peacocks that tease the tigers by playing a game of dare.

As the family of four mature into independent hunters their hidden power is revealed. Discovered by the elephant crew when they were just 10 days old, these cubs are now reaching the end of an incredible journey.

As David Attenborough says, this is "the most extraordinary portrait of tigers yet seen".


SAT 20:00 Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk (b0110grr)
Julia Bradbury heads for Iceland to embark on the toughest walk of her life. Her challenge is to walk the 60 kilometres of Iceland's most famous hiking route, a trail that just happens to end at the unpronounceable volcano that brought air traffic across Europe to a standstill in 2010. With the help of Icelandic mountain guide Hanna, Julia faces daunting mountain climbs, red hot lava fields, freezing river crossings, deadly clouds of sulphuric gas, swirling ash deserts and sinister Nordic ghost stories as she attempts to reach the huge volcanic crater at the centre of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier.


SAT 21:00 Tell No One (b00qplfr)
Mystery thriller about a paediatrician who is shocked when the eight-year-old investigation into his wife's murder is reopened when two bodies are found near where she was killed. As he tries to come to terms with being a suspect again, he receives a startling email from a seemingly impossible source.


SAT 23:05 Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury (b0110ghh)
The Worcester and Birmingham Canal

Seasoned stomper Julia Bradbury dons her walking boots once again to explore her own British backyard, travelling along the country's network of canals and their accompanying towpath trails. Julia navigates Highland glens, rolling countryside and river valleys, as well as our industrial heartlands, and follows these magical waterways as they cut a sedate path through some of the country's finest scenery.

Julia starts this walk in Birmingham, which surprisingly boasts more miles of canal than Venice. But her mission isn't to seek out gondolas or ice cream - it's to discover how the city, through its canal network, became the centre of the Industrial Revolution. It's also the start of Julia's two-day walk along the historic and picturesque Worcester and Birmingham Canal, which cuts a 30-mile path through to the River Severn. The highlight of the canal is a dramatic two-mile flight of 30 locks which lower the canal by 220 feet. Negotiating this flight of locks is considered to be a rite of passage by boaters, and it's definitely one for the tick list for walkers.


SAT 23:35 Top of the Pops (b010v8hw)
1976 edition in which Noel Edmonds introduces Mud, Barry Manilow, Robin Sarstedt, Sutherland Bros & Quiver, Cliff Richard, Frankie Valli, the Rolling Stones, Abba and Ruby Flipper.


SAT 00:15 The End of the World? A Horizon Guide to Armageddon (b00zj1c2)
Our understanding of the world around us is better now than ever before. But are we any closer to knowing how it is all going to end?

Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archive to discover how scientists have tried to predict an impending apocalypse - from natural disaster to killer disease to asteroid impact - and to ask: when Armageddon arrives, will science be able to save us?


SAT 01:15 Storyville (b0110ghk)
Last Days of the Arctic: Capturing the Faces of the North

Ragnar Axelsson, known as Rax, is a photograher for Iceland's largest newspaper. This documentary follows him on his life's mission, to capture the human faces of climate change by photographing the vanishing lifestyles of the people of the north.

Rax is among the most celebrated photographers in the world and his series of photographs, Faces of the North, is a living document of the dying cultures of the far northern reaches of the planet, mainly Icelandic farmers, fishermen and the great hunters of Greenland.

'It was really only one photograph that started me off,' he says. 'An old man in a rowing boat and his dog on a skerry. I thought to myself, these men are vanishing. If I don't photograph them now, no one will remember them and no one will know that they ever existed.'

Rax spent his childhood summers on an isolated farm on the southern coast of Iceland, where the farmers lived off of the land as countless generations had before them. As a child he was enraptured by the landscape and the interactions between man and nature.

Twenty-five years ago, his fascination with people who try to survive in extreme circumstances took him from Iceland to Greenland - a place which has continually inspired him to return.

His photo essays of the hunters of Greenland are legendary. Rax could well have been a hunter himself - and we watch him as he stalks his images and strikes at the opportune moment. Fascinated by stories of half-forgotten people who have adapted to unspeakably harsh conditions, Rax is now documenting them as they cope with extreme changes to those conditions as the result of climate change.

Last Days of the Arctic is a celebration of the photographer and his subjects, an elegy for a disappearing landscape and the people who inhabit it.


SAT 02:15 Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk (b0110grr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SAT 03:15 Tiger - Spy in the Jungle (b009x107)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



SUNDAY 15 MAY 2011

SUN 19:00 A History of Christianity (b00p270g)
Reformation: The Individual Before God

The Amish today are peaceable folk, but five centuries ago their ancestors were seen as some of the most dangerous people in Europe. They were radicals - Protestants - who tore apart the Catholic Church.

In the fourth part of the series, Diarmaid MacCulloch makes sense of the Reformation, and of how a faith based on obedience and authority gave birth to one based on individual conscience.

He shows how Martin Luther wrote hymns to teach people the message of the Bible, and how a tasty sausage became the rallying cry for Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli to tear down statues of saints, allow married clergy and deny that communion bread and wine were the body and blood of Christ. 'Jesus ascended into heaven', declared Zwingli. 'He's sitting at the right hand of the Father, not on a table here in Zurich.'.


SUN 20:00 The Secret Life of the National Grid (b00vnfgt)
Switching On

From hoovers to hi-fis, from electric lifts to intensive care units - where would we be if we couldn't plug in to the national electricity grid? The second part of this history of the grid explores how switching on has transformed every part of our lives over the last 60 years.

Colour archive reveals a time when having an electric cooker was a status symbol and 'plugged in' music was revolutionary. But the grid didn't just mean gadgets - it has been central to creating a consumer society and shaping the contemporary city.

Contributors include The Shadows' guitarist Bruce Welch, author Will Self and architect Mike Davies, all talking about how electrification has sparked modern Britain into life.


SUN 21:00 Shanties and Sea Songs with Gareth Malone (b00s97c0)
The story of Britain's maritime past has a hidden history of shanties and sea songs, and choirmaster Gareth Malone has been travelling Britain's coast to explore this unique heritage. From dedicated traditionalists to groundbreaking recording artists, Gareth meets a variety of sea-singers from across the country.

His journey begins in Portsmouth where he meets a devoted shanty singer, before continuing on to Tyneside and the Yorkshire coast, where the Filey Fisherman's Choir, with an average age of 70, are determined to keep the tradition alive.

Gareth gets a fascinating insight into the songs of the Herring Girls when he visits Gardenstown in Scotland. In Whitby, he meets Kimber's Men, a local group who have dedicated themselves to writing and singing songs celebrating heroes of the sea, such as a rescue of 1881 when the sea was so rough the people of Whitby had to carry their 2-tonne lifeboat some six miles overland on a wooden trailer and in heavy snow to the bay where a ship had hit the rocks. Despite the exhaustion, they still managed to rescue the shipwrecked crew and passengers.

Gareth's journey ends in Port Isaac in Cornwall, where a group of local fishermen sing shanties and sea songs alongside their day job. Calling themselves the Fishermen's Friends, they have been so successful that they have landed a lucrative record deal.


SUN 22:00 The History of Safari with Richard E Grant (b00s6b8q)
Episode 1

For almost 100 years, big game hunters - from Theodore Roosevelt to the British Royal Family - came to British East Africa to bag the 'big five'. Now, luxury 'eco safaris' continue to drive its economy. It has been both East Africa's damnation and its salvation that wildlife is the greatest natural resource it possesses.

Richard E Grant - who grew up in Swaziland - examines the controversial history of the safari. Exploring the world of the big game hunters and the luxury of today's safaris, he goes on a personal journey to experience how the beauty of the bush made Africa the white man's playground.

Plotting the major landmarks in the development of the safari, Grant uncovers a world of danger, glamour and gung-ho. He reveals how the safari was continually reinvented as explorers and ivory hunters were replaced by white settlers, guns gave way to cameras and direct British rule to independence.

He discovers how safari became one of the central constructs through which British rule over East Africa was imposed, provided the social touchstone for the white settlers and was eventually transformed by the glamour of Hollywood, the power of the dollar and the traveller's desire for an 'authentic African experience'.

As someone born and raised in the privileged world of the ex-pats, Grant takes an insider's perspective on the scandals and adventures of the elite class of Brits who ran the show. He meets their descendents and delves into the rich material archives of their family homes, discovering that for the remaining whites in the region this history is still very much alive.

As the trophy hunt became an icon of high society, everyone from Ernest Hemingway to British nobility and Hollywood stars were soon clamouring for a piece of the action. And as hunters decimated Africa's wildlife, they also surprisingly introduced the first conservation laws, if only to protect the supply of animals to shoot.

Embarking on safari himself, Grant experiences the beauty and the danger of being up close to the big game animals and accompanies modern hunters on safaris, where animals are still killed and the patrons still argue that hunting equals conservation.

The film is full of frontier colonial characters whose lives, exploits and attitudes describe a very particular time in Britain's relationship to Africa and its wildlife, when the continent was part Wild West, part idyll and part colonial experiment - where life could be lived between the crack of rifles at dawn and the setting of the sun at cocktail hour, largely oblivious to the indigenous Africans themselves.

Through creative use of film and photographic archive, as well as actuality with those involved in big game hunting and luxury safaris today, the documentary evokes the spirit of decadence, exploration and adventure of the safari. Ultimately, it reveals how safari has been and continues to be a barometer of our attitudes to travel, our colonial inheritance and Africa itself.


SUN 23:30 Bee Gees: In Our Own Time (b08ktv7w)
Documentary following the fascinating, and at times turbulent, story of the Bee Gees, one of the most successful bands of all time. This is the story of three very close brothers, tied together by familial love and a natural aptitude and obsession for all things musical.

Born on the Isle of Man but raised in Manchester the Brothers Gibb, eldest brother Barry and twins Robin and Maurice were whisked to Australia by their parents at an impressionable age in search of a better life. Australia, for the Gibb family, was the start of a new adventure and a new career.

From childhood stardom to the first flashes of fame on the coat tails of 1960s Beatlemania, the Bee Gees enjoyed number one successes with hits like Massachusetts and I've Got To Get A Message to You.

The early 1970s saw a spell in the musical wilderness, but eventually led to the Bee Gees discovering a whole new musical direction and, more importantly, the discovery of Barry's unique falsetto voice. The phenomenon of Saturday Night Fever in 1977 brought the band worldwide success, and identified them as the band that defined disco.

A career as songwriters, and success with Barbra Streisand and number one hits like Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, meant a brief hiatus for the Bee Gees as a group. But, true to form, they returned with number one successes in the late 1980s with hits such as You Win Again.

The unexpected and sudden death of Maurice in 2003 meant the end of the Bee Gees as we know it, and the end of an era.

Bee Gees: In Our Own Time is the story of a consistently successful, talented and musically prolific band of brothers.


SUN 01:00 ... Sings Bee Gees (b0110js7)
Archive compilation celebrating the songbook of the brothers Gibb, with contributions and covers from the likes of Al Green, Esther Ofarim, Take That, Dionne Warwick, Steps, Rita Coolidge, Aaliyah and others, performing hits such as To Love Somebody, Words, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?, How Deep Is Your Love, Heartbreaker and More Than A Woman.


SUN 01:30 Shanties and Sea Songs with Gareth Malone (b00s97c0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


SUN 02:30 A History of Christianity (b00p270g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



MONDAY 16 MAY 2011

MON 19:00 World News Today (b01173h9)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


MON 19:30 The Viking Sagas (b0110gnv)
Hundreds of years ago in faraway Iceland the Vikings began to write down dozens of stories called sagas - sweeping narratives based on real people and real events. But as Oxford University's Janina Ramirez discovers, these sagas are not just great works of art, they are also priceless historical documents which bring to life the Viking world. Dr Ramirez travels across glaciers and through the lava fields of Iceland to the far north west of the country to find out about one of the most compelling of these stories - the Laxdaela Saga.


MON 20:30 Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury (b01173hc)
The Kennet and Avon Canal

Seasoned stomper Julia Bradbury dons her walking boots once again to explore her own British backyard, travelling along the country's network of canals and their accompanying towpath trails. This sees her navigating Highland glens, rolling countryside and river valleys, as well as our industrial heartlands, following these magical waterways as they cut a sedate path through some of the country's finest scenery.

Julia starts this walk in the beautiful world heritage city of Bath, where the Kennet and Avon Canal provided a 19th-century 'canal superhighway' between the country's two most important ports, Bristol and London. But only forty years later the trade along the canal was usurped by rail travel, leaving the once great waterway neglected and derelict. Julia's 20-mile walk along what is arguably the most picturesque stretch of the canal tells the story of how the waterway was restored to its former glory after it was awarded the biggest ever lottery heritage grant. The walk ends at the spectacular Caen Hill flight of locks, listed as one of the seven wonders of British waterways.


MON 21:00 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
Most people thought that when the working traffic on canals faded away after the war, it would be the end of their story. But they were wrong. A few diehard enthusiasts and boat owners campaigned, lobbied and dug, sometimes with their bare hands, to keep the network of narrow canals open.

Some of these enthusiasts filmed their campaigns and their home movies tell the story of how, in the teeth of much political opposition, they saved the inland waterways for the nation and, more than 200 years after they were first built, created a second golden age of the canals.

Stan Offley, an IWA activist from Ellesmere Port, filmed his boating trips around the wide canals in the 40s, 50s and 60s in 16mm colour. But equally charming is the film made by Ed Frangleton, with help from Harry Arnold, of a hostel boat holiday on the Llangollen Canal in 1961. There are the films shot by ex-working boatman Ike Argent from his home in Nottinghamshire and looked after by his son Barry.

There is astonishing film of the last days of working boats, some shot by John Pyper when he spent time with the Beecheys in the 60s, film taken by Keith Christie of the last days of the cut around the BCN, and the films made by Keith and his mate Tony Gregory of their attempts to keep working the canals through their carrying company, Midland Canal Transport.

There is film of key restorations, the Stourbridge 16 being talked about with great wit and affection by one of the leading activists in that watershed of restorations in the mid-60s, David Tomlinson, and John Maynard's beautiful films of the restoration of the Huddersfield, 'the impossible restoration', shot over two decades.

All these and more are in the programme alongside the people who made the films and some of the stars of them. Together they tell the story of how, in the years after 1945, a few people fought the government like David fought Goliath to keep canals open and restore ones that had become defunct, and won against all the odds.


MON 22:00 The Night Shift (b011d64v)
Episode 7

A supervisor from company headquarters arrives to investigate a customer complaint brought against the station manager Georg. Olafur tries to impress by turning up at the wheel of a gigantic new jeep.


MON 22:25 The Night Shift (b011dkq7)
Episode 8

A supervisor from company headquarters arrives to investigate a customer complaint brought against the station manager Georg. Olafur tries to impress by turning up at the wheel of a gigantic new jeep.


MON 22:50 Rubicon (b0110h37)
Look to the Ant

Will is surprised by an invitation to Kale Ingram's apartment but remains unsure whether to trust him. Miles volunteers for overnight duty to monitor live surveillance footage of a wedding and Katherine visits Gerald Bradley's widow hoping that she can shed light on her own husband's suicide.


MON 23:35 The Viking Sagas (b0110gnv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


MON 00:35 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


MON 01:35 Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter (b00mqlzz)
Episode 2

Architecture critic Jonathan Meades continues his quixotic tour of Scotland. Genealogy, or 'ancestral tribalism', gets Meades's goat as he travels from Stirling to the Isles of Lewis and Harris, a strange, sometimes rusty paradise. Here, he discovers serenity, Calvinism and peat bog bodies.


MON 02:35 Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury (b01173hc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


MON 03:05 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



TUESDAY 17 MAY 2011

TUE 19:00 World News Today (b01173ph)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


TUE 19:30 Britain by Bike (b00t4lqf)
North Devon

Clare Balding sets out on a two-wheel odyssey to re-discover Britain from the saddle of a touring cycle.

In a six-part series, Clare follows the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe whose evocative guide books of the late 1940s lovingly describe by-passed Britain - a world of unspoiled villages, cycle touring clubs and sunny B roads.

Carrying a set of Harold's Cycling Touring Guides for company and riding his very own bicycle, Clare embarks on six iconic cycle rides to try and find the world he described - if it is still there.

Her first journey takes Clare to the rugged and beautiful Atlantic coast of north Devon - from Lynmouth, scene of Britain's worst flood disaster in the early 1950s, to Ilfracombe via Little Switzerland, and a hidden silver mine whose riches probably helped England win the Battle of Agincourt.


TUE 20:00 Munro: Mountain Man (b00mwgyq)
Little more than 100 years ago, Scottish mountains standing at more than 3,000 feet were virtually unknown. Today they are familiar terrain to many thousands of climbers, thanks to Victorian adventurer Hugh Munro's determination to list the high peaks which now define the highlands and islands of Scotland.

This documentary tells the story of the magnificent peaks that bear his name and the people who have been possessed by them.

The birth of this obsession - now known as Munrobagging - is a twisting tale of intrigue, which presenter Nicholas Crane unravels high on the ridges and pinnacles of some of Scotland's most spectacular mountains.


TUE 21:00 This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting (b01173pk)
400 years of art history in 90 minutes? This film takes an eclectic group of people from all walks of life, including artists, critics and academics, out into the countryside to take a look at how we have depicted our landscape in art, discovering how the genre carried British painting to its highest eminence and won a place in the nation's heart.

From Flemish beginnings in the court of Charles I to the digital thumbstrokes of David Hockney's iPad, the paintings reveal as much about the nation's past as they do the patrons and artists who created them. Famous names sit alongside lesser-known works, covering everything from the refined sensibilities of 18th-century Classicism to the abstract forms of the war-torn 20th century with a bit of love, loss, rivalry and rioting thrown in.

Contributions come from a cast as diverse as the works themselves, including filmmaker Nic Roeg, historian Dan Snow and novelist Will Self, who offer a refreshingly wide range of perspectives on a genre of art which we have made very much our own.


TUE 22:30 The Great British Outdoors (b00t4kh5)
Mud, midges, barbed wire - just why do us Brits love the great outdoors?

In this nostalgic look at life for campers, twitchers, ramblers and metal detectors, Mark Benton examines the history of the British fresh air freak.


TUE 23:30 On Show (b007hzgf)
RS Thomas: The Man Who Went into the West

When Byron Rogers decided to write the biography of RS Thomas, he knew his subject was a man of contradictions. After all, the 'ogre of Wales' wrote some of the best love poetry of his time. But Rogers' journey to uncover the man behind the stone face was unexpectedly humorous.

In this documentary, he recreates that journey, meeting friends and parishioners of Thomas and his only son Gwydion, who talks candidly about his relationship with his father. He also recalls some extraordinary moments such as the time Richard Burton and Liz Taylor requested a meeting with Thomas where, at the rather awkward lunch that followed, the poet quizzed Taylor on her favourite types of flat fish. Contributors also include Dr Rowan Williams and poet Twm Morys.


TUE 00:20 Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes (b0074tfq)
Capturing the beauty of the English Lake District, a documentary which traces the life of writer and artist Alfred Wainwright, the eccentric Lancastrian who created a series of iconic fell-walking books which he hand-wrote, illustrated and published himself in the 1950s.

Celebrating the centenary of his birth, the film captures his passionate love affair with the Lakeland landscape and explores how his books have become guide-book classics for millions of fell-walkers.


TUE 01:20 Munro: Mountain Man (b00mwgyq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


TUE 02:20 This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting (b01173pk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 18 MAY 2011

WED 19:00 World News Today (b01173rh)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


WED 19:30 Indian Hill Railways (b00r5wk7)
The Kalka-Shimla Railway

From the Himalayas in the north to the Nilgiris in the south - for a hundred years these little trains have climbed through the clouds and into the wonderful world of Indian hill railways.

Shimla was once the summer capital of the Raj. They built churches, schools, a town hall and the railway and left behind their symbols of empire and an ethos of duty, loyalty and ambition - but they also left a divided subcontinent.

Characters featured include Maqsood, a refugee and a porter from Kashmir, and John Whitmarsh-Knight, a teacher looking for a home. Sanjay the stationmaster is hoping for promotion, and his boss Bataljit is waiting for a transfer, but everybody is waiting for the snow.


WED 20:30 Petworth House: The Big Spring Clean (b01173rk)
Waking up the House

To finish his stint, Andrew battles an invasion of moths in one of Petworth's 35 bedrooms, before uncovering the house's many treasures once more and welcoming back an eager visiting public.


WED 21:00 The Mountain That Had to Be Painted (b01173rm)
Documentary about the painters Augustus John and James Dickson Innes who, in 1911, left London for the wild Arenig Valley in north Wales. Over three years, they created a body of work to rival the visionary landscapes of Matisse.


WED 22:00 Wild Swimming (b00t9r28)
Alice Roberts embarks on a quest to discover what lies behind the passion for wild swimming, now becoming popular in Britain. She follows in the wake of Waterlog, the classic swimming text by journalist and author Roger Deakin.

Her journey takes in cavernous plunge pools, languid rivers and unfathomable underground lakes, as well as a skinny dip in a moorland pool. Along the way Alice becomes aware that she is not alone on her watery journey.


WED 23:00 Sex and the Sitcom (b00zwnt0)
How has the sitcom responded to the sexual revolution?

From Hancock's Half Hour in the 50s, through 70s sitcoms like Up Pompeii! and Reggie Perrin to contemporary comedies like Him & Her, this documentary explores sexual frustration as an enduring sitcom theme, the changing role of women and the British love of innuendo.

Why did Butterflies cause such a stir in the 80s? Did Men Behaving Badly really capture the sexual politics of the 90s? And how did the permissive society affect Terry and June?

The film looks at the changing language of sitcom, contrasts British comedy with its more liberal American counterpart, and asks whether the modern sitcom recognises any taboos at all.

Contributors include sitcom stars Leslie Phillips, Lesley Joseph, Wendy Craig, and writers David Nobbs, Simon Nye and Jonathan Harvey.


WED 00:00 Britain by Bike (b00t6yhb)
The Welsh Borders

Clare Balding sets out on a two-wheel odyssey to rediscover Britain from the saddle of a touring cycle. In a six-part series, she follows in the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe whose evocative guidebooks of the late 1940s lovingly describe bypassed Britain - a world of unspoiled villages, cycle touring clubs and sunny B roads.

Carrying a set of Harold's Cycling Touring Guides for company and riding his very own Dawes Super Galaxy bicycle, Clare goes in search of the world he described. Is it lost for ever? Or still there, waiting to be found?

Clare's journey into Wales is rich in literary connections to both Bruce Chatwin and AE Housman. She reveals how a cycle factory went to war and finds out about the Bride's Tree - a bizarre village ceremony with a dark secret.


WED 00:30 The Mountain That Had to Be Painted (b01173rm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


WED 01:30 Indian Hill Railways (b00r5wk7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 02:30 Petworth House: The Big Spring Clean (b01173rk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


WED 03:00 The Mountain That Had to Be Painted (b01173rm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



THURSDAY 19 MAY 2011

THU 19:00 World News Today (b01173t9)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b01173tc)
Dave Lee Travis introduces City Boy, Lee Garrett, Slik, Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, Paul Nicholas, the Wurzels, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Andrea True Connection.


THU 20:00 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Monday]


THU 21:00 A303: Highway to the Sun (b0116ly6)
The A303 is the road that passes Stonehenge on the way to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. On the way, it whisks drivers through 5,000 years of remarkable moments in British history. And it is the star of this film made for armchair travellers and history lovers.

Writer Tom Fort drives its 92-mile length in a lovingly restored Morris Traveller. Along the way he has many adventures - he digs up the 1960s master plan for the A303's dreams of superhighway status, meets up with a Neolithic traveller who knew the road like the back of his hand, gets to know a section of the Roman 303, uncovers a medieval murder mystery and discovers what lies at the end of the Highway to the Sun.


THU 22:00 Rubicon (b01173tf)
The Truth Will Out

The FBI puts the API in lockdown and prepares to polygraph test all its employees. Several of the team have reasons to fear exposure, but Will takes the opportunity to search Spangler's office. Katherine realises she is not safe in her own home.


THU 22:45 Mad and Bad: 60 Years of Science on TV (b00wltfx)
From Raymond Baxter live on Tomorrow's World testing a new-fangled bulletproof vest on a nervous inventor to Doctor Who's contemporary spin on the War on Terror, British television and the Great British public have been fascinated with the brave new world offered up by science on TV.

Narrated by Robert Webb, this documentary takes a fantastic, incisive and funny voyage through the rich heritage of science TV in the UK, from real science programmes (including The Sky At Night, Horizon, Tomorrow's World, The Ascent of Man) to science-fiction (such as The Quatermass Experiment, Doctor Who, Doomwatch, Blake's 7, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), to find out what it tells us about Britain over the last 60 years.

Important figures in science and TV science, including Sir David Attenborough, Robert Winston, Dr Tim Hunt, Professor Colin Blakemore, Tony Robinson, Sir Patrick Moore and Johnny Ball, comment on growing up with TV science and on how it has reflected - or led - our collective image of science and the scientist.


THU 00:15 A303: Highway to the Sun (b0116ly6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


THU 01:15 Top of the Pops (b01173tc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 01:55 The Golden Age of Canals (b01173hf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Monday]


THU 02:55 A303: Highway to the Sun (b0116ly6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



FRIDAY 20 MAY 2011

FRI 19:00 World News Today (b01174df)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


FRI 19:30 BBC Proms (b00t4213)
2010

Mahler's Symphony No 8 - Symphony of a Thousand

Katie Derham introduces a Prom concert from the Royal Albert Hall in London, featuring Mahler's Symphony No 8 - Symphony of a Thousand. The choral symphony for orchestra, massed choirs and eight soloists, launches the 150th-anniversary celebrations of Mahler's birth. Jiri Belohlavek, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra leads on the podium.


FRI 21:00 Arena (b0074sgb)
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home

Part 1

A story told in flashbacks, Martin Scorsese's documentary intertwines the immediacy of Bob Dylan's controversial 1966 tour of the British Isles with his remarkable personal and musical journey. Drawing from hundreds of hours of unseen footage and rare recordings, in-depth interviews and revealing photographs, the film strikes a remarkable balance - telling the story of one man's journey and at the same time placing that story within the greater canvas of human events.

This opening part traces his journey from a rock 'n' roll loving kid in the Midwest to his arrival as a major force in the world of folk music. In his own words, Dylan tells viewers how he became smitten with folk music as the story shifts scenes from the iron range in Minnesota to Greenwich Village in New York City.

An amazing cast of characters includes Dave Van Ronk, the king of Greenwich village folk clubs, Joan Baez, queen of the folk music world and Allen Ginsburg, America's beat poet laureate. And, most importantly, the wide range of music that influenced the young Bob Dylan is explored.

As Dylan's fame and notoriety grows, his skill as a performer matures rapidly and the songs begin to pour out - Blowing in the Wind, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Masters of War, Don't Think Twice It's Alright and many more.

Part one ends with what seems to be the dawn of a new generation - Dylan, hands intertwined with musician Pete Seeger, the Freedom Singers and Odetta singing Blowin' in the Wind at the closing night of the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.


FRI 22:55 Tangled Up with Dylan: The Ballad of AJ Weberman (b01174k6)
Documentary chronicling the life, times and crimes of notorious Bob Dylan obsessive and garbology inventor AJ Weberman. It's an irreverent and witty exploration into one man's obsessions, a bohemian life lived on the New York fringes and a uniquely twisted take on the American dream.

Bob Dylan once said 'I don't think I'm gonna be really understood until maybe 100 years from now'. Author of the Dylan To English Dictionary, a Dylanologist and originator of garbology (the practice of rooting through rubbish in order to gain insight into prominent people's lives), Weberman has made it his life's work to understand Dylan.

At times both hilarious and disturbing, the film is not only a great companion piece to Scorsese's No Direction Home but an interesting observation on our unbalanced desires to know more about celebrities and how far we are willing to go to get that information or even become a part of their lives.

Weberman does not see himself as a stalker and insists that Dylan should be grateful that he is around: 'how was I to know I would have been to Dylan what Verlaine was to Rimbaud'. It's hard to see this as a tale of poet and critic, but rather a look at the bizarre relationship between the obsessed and the object of his obsession and how it can completely take over a man's life.

Beginning in the 1960s when Dylan was at the height of his early fame and regarded as something close to a prophet or a seer by the American counter-culture, Weberman has sought to try and climb inside Dylan's head by going through his rubbish. Back then he pursued his obsession relentlessly.

An amusing telephone conversation between Weberman and Dylan, recorded in the 1970s, punctuates the film in the form of animations, creating connections between Weberman's past and present.

The film also features an unforgettable cast of supporting characters close to Weberman, including New York street singer David Peel, former child dancer Jay Byrd and Aaron Kay aka 'The Pieman', and enjoys a vivid Americana soundtrack performed by cast members, adding an extra veneer of strangeness to Weberman and his universe.


FRI 00:15 Folk America (b00gvk91)
Birth of a Nation

Three-part documentary series on American folk music, tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.

The opening part looks at how, in the 1920s, record companies scoured the American south for talent to sell. This was a golden age of American music, as the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs and Mississippi John Hurt burst onto record, eager to have a share in the new industry and the money it made, only to lapse into obscurity when the depression hit at the start of the 30s.

Contributors include Judy Collins, Steve Earle, Tom Paxton and Pete Seeger, surviving relations of 1920s greats such as Mississippi John Hurt, the Carter Family and Uncle Dave Macon, plus three actual survivors of the era - guitarist Slim Bryant, banjoist Wade Mainer and Delta bluesman 'Honeyboy' Edwards.


FRI 01:15 Folk America (b00h6xmb)
This Land is Your Land

Three-part documentary series on American folk music, tracing its history from the recording boom of the 1920s to the folk revival of the 1960s.

In the depression of the 1930s, John Lomax found convicted murderer Leadbelly in a southern jail. Leadbelly's music was never quite as pure and untouched by pop as Lomax believed, but it set a new agenda for folk music, redefining it as the voice of protest, the voice of the outsider and the oppressed.

Dustbowl drifter Woody Guthrie fitted the mould perfectly and the two of them teamed up with Lomax's son Alan, Pete Seeger and Josh White - a group of friends who believed 'they could make a better world if they all got together and just sang about it'. Their songs and their radical politics took them to high places of influence, but brought about their downfall in the blacklisting 1950s.

Contributors include Pete Seeger, Rambling Jack Elliot, Anna Lomax, Tom Paxton, Roger McGuinn, Woody Guthrie's sister and daughter and Josh White's son.


FRI 02:15 BBC Proms (b00t4213)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]




LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)

... Sings Bee Gees 01:00 SUN (b0110js7)

A History of Christianity 19:00 SUN (b00p270g)

A History of Christianity 02:30 SUN (b00p270g)

A303: Highway to the Sun 21:00 THU (b0116ly6)

A303: Highway to the Sun 00:15 THU (b0116ly6)

A303: Highway to the Sun 02:55 THU (b0116ly6)

Arena 21:00 FRI (b0074sgb)

BBC Proms 19:30 FRI (b00t4213)

BBC Proms 02:15 FRI (b00t4213)

Bee Gees: In Our Own Time 23:30 SUN (b08ktv7w)

Britain by Bike 19:30 TUE (b00t4lqf)

Britain by Bike 00:00 WED (b00t6yhb)

Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury 23:05 SAT (b0110ghh)

Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury 20:30 MON (b01173hc)

Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury 02:35 MON (b01173hc)

Folk America 00:15 FRI (b00gvk91)

Folk America 01:15 FRI (b00h6xmb)

Indian Hill Railways 19:30 WED (b00r5wk7)

Indian Hill Railways 01:30 WED (b00r5wk7)

Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter 01:35 MON (b00mqlzz)

Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk 20:00 SAT (b0110grr)

Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk 02:15 SAT (b0110grr)

Mad and Bad: 60 Years of Science on TV 22:45 THU (b00wltfx)

Munro: Mountain Man 20:00 TUE (b00mwgyq)

Munro: Mountain Man 01:20 TUE (b00mwgyq)

On Show 23:30 TUE (b007hzgf)

Petworth House: The Big Spring Clean 20:30 WED (b01173rk)

Petworth House: The Big Spring Clean 02:30 WED (b01173rk)

Rubicon 22:50 MON (b0110h37)

Rubicon 22:00 THU (b01173tf)

Sex and the Sitcom 23:00 WED (b00zwnt0)

Shanties and Sea Songs with Gareth Malone 21:00 SUN (b00s97c0)

Shanties and Sea Songs with Gareth Malone 01:30 SUN (b00s97c0)

Storyville 01:15 SAT (b0110ghk)

Tangled Up with Dylan: The Ballad of AJ Weberman 22:55 FRI (b01174k6)

Tell No One 21:00 SAT (b00qplfr)

The End of the World? A Horizon Guide to Armageddon 00:15 SAT (b00zj1c2)

The Golden Age of Canals 21:00 MON (b01173hf)

The Golden Age of Canals 00:35 MON (b01173hf)

The Golden Age of Canals 03:05 MON (b01173hf)

The Golden Age of Canals 20:00 THU (b01173hf)

The Golden Age of Canals 01:55 THU (b01173hf)

The Great British Outdoors 22:30 TUE (b00t4kh5)

The History of Safari with Richard E Grant 22:00 SUN (b00s6b8q)

The Mountain That Had to Be Painted 21:00 WED (b01173rm)

The Mountain That Had to Be Painted 00:30 WED (b01173rm)

The Mountain That Had to Be Painted 03:00 WED (b01173rm)

The Night Shift 22:00 MON (b011d64v)

The Night Shift 22:25 MON (b011dkq7)

The Secret Life of the National Grid 20:00 SUN (b00vnfgt)

The Viking Sagas 19:30 MON (b0110gnv)

The Viking Sagas 23:35 MON (b0110gnv)

This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting 21:00 TUE (b01173pk)

This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting 02:20 TUE (b01173pk)

Tiger - Spy in the Jungle 19:00 SAT (b009x107)

Tiger - Spy in the Jungle 03:15 SAT (b009x107)

Top of the Pops 23:35 SAT (b010v8hw)

Top of the Pops 19:30 THU (b01173tc)

Top of the Pops 01:15 THU (b01173tc)

Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes 00:20 TUE (b0074tfq)

Wild Swimming 22:00 WED (b00t9r28)

World News Today 19:00 MON (b01173h9)

World News Today 19:00 TUE (b01173ph)

World News Today 19:00 WED (b01173rh)

World News Today 19:00 THU (b01173t9)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (b01174df)