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 17 AUGUST 2013

SAT 19:00 Precision: The Measure of All Things (b02xbj6m)
Time and Distance

Professor Marcus du Sautoy tells the story of the metre and the second - how an astonishing journey across revolutionary France gave birth to the metre, and how scientists today are continuing to redefine the measurement of time and length, with extraordinary results.


SAT 20:00 Tiger - Spy in the Jungle (b009r259)
Episode 1

Elephants carrying Trunkcam, Tuskcam and other spy cameras tell the story of four cubs growing up in the Indian jungle.

From the day their eyes open and they tumble out of the den, Tiger - Spy in the Jungle captures the lives of four tiger cubs as they grow up alongside their devoted mother. The elephants continue to film the young stars as they grow into adult hunters. Over two years, the elephants help capture the most intimate portrayal of tigers ever filmed. They also reveal the secret life of the other extraordinary creatures of the Indian jungle.

In the first programme, the elephants come upon the four 10-day-old tiger cubs. This is their mother's first litter and she has her paws full as they tumble from the den, only to be carried back to safety in her massive jaws.

As they grow they move from her milk onto meat. Fortunately the tigress is a skilled hunter. Charger, their imposing father, keeps his distance but helps to protect his vulnerable offspring from rogue male tigers and leopards. As they grow, they face encounters with sloth bears, pythons and pangolins. Their mother keeps them safe, until one day the cubs are left home alone and their arch rival, an Indian leopard, is about.


SAT 21:00 Den fördömde (b01jmq9q)
Sebastian Bergman

The Cursed One: Part 2

Back in Stockholm, Bergman attempts to get his life back in order, with a surprise discovery giving him a new lease of life. He starts to deal with his sexual addiction and tries to get back into work. When the Stockholm CID realise they have a serial killer on their hands, Bergman insists they hire him to help out.

In Swedish with English subtitles.


SAT 22:30 Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? (b01k83bl)
In his home studio and revisiting old haunts in Shepherd's Bush and Battersea, Pete Townshend opens his heart and his personal archive to revisit 'the last great album the Who ever made', one that took the Who full circle back to their earliest days via the adventures of a pill-popping mod on an epic journey of self-discovery.

But in 1973 Quadrophenia was an album that almost never was. Beset by money problems, a studio in construction, heroin-taking managers, a lunatic drummer and a culture of heavy drinking, Townshend took on an album that nearly broke him and one that within a year the band had turned their back on and would ignore for nearly three decades.

With unseen archive and in-depth interviews from Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, John Entwistle and those in the studio and behind the lens who made the album and 30 page photo booklet.

Contributors include Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Ethan Russell, Ron Nevison, Richard Barnes, Irish Jack Lyons, Bill Curbishley, John Woolf, Howie Edelson, Mark Kermode and Georgiana Steele Waller.


SAT 23:40 Electric Proms (b009zj8p)
2006

The Who

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are on blistering form in a session recorded at the Roundhouse in north London, as the grand finale of the BBC's Electric Proms in 2006. The setlist showcases a sprinkling of songs from their new mini-opera Wire and Glass, but it's also packed with big singalong tunes like My Generation, Who Are You, Baba O'Riley and Pinball Wizard.


SAT 00:30 Top of the Pops (b038dbtf)
David 'Kid' Jensen presents the weekly pop chart show with Bilbo, Blondie, Jilted John, the Motors, David Essex, Hi-Tension, the Jam, the Commodores and dance sequences by Legs & Co.


SAT 01:05 Tiger - Spy in the Jungle (b009r259)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SAT 02:05 Precision: The Measure of All Things (b02xbj6m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



SUNDAY 18 AUGUST 2013

SUN 19:00 A Poet's Guide to Britain (b00kps7f)
Matthew Arnold

Poet and author Owen Sheers presents a series in which he explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. Each poem explores a sense of place and identity across Britain and opens the doors to captivating stories about the places and the lives of the poets themselves.

In 1851, a young school inspector and his wife spent a night of their honeymoon in a hotel in Dover overlooking the beach. Standing at the bedroom window and staring out at the moonlit sea, this newly-married man wrote a poem that sent a chill through his own and future generations - a poem that ends with the shocking conclusion that there is no hope, no comfort and no purpose in life.

Sheers goes in search of this poet, Matthew Arnold, and discovers what drove him to write his bleak but tremendous poem Dover Beach. He goes to Rugby School to delve into Arnold's relationship with his father, the great Victorian headmaster Dr Arnold, and visits Oxford to explore the extraordinary impact that the religious thinker John Henry Newman made on so many young people of the age. He also travels to the Swiss lake resort of Thun, where Arnold lost his heart to a mysterious woman called Marguerite.

It's the story of a rebellious young man trying to make sense of the world and includes contributions from Archbishop of Canterbury and poet Rowan Williams and rising poetry star, Daljit Nagra.


SUN 19:30 BBC Proms (b038wqc0)
2013

Proms on Four: 20th Century Classics - New Music at the Proms

Brand new sounds from the Proms in Tom Service's modern music series. Tom is joined by Southbank classical music supremo Gillian Moore to discuss a selection of premieres and new commissions from across the season at the Royal Albert Hall. Music ranges from the world premieres of John McCabe's Joybox and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Frieze to Murray Gold's new composition to mark Doctor Who's 50th birthday.


SUN 21:00 The Review Show (b038rhxp)
Kirsty Wark is joined by writer and critic Paul Morley, crime writer Denise Mina and comedian and writer Mark Thomas to discuss some of the biggest events at this year's Edinburgh Festival. Under the microscope this month: Grid Iron's site-specific theatre extravaganza Leaving Planet Earth, Margaret Atwood's new novel MaddAddam and a retrospective of work by pioneering Korean-American video artist Nam June Paik.


SUN 22:00 The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank (b036f9vc)
Ludwig II of Bavaria, more commonly known by his nicknames the Swan King or the Dream King, is a legendary figure - the handsome boy-king, loved by his people, betrayed by his cabinet and found dead in tragic and mysterious circumstances. He spent his life in pursuit of the ideal of beauty, an ideal that found expression in three of the most extraordinary, ornate architectural schemes imaginable - the castle of Neuschwanstein and the palaces of Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee. Today, these three buildings are among Germany's biggest tourist attractions.

In this documentary, Dan Cruickshank explores the rich aesthetic of Ludwig II - from the mock-medievalism of Neuschwanstein, the iconic fairytale castle that became the inspiration for the one in Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, to the rich Baroque splendour of Herrenchiemsee, Ludwig's answer to Versailles. Dan argues that Ludwig's castles are more than flamboyant kitsch and are, in fact, the key to unravelling the eternal enigma of Ludwig II.


SUN 23:00 Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime (b00jtg0n)
The Americas

Celebrating a remarkable fifty years on television, TV legend and undisputed travel king Alan Whicker sets off round the world on a journey reflecting his incredibly varied life and career.

Alan travels from West to East across America to track down his all-time favourite couple, a prolific Hollywood plastic surgeon and his wife, who also happens to be his favourite patient. When originally shown, they generated the biggest ever postbag of Whicker's career, but after thirty years will they still be together - and what will all the surgery have done to them?

Also in this episode, Whicker explores once more the closed community of the ultra-wealthy ladies of Palm Beach. He revisits the groundbreaking 1960s programme where he filmed the trial of modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, who were both facing the death penalty, and looks back at startling footage of America's first so-called serial killer seconds after his arrest. Whicker also re-examines his extraordinary interview with Haitian dictator Papa Doc, his most critically acclaimed film for which he won the prestigious Dumont Award.


SUN 00:00 The Lighthouse Stevensons (b00y6hym)
The story of the remarkable family who tamed the wild Scottish coastline, told 200 years after the building of their first iconic lighthouse, the Bell Rock.


SUN 01:00 Punk Britannia (p00s81jz)
Pre-Punk 1972-1976

Narrated by Peter Capaldi, this opener of a three-part documentary series in BBC FOUR's celebrated 'Britannia' strand is scheduled to chime with the 35th anniversary of the Queen's Silver Jubilee and the arrival of punk as national and then international music culture. The film explores the road to punk in Britain, which begins in the early 70s with a young generation already conscious that they have 'missed the 60s party' and are stuck in a Britain heading for economic woes and dwindling opportunities. Meanwhile the music of the day - prog and super rock - seems to ask not for their interest and involvement, but only their awe and their money.

But before the punk generation finally arises to have its say during 1976 come a group of pub rockers, a generation of bands sandwiched between 60s hippies and mid-70s punks who will help pave the way towards the short, sharp shock of punk, only to be elbowed aside by the emergence of the Sex Pistols, the Clash et al.

An unlikely cast of characters set the scene for punk in early 70s Britain. Reacting against overblown super rock of the day and the glam their younger sisters like on Top of the Pops, pub rock set the template for punk. Small venues, fast retro rock 'n' roll and bags of attitude typified bands like Dr Feelgood, Ducks Deluxe, Kilburn and the High Roads and Eddie and the Hotrods. These bands engendered a small London scene which is sometimes forgotten and helped define the Pistols, the Clash and the Damned, both positively and negatively.

Featuring copious unseen archive footage and interviews with John Lydon, Paul Weller, Mick Jones, Wilko Johnson, Nick Lowe, Adam Ant, Brian James and many more.


SUN 02:00 Punk Britannia (b01jmwjd)
Punk 1976-1978

Daydreaming England was about to be rudely awoken as punk emerged from the London underground scene. A nation dropped its dinner in its lap when the Sex Pistols swore on primetime television. Punk had finally found its enemy- the establishment. In Manchester, the Buzzcocks' self-released Spiral Scratch was a clarion call for a do-it-yourself generation, while the Clash's White Riot tour took punk's message across Britain. Moral outrage followed the Pistols around the country, effectively outlawing punk - but there was one refuge for the music. Nestled in the wasteland of 70s Covent Garden, the Roxy was punk's cathedral. Punk interlopers the Jam raised the bar for lyricism, challenging punk's London elite.

Punk also began to extend its three-chord vocabulary through an alliance with reggae, memorably captured by the Clash on White Man in Hammersmith Palais. With their second single, God Save the Queen, the Pistols scored a direct hit at the establishment in summer '77, but a disastrous PR stunt on a Thames barge would mark a turning point. The darker underbelly of the summer of '77 would see race riots in Lewisham. This street turbulence was the backdrop for a rawer, working class sound. If the Pistols and the Clash had been the theory, a second wave led by Sham 69 was the reality.

By '78 punk was becoming a costume - the very pop orthodoxy it had originally sought to destroy. For many punk ended when the Pistols split, beset by internal problems, following an abortive tour of the USA in January '78. Those practitioners who would go on to enjoy sustained success sought to modify their sound to survive, such as Siouxsie Sioux. Punk had shown what it was against, now it was time to show what it was for in the post-punk era.

With John Lydon, Mick Jones, Siouxsie Sioux and Paul Weller.


SUN 03:00 Punk Britannia (b01jv7f2)
Post-Punk 1978-1981

Punk had shown what it was against - now what was it for? In the wake of the Pistols' demise a new generation of musicians would re-imagine the world they lived in through the music they made. Freed up by punk's DIY ethos, a kaleidoscope of musical influences broke three chord conformity.

Public Image Limited allowed Johnny Rotten to become John Lydon the artist. In Manchester, Magazine would be first to record in the wake of the Pistols' split, Mark E Smith made street poetry while Ian Curtis turned punk's external rage into an existential drama. A raft of left-wing art school intellectuals like Gang of Four and Wire imbued post-punk with a sense of radical politics and conceptualism while the Pop Group infused funk with anti-capitalist sentiment in the early days of Thatcher. Flirting with fascism and violence, the working class Oi! movement tried to drag punk from the Kings Road into the heart of the East End whilst Anarcho punks Crass embarked on the most radical vision of any.

In a time beset by dread and tension perhaps the biggest paranoia was Mutually Assured Destruction essayed perfectly by Young Marble Giants' Final Day. Released in the height of Thatcherism, Ghost Town by The Specials marked a parting of the post-punk waves. Some would remain avowedly uncommercial whilst others would explore pop as a new avenue in the new decade. The song that perhaps summed up post-punk's journey was Orange Juice's Rip It Up and Start Again.

With John Lydon, Howard Devoto, Mark E Smith, Peter Hook, Jerry Dammers, The Raincoats, Wire, Jah Wobble, Mark Stewart, Edwyn Collins, Young Marble Giants and many more.



MONDAY 19 AUGUST 2013

MON 19:00 World News Today (b038qdxf)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


MON 19:30 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01rqbnm)
Islands

Presenter and Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn explores the wealth of Britain's extraordinary holy places on a pilgrimage that spans almost 2,000 years of history. Travelling across the breadth of the UK, Ifor uncovers the stories and rich history behind many of our most famous sites, explaining the myths and legends of some of Britain's most sacred places.

Ifor sets out to understand the appeal of islands as holy retreats. It may seem obvious that we would feel closer to the divine when surrounded by the stunning natural beauty of an island, but Ifor soon discovers there is a far deeper reason they became such a major aspect of religion.

His journey takes him from the Lake District to the Mappa Mundi in Hereford Cathedral, from our most famous holy island at Lindisfarne to the Western Isles in Scotland where an ancient Christian holy island has been reborn as a Buddhist monastery. He visits the island where the Welsh version of St Valentine lived and finally heads out west to the barren island of Bardsey, at the very furthest tip of Wales. This is known as the Island of 20,000 Saints, a place that exists halfway between this world and the next.


MON 20:00 How It Works (b01fq06h)
Plastic

Professor Mark Miodownik tells the story of plastics - created in the lab, they have brought luxury to the masses and shaped the modern age. He recounts tales of the mavericks responsible for some of plastic's most outrageous failures and heady successes, from the explosive attempts to make a replacement for ivory billiard balls to the ultimately ubiquitous Bakelite.

Investigating at atomic level, Mark discovers the extraordinary properties that have allowed plastics to dominate our world and reveals how the next generation of plastics will take its inspiration from nature, creating man-made materials which behave as though they are alive and which could help rebuild the human body.


MON 21:00 Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain (b038rj1b)
Making Connections

Using her skills to uncover long-forgotten and abandoned plans, architectural investigator Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner explores the fascinating and dramatic stories behind some of the grandest designs that were never built. In this episode she looks at two of the most radical civil engineering projects proposed in the last century and explores how international politics and vested interests both drove, and derailed, plans to better connect Britain to the continent.

In the early 1900s Britain was anticipating the threat of war. As concern grew about Germany expanding its naval fleet and investing in its infrastructure, there were calls to find a way for Britain's navy to be able to react swiftly to protect our waters. The solution proposed was to create a ship canal big enough for warships to cross from the Firth of Clyde on the west of Scotland to the Firth of Forth on the east. This enormous civil engineering endeavour would have completely changed the central belt of Scotland - the favoured route was through Loch Lomond, now considered one of the most treasured wilderness areas in the country.

There was huge support for the building of the canal, not least from members of parliament who recognised the potential for creating jobs and wealth in their constituencies. The debate over whether to invest £50m of the public purse in building the canal dragged on for years in both the House of Commons and Lords, with opinion split on whether it really was a strategic imperative. In the end, technology decided the fate of the canal. By 1918, all of the naval fleet was fuelled by oil rather than coal and so instead of a canal an oil pipeline was built from the mouth of the Clyde to Grangemouth on the east, and Royal Navy destroyers never did - and never will - sail up Loch Lomond.

Fifty years later, instead of seeking to protect Britain from attacks from the continent, thoughts had turned to how to connect our island to the rest of Europe. There had been talk of building a channel tunnel between England and France for centuries. In contrast with the Mid-Scotland Canal, where strategic advantages stimulated building, it was national security concerns that cut short the first proposal for a Channel Tunnel. The idea was presented to the British by Napoleon in 1802, but was rejected over concerns that the French had covert plans to invade England.

But 170 years later, the idea was to become a reality. Britain had finally joined mainland Europe through her membership of the Common Market in 1973, and both the French and British governments agreed it made sense build a tunnel together. But in 1975, construction was again abandoned because the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, had to look for economies in a financial crisis caused by dramatically rising world oil prices. Once more, the bid to connect with the continent had failed.

The idea was resurrected yet again in the early 1980s, with several competing schemes for consideration. The boldest of these, sponsored by British Steel, was a vast structure combing a double-decker bridge and tunnel, linked to an artificial island in the middle of the English Channel. The materials for the construction of this vast project would keep the steel mills of England and Scotland busy for a decade - but the politicians chose in favour of the Eurotunnel bid and British industry lost out.

Both these grandiose schemes defined how Britain saw its relationship with Europe. In an age when the headline 'Fog in Channel - Europe Isolated' made sense, a naval ship canal that would protect our island fortress from continental rivals was considered to be in the national interest. But just 60 years later, the fog had lifted and securing Britain's national interests became dependent on a physical connection with countries previously regarded as hostile. However, both plans foundered on the conflict of politics and vested interest.


MON 22:00 Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime (b00jz757)
Hong Kong and Beyond

Alan Whicker completes the final leg of his journey by returning to Hong Kong, the hub of all his many Far Eastern adventures, five decades after his first trip. He looks at the drastically changing face of Hong Kong and the endless struggle that beautiful Bali has had to preserve its unique charms - especially after the 2002 and 2005 bombings.

He also meets the Brits who emigrated to paradise after watching one of his shows, the island full of 'millionaire natives' who made, spent and ultimately lost their fortune and the British couple who escaped the rat race to live the Robinson Crusoe lifestyle on a remote tropical paradise.


MON 23:00 Tribe (b007xmmc)
Series 3

Matis

Explorer Bruce Parry travels to the Amazon rainforest to live with the Matis, a tribe once devastated by western disease. They are determined to preserve their culture and they teach Bruce how to be a good hunter. He undergoes some gruelling tests including having painful tree sap dropped into his eyes and taking a powerful frog toxin to purge his system.


MON 00:00 Tiger - Spy in the Jungle (b009r259)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 on Saturday]


MON 01:00 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01rqbnm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


MON 01:30 How It Works (b01fq06h)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


MON 02:30 Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain (b038rj1b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



TUESDAY 20 AUGUST 2013

TUE 19:00 World News Today (b038qdxl)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


TUE 19:30 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01rsl66)
Caves

Presenter and Welsh poet Ifor ap Glyn explores the wealth of Britain's extraordinary holy places on a pilgrimage that spans almost 2,000 years of history. Travelling across the breadth of the UK, Ifor uncovers the stories and rich history behind many of our most famous sites, explaining the myths and legends of some of Britain's most sacred places.

Ifor sets out to understand what happens when our religious urges drive us underground. His first stop is Lud's Church in Derbyshire, one of the most dramatic and eerie holy places in the land, once described as 'the place for the Devil to say matins'.

Ifor then heads back 14,000 years to find evidence of perhaps the oldest holy place in Britain. He follows the path of St Cuthbert's body as it was shifted between caves in the north of England to escape the attentions of Viking raiders and visits the cave of St Govan where a hermit was miraculously enveloped in rock to evade local gangs of wreckers.

He meets a nun in Norwich who tells him about a young woman who was bricked up alive for over 40 years in an act of almost unbelievable devotion and finally heads to a crypt of Ripon Cathedral to discover one of the most dramatic pieces of religious theatre in Britain.


TUE 20:00 Archaeology: A Secret History (p0109k28)
The Search for Civilisation

Archaeologist Richard Miles shows how discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries overturned ideas of when and where civilisation began as empires competed to literally 'own' the past.


TUE 21:00 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b038rkw9)
Aethelstan: The First King of England

In this third episode, Alfred's grandson Aethelstan fulfils the family plan and creates a kingdom of all England.

Travelling from Devon to Cumbria, Scotland and Rome, Michael Wood tells the tale of Aethelstan's wars, his learning and his lawmaking, showing how he created a national coinage and tracing the origin of the English parliament to the king's new assembly politics. But there's also a dark side, with later legends that the king had his brother drowned at sea. In his last desperate struggle, Aethelstan defeated a huge invasion of Vikings and Scots in what became known as the Anglo-Saxon 'Great War'.

Wood argues that Aethelstan was one of the greatest English monarchs, and with his grandfather Alfred, his father Edward and his aunt Aethelflaed, a member of our most remarkable royal family and 'even more than the Tudors, the most gifted and influential rulers in British history'.


TUE 22:00 Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields (b007rt2l)
20th Century Battlefields

1968 Vietnam

Peter and Dan Snow trace the Tet Offensive of 1968, the turning point of the Vietnam War. State of-the-art graphics are used to illustrate how US marines flushed out Communist fighters, some of whom lived in a claustrophobic network of tunnels which were used as a platform for major attacks. Together the Snows join the British Army on an urban clearance operation to experience first hand the chaos and intensity of similar situations.


TUE 23:00 Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited (b01s74g9)
Pagans of Roman Britain

Series in which archaeologist Julian Richards returns to some of his most important digs to discover how science, conservation and new finds have changed our understanding of entire eras of ancient history.

Julian goes back to the excavation of two burials from Roman Britain - a wealthy man from Roman Winchester and a lavishly appointed grave of a woman from the heart of London that holds a special and unexpected secret only recently unlocked.


TUE 00:00 The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank (b036f9vc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Sunday]


TUE 01:00 Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places (b01rsl66)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 01:30 Archaeology: A Secret History (p0109k28)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


TUE 02:30 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b038rkw9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 21 AUGUST 2013

WED 19:00 World News Today (b038qdxr)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


WED 19:30 Top of the Pops (b038z4mf)
Tony Blackburn presents the weekly pop chart show featuring the Dooleys, Siouxsie and the Banshees, 10cc, Klark Kent, Exile, the Rezillos, Darts, Cliff Richard, the Commodores and a Legs & Co dance sequence.


WED 20:00 She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (b01dpqtx)
Jane, Mary and Elizabeth

In the medieval and Tudor world there was no question in people's minds about the order of God's creation - men ruled and women didn't. A king was a warrior who literally fought to win power then battled to keep it. Yet despite everything that stood in their way, a handful of extraordinary women did attempt to rule medieval and Tudor England. In this series, historian Dr Helen Castor explores seven queens who challenged male power, the fierce reactions they provoked and whether the term 'she wolves' was deserved.

Helen looks at what happened when England was faced not just with inadequate kings, but no kings at all. In 1553, for the first time in English history all the contenders for the crown were female. In the lives of these three Tudor queens - Jane, Mary and Elizabeth - she explores how each woman struggled in turn with wearing a crown that was made for a male head. Elizabeth I seemed to show that not only could a woman rule, but could do so gloriously. But at what cost?


WED 21:00 ArtWorks Scotland (b021ncdh)
The Man Who Collected the World: William Burrell

William Burrell made a fortune out of shipping and spent it on art. Over his long life, he assembled one of the most remarkable private collections of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics and stained glass in the world and in 1944 he donated it all - over 9,000 objects - to the city of Glasgow. The Burrell Collection finally opened to the public in 1983, but the building that bears his name contains no tribute to Burrell and he never commissioned a portrait of himself.

Kirsty Wark tells the story of the self-effacing collector and tours the highlights of his collection in the company of its curators.


WED 22:00 Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain (b038rj1b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Monday]


WED 23:00 Anyone for Demis? How the World Invaded the Charts (b013g87k)
The British have a love-hate relationship with the foreign pop song. For years they were frequent visitors to the charts and were bought in their millions. Once heard never forgotten, these international hits conjure instant memories of a holiday abroad, musical portraits of countries far away.

This documentary tells the story of these musical imports from the Second World War to the present day. It reveals surprising stories behind some of the songs and asks what made them so popular.

The programme starts with the fad for Hawaiian music in wartime Britain. Dodging the bombs was Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders. Hula dancer Doreena Sugundo, who joined the band aged seventeen, remembers their exotic stage act and the intricacies of the homemade grass skirt.

In the 1950s the foreign pop song was a fixture in the newly-formed charts. From Anton Karas's zither music to the Obernkirchen Children's Choir, continental pop sold in its millions. On BBC television, calypsos from Harry Belafonte and Cy Grant were family favourites, while Danish aristocrats Nina and Frederik brought a certain cosmopolitan cool with their versions of international folk music.

One would think that the worldwide success of the Beatles would see off these foreign pretenders. Not so, as in their breakthrough year of 1963 they were challenged in the charts by the Singing Nun's song Dominique. But the Singing Nun's subsequent fall from grace rivals any rock and roll tragedy.

People travelled the world through their record collections and on the new BBC2 Nana Mouskouri brought an early version of world music to our homes. In the late 1960s the package holiday boom meant that ordinary Britons could visit the places they'd only dreamt of seeing. Holiday songs like Sylvia's Y Viva Espana were souvenirs of a week in the sun and Greek balladeer Demis Roussos became the 1970s' most unlikely sex symbol.

Since then there has been the fad for pan pipes, initially coming not from the Andes but Romania, and in the 1980s the success of Paul Simon's Graceland and the emergence of world music. As our holidays became more exotic and our tastes for food more international, so music from around the world has become more dominant, with the craze for Latin and salsa music.

So now when music is truly global, and international stars like Shakira bestride the music world, has the foreign pop song had its day? Will there ever been another foreign pop sensation like the Singing Nun or the pan pipes, and is there anyone for Demis?

Featuring interviews with Nana Mouskouri, Sylvia, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Gipsy Kings. Narrated by Liza Tarbuck.


WED 00:00 Top of the Pops (b038z4mf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 00:30 The Lighthouse Stevensons (b00y6hym)
[Repeat of broadcast at 00:00 on Sunday]


WED 01:30 She-Wolves: England's Early Queens (b01dpqtx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


WED 02:30 ArtWorks Scotland (b021ncdh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



THURSDAY 22 AUGUST 2013

THU 19:00 World News Today (b038qdxz)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


THU 19:30 BBC Proms (b038rms5)
2013

Proms on Four: Orchestras of the World - Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra

From the Royal Albert Hall, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, under their charismatic French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin, bring a programme of ill-fated love to the BBC Proms. Tchaikovsky's fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet is followed by Wagner's Wesendonck Leider, a song cycle inspired by the composer's infatuation with the wife of one of his wealthy patrons. Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci is the soloist. The concert ends with a performance of one of the great orchestral works of the 20th century, Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. Presented by Katie Derham.


THU 21:15 Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe (b00791y3)
A British Love Affair

Francesco da Mosto enters Tuscany and Umbria to look at the long love affair that Britain has had with the area. He learns how to be the perfect courtier in Urbino, goes grape harvesting in Chianti, discovers the romantic inspiration at the heart of Puccini's operas, travels to Assisi to find out why he was named after St Francis and takes Dame Maggie Smith on a sightseeing tour of Florence.


THU 22:15 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b038rkw9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Tuesday]


THU 23:15 Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields (b007rt2l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Tuesday]


THU 00:15 ArtWorks Scotland (b021ncdh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Wednesday]


THU 01:15 Turner's Thames (b01jv255)
In this documentary, the presenter and art critic Matthew Collings explores how Turner, the artist of light, makes light the vehicle of feeling in his work, and how he found inspiration for that feeling in the waters of the River Thames.

JMW Turner is the most famous of English landscape painters. Throughout a lifetime of travel, he returned time and again to paint and draw scenes of the Thames, the lifeblood of London. This documentary reveals the Thames in all its diverse glory, from its beauty in west London, to its heartland in the City of London and its former docks, out to the vast emptiness and drama of the Thames estuary near Margate.

Turner was among the first to pioneer painting directly from nature, turning a boat into a floating studio from which he sketched the Thames. The river and his unique relationship with it had a powerful impact upon his use of materials, as he sought to find an equivalent in paint for the visual surprise and delight he found in the reality of its waters.

By pursuing this ever-changing tale of light, Turner also documented and reflected upon key moments in British history in the early 19th century; the Napoleonic wars, social unrest and the onset of the industrial revolution. His paintings of the river Thames communicate the fears and exultations of the time.

Turner's greatness as a painter is often attributed to his modern use of colour. Many of his paintings are loved by the British public and regularly celebrated as the nation's greatest art. This film reveals for the first time on television a key inspiration for that modernity and celebrity; a stretch of water of immense importance to the nation in the early 19th century but which today is often taken for granted - the River Thames.


THU 02:15 Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe (b00791y3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:15 today]



FRIDAY 23 AUGUST 2013

FRI 19:00 World News Today (b038qdy6)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


FRI 19:30 BBC Proms (b038rp8h)
2013

Nigel Kennedy at the Proms

At the Royal Albert Hall, Clemency Burton-Hill introduces violinist Nigel Kennedy, who returns to the Proms to give his distinctive version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the work he recorded to great acclaim 25 years ago. Joined by the Palestine Strings from the Edward Said Music Conservatory, Kennedy also adds improvisation between each concerto with members of his own Orchestra of Life.


FRI 21:00 How to Be a World Music Star: Buena Vista, Bhundu Boys and Beyond (b038rp8k)
Documentary telling the story of the British world music revolution from the early 1980s to the present. Through a variety of careers, starting with Zimbabwe's Bhundu Boys and culminating with Portugal's Mariza in the new millennium, the film explores what it takes to bring music from 'out there' over here.

Through the testimony of artists from all around the world alongside key British producers and broadcasters including Andy Kershaw, Joe Boyd and Nick Gold, it tracks the evolving story of what British audiences have wanted from what has come to be called 'world music' and what a range of artists, including Les Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Salif Keita, Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Buena Vista Social Club and Tinariwen, have made of us.

At the dawn of the 80s, in an age of spandex and synthesizers, many music fans were becoming bored with the pop charts and hungered for a new music that could excite them once again. Where music from the rest of the world had once been regarded as mere exotica, there was increasingly a sense that world music could be the future of pop music.

The documentary traces the hopes and ambitions of a new music industry as cultures came together for the first time, producing much brilliant music and a degree of human comedy.

From the tribal warriors of Mali who fought in rebellions with guitars and guns strapped to their shoulders, all-female choirs from the other side of the Iron Curtain playing to rock fans, a band from Zimbabwe who supported Madonna to a group of old men from Cuba who took the world by storm with their music from another era, these tales from musicians from out there arriving over here trace an evolving market that has both offered a blueprint for the future and an escape into a romantic past.


FRI 22:30 A-Z of World Music (b038rp8n)
Journeying through the alphabet, a showcase of music from across the world - from Africa to Uzbekistan, Norway to South America, India to Louisiana and everywhere in between.

Featured instruments include Kimmo Pohjonen's accordion, the impressively large drums of the Yamato Drummers and the extraordinary vocals of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The helter-skelter ride takes us from the 1970s, through to the explosion of acts in the 1980s, right up to the most sought-after musicians on the world music circuit today.

From Sevara Nazarkhan's pin-drop solo to a crowd-moving set from Orchestra Baobab, this is a compilation that presents a fun, vibrant snapshot of the range of traditional music that has captured audiences the world over.


FRI 00:00 Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? (b01k83bl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:30 on Saturday]


FRI 01:10 Electric Proms (b009zj8p)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:40 on Saturday]


FRI 02:00 How to Be a World Music Star: Buena Vista, Bhundu Boys and Beyond (b038rp8k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]




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

A Poet's Guide to Britain 19:00 SUN (b00kps7f)

A-Z of World Music 22:30 FRI (b038rp8n)

Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime 23:00 SUN (b00jtg0n)

Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime 22:00 MON (b00jz757)

Anyone for Demis? How the World Invaded the Charts 23:00 WED (b013g87k)

Archaeology: A Secret History 20:00 TUE (p0109k28)

Archaeology: A Secret History 01:30 TUE (p0109k28)

ArtWorks Scotland 21:00 WED (b021ncdh)

ArtWorks Scotland 02:30 WED (b021ncdh)

ArtWorks Scotland 00:15 THU (b021ncdh)

BBC Proms 19:30 SUN (b038wqc0)

BBC Proms 19:30 THU (b038rms5)

BBC Proms 19:30 FRI (b038rp8h)

Den fördömde 21:00 SAT (b01jmq9q)

Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain 21:00 MON (b038rj1b)

Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain 02:30 MON (b038rj1b)

Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain 22:00 WED (b038rj1b)

Electric Proms 23:40 SAT (b009zj8p)

Electric Proms 01:10 FRI (b009zj8p)

Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe 21:15 THU (b00791y3)

Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe 02:15 THU (b00791y3)

How It Works 20:00 MON (b01fq06h)

How It Works 01:30 MON (b01fq06h)

How to Be a World Music Star: Buena Vista, Bhundu Boys and Beyond 21:00 FRI (b038rp8k)

How to Be a World Music Star: Buena Vista, Bhundu Boys and Beyond 02:00 FRI (b038rp8k)

King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons 21:00 TUE (b038rkw9)

King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons 02:30 TUE (b038rkw9)

King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons 22:15 THU (b038rkw9)

Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places 19:30 MON (b01rqbnm)

Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places 01:00 MON (b01rqbnm)

Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places 19:30 TUE (b01rsl66)

Pagans and Pilgrims: Britain's Holiest Places 01:00 TUE (b01rsl66)

Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields 22:00 TUE (b007rt2l)

Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields 23:15 THU (b007rt2l)

Precision: The Measure of All Things 19:00 SAT (b02xbj6m)

Precision: The Measure of All Things 02:05 SAT (b02xbj6m)

Punk Britannia 01:00 SUN (p00s81jz)

Punk Britannia 02:00 SUN (b01jmwjd)

Punk Britannia 03:00 SUN (b01jv7f2)

Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? 22:30 SAT (b01k83bl)

Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? 00:00 FRI (b01k83bl)

She-Wolves: England's Early Queens 20:00 WED (b01dpqtx)

She-Wolves: England's Early Queens 01:30 WED (b01dpqtx)

Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited 23:00 TUE (b01s74g9)

The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank 22:00 SUN (b036f9vc)

The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank 00:00 TUE (b036f9vc)

The Lighthouse Stevensons 00:00 SUN (b00y6hym)

The Lighthouse Stevensons 00:30 WED (b00y6hym)

The Review Show 21:00 SUN (b038rhxp)

Tiger - Spy in the Jungle 20:00 SAT (b009r259)

Tiger - Spy in the Jungle 01:05 SAT (b009r259)

Tiger - Spy in the Jungle 00:00 MON (b009r259)

Top of the Pops 00:30 SAT (b038dbtf)

Top of the Pops 19:30 WED (b038z4mf)

Top of the Pops 00:00 WED (b038z4mf)

Tribe 23:00 MON (b007xmmc)

Turner's Thames 01:15 THU (b01jv255)

World News Today 19:00 MON (b038qdxf)

World News Today 19:00 TUE (b038qdxl)

World News Today 19:00 WED (b038qdxr)

World News Today 19:00 THU (b038qdxz)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (b038qdy6)