The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
Jeremy Paxman asks the questions in the Christmas-themed quiz for distinguished university alumni.
In the third match, the team from Manchester University, which features comedian Lucy Porter and The Thick of It writer Jesse Armstrong, fight it out for a place in the semis with the University of East Anglia, whose team includes Caroline Flint MP and Tim Bentinck, who plays David in The Archers.
Ray Mears explores how 500,000 square miles of flat, treeless grassland was the setting for some of the Wild West's most dramatic stories of Plains Indians, wagon trains, homesteaders and cattle drives.
Ray joins the Blackfeet Indian Nation as they demonstrate bareback riding skills before a ritual buffalo hunt and sacrifice, and learns how their ancestors were dependent upon the buffalo for their survival. He follows in the wagon ruts of the early pioneers along the Oregon Trail and hitches a ride on a prairie schooner with wagon master Kim Merchant. He discovers the stories of the early homesteaders who lived in sod-houses and farmed the wild grassland around them.
At a cattle auction in Dodge City he explores the story of the railways, cow-towns and the buffalo massacre. His journey across the Great Plains ends at Moore Ranch where he joins a long-horn cattle drive and learns about the life and myth of one of the Wild West's most iconic figures, the cowboy.
Professor Alice Roberts explores some of this year's most exciting archaeological finds from the east of Britain. Each discovery comes straight from the trenches/site, filmed by the archaeologists themselves.
We unearth the biggest collection of Roman writing tablets in Britain, giving insight into what Roman London was really like. Off the coast of Kent, we dive into the English Channel to complete the biggest marine excavation since the Mary Rose - an 18th-century East India Company ship, packed with silver. Also in Kent, we're on the detective trail to find the very first evidence of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain - an ancient fort scattered with human skulls and weapons.
Lance is obsessed with finding the thief that stole his gold, which means he can ignore the melodrama going on at home. Andy's lies are catching up with him too. They decide that camping out is the safest option.
Black comedy series about small-town life. The schoolchildren get a visit from the incompetent Legz Akimbo Theatre Company and the Denton children get cousin Benjamin in more trouble than he can possibly imagine.
In impeccable evening dress, Mark Gatiss and Matthew Sweet ponder the Bonds we've seen on screen since Dr No in 1962 and ask - which 007 is the best? To date, six actors have portrayed British Secret Service agent James Bond. Was Sean Connery impossible to surpass? Was George Lazenby really that bad? Was Live and Let Die really a blaxploitation movie in disguise? Gatiss and Sweet consider these and many other questions, and raise a martini in honour of their premium Bond.
After more than 60 years tracking James Bond in print and on screen, the BBC opens up its vaults to reveal the forgotten files on the world's most famous secret agent. Featuring rare and candid interviews with all six actors to play 007, and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, this is James Bond unguarded, unrestricted and unseen.
In the 19th century, as Suzy Klein shows in the second episode of the series, music wasn't just a backdrop to life, easing pain and enhancing pleasure. It became a revolutionary force that could - and did - change the world.
As the impact of the violence and turmoil unleashed in the French Revolution reverberated around Europe, it was music that most viscerally carried the message that the people could stand up to kings and emperors. In France during the revolution, La Marseillaise emerged as a rallying cry - sung by the mob as they stormed the royal palace. When Napoleon imposed his grip on the nation it became an anthem of subversion, along with countless songs that pilloried the return to autocracy and the crushing of freedom.
But it was not just on the streets, as Suzy shows, that revolutionary fervour was stoked up. Even opera, intended by the authorities to reinforce the status quo, became politically potent, fanning the flames of nationalism and revolution throughout Europe. One French opera actually helped trigger a revolution when it was performed in Belgium in 1830.
Suzy shows how music came to express not only revolutionary fervour, but also the growing force of nationalism that was sweeping Europe. She discovers how Chopin's music, beneath its lyrical surface, expressed more powerfully than words the defiant spirit of the Polish people suffering under the oppression of a foreign power. And she explores how Carl Weber's lovely work Der Freischutz articulated the longings for nationhood of the Germans and inspired Richard Wagner to attempt the transformation of the human spirit through his work.
But it was Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi whose music had the most profound political impact in the 19th century. Suzy travels to Parma, Verdi's home town, to meet the disciples who keep his flame alive to this day, venerating the man whose music embodied the fight for freedom and whose very name came to symbolise Italy's fight for nationhood.
THURSDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2017
THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09gvfqw)
Series 1
30/11/2017
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
THU 19:30 University Challenge (b06tl3l6)
Christmas 2015
Christ's, Cambridge v Essex
Jeremy Paxman asks the questions in the Christmas-themed quiz for distinguished university alumni.
In the fourth match of the Christmas series, Christ's College, Cambridge, with broadcaster Natalie Haynes and news correspondent James Reynolds, fights it out against the team from the University of Essex with Antiques Roadshow expert Rupert Maas and Radio 5 Live broadcaster Dotun Adebayo. Both teams are playing for a place in the semi-finals.
THU 20:00 Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails (b00drtpj)
Ian Hislop brings his customary humour, analysis and wit to the notorious Beeching Report of 1963, which led to the closure of a third of the nation's railway lines and stations and forced tens of thousands of people into the car and onto the road.
Was author Dr Richard Beeching little more than Genghis Khan with a slide rule, ruthlessly hacking away at Britain's rail network in a misguided quest for profitability, or was he the fall guy for short-sighted government policies that favoured the car over the train?
Ian also investigates the fallout of Beeching's plan, discovering what was lost to the British landscape, communities and ways of life when the railway map shrank, and recalls the halcyon days of train travel, celebrated by John Betjeman.
Ian travels from Cornwall to the Scottish borders, meeting those responsible and those affected and questioning whether such brutal measures could be justified. Knowing what we know now, with trains far more energy efficient and environmentally sound than cars, perhaps Beeching's plan was the biggest folly of the 1960s?
THU 21:00 Storyville (b09gvnty)
The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey
12 billion miles away, a tiny spaceship is leaving our solar system and entering the void of deep space. It is the first human-made object ever to do so. Slowly dying within its heart is a plutonium generator that will beat for perhaps another decade before the lights on Voyager finally go out. But this little craft will travel on for millions of years, carrying a golden record bearing recordings and images of life on Earth.
The story of Voyager is an epic of human achievement, personal drama and almost miraculous success. Launched 16 days apart in 1977, the twin Voyager space probes have defied all the odds, survived countless near misses and almost 40 years later continue to beam revolutionary information across unimaginable distances. With less computing power than a modern hearing aid, they have unlocked the stunning secrets of our solar system.
The Farthest – Voyager’s Interstellar Journey tells the story of these magnificent machines, the men and women who built them and the vision that propelled them farther than anyone could ever have hoped.
THU 22:30 The Beginning and End of the Universe (b0754t74)
The Beginning
Professor Jim Al-Khalili takes us back in time to tackle the greatest question in science: how did the universe begin? Uncovering the origins of the universe is regarded as humankind's greatest intellectual achievement. By recreating key experiments Jim unravels the cosmic mystery of science's creation story before witnessing a moment, one millionth of a second, after the universe sprang into existence.
THU 23:30 The Beginning and End of the Universe (b075dxsq)
The End
Professor Jim Al-Khalili carries us into the distant future to try to discover how the universe will end - with a bang or a whimper? He reveals a universe far stranger than anyone imagined and, at the frontier of our understanding, encounters a mysterious and enigmatic force that promises to change physics forever.
THU 00:30 SAS: Rogue Warriors (b08g89l7)
Series 1
Episode 3
Stirling is locked away in Hitler's most secure prison - Colditz. Leadership of the SAS passes to Paddy Mayne, a man who has built his reputation on the battlefield as a warrior of the first rank, but has no interest in charming high command. In 1943, the SAS leaves the desert for Europe to enter a darker and far more complex theatre of war, led by a man who is often drunk and disorderly and prone to acts of savagery. They will face the terror of execution and the trauma of civilian casualties. And they will be the first to witness the nightmare of Belsen concentration camp.
THU 01:30 Revolution and Romance: Musical Masters of the 19th Century (b07g9q4w)
Party Like It's 1899
Music was both transformed and transformative in the 19th century. It burst out of court, church and tavern into the world and became a universal soundscape, transcending language and borders. This revolution was made possible by economic and social change, and by a technological revolution.
The 19th century witnessed advances in communication that made the world a smaller place. People could travel by train and steamship with ease across the globe. At the close of the century hundreds of thousands came to the great Paris Exposition of 1889 - the centenary of the French Revolution - to witness the latest inventions and marvel at the strange cultures that came to make music in the temporary halls and theatres on the Champ de Mars.
They heard the music of the Orient, they listened to recording devices, they saw the future. Composers such as Claude Debussy were profoundly influenced by the sounds of the east, in particular the Balinese gamelan. With its non-European harmony and rhythm, such music offered western composers new musical horizons and a way to innovate and escape from the high romanticism of Richard Wagner.
But it was not only the music of the east that inspired the new composers. Developments in manufacturing were changing instruments and creating new ones - exemplified by the saxophone. Suzy witnesses a 'battle of the bands' in which the new and versatile instrument demonstrates its capabilities and - for the luddites - its threatening versatility. And in the spirit of the new age she makes her first recording on a vintage phonograph, one of the earliest recording machines. To our ears they may lack quality, but they were mind-blowing to those who first heard them - and they presaged a new future of recorded music that is still with us today.
THU 02:30 Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson (b01pgrk2)
Moomintroll and the Moomin family are characters loved by children and parents worldwide who have grown up listening to Finnish writer Tove Jansson's delightful stories about a group of philosophical trolls who face a range of adventures in Moominland.
This documentary reveals the strong autobiographical slant in the Moomins series as it traces the author's own extraordinary story from living the bohemian life of an artist in war-torn Helsinki to becoming a recluse on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland.
Enjoying unprecedented access to Jansson's personal archive, the film reveals an unconventional, brave and compelling woman whose creative genius extended beyond Moominland to satire, fine art and masterful adult fiction - not least her highly regarded The Summer Book. With home movie footage shot by her long-term female lover and companion, it offers a unique glimpse of an uncompromising fun-loving woman who developed love as the central theme of her work.
FRIDAY 01 DECEMBER 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b09gvfr2)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 University Challenge (b06tl4hv)
Christmas 2015
Exeter v Magdalen, Oxford
Jeremy Paxman asks the questions in the Christmas-themed quiz for distinguished university alumni.
In the Exeter University team are wildlife presenter Nick Baker and actor Barnaby Edwards, who plays a Dalek in Doctor Who. They fight it out for a place in the semis against Magdalen College, Oxford, featuring documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux and writer Matt Ridley.
FRI 20:00 The Good Old Days (b09gvqj7)
Leonard Sachs presents the old-time music hall programme, first broadcast on 6 August 1980. Featuring Max Wall, Denny Willis and Company, Eira Heath, Grace Kennedy, Deryk Parkin, Doreen Hermitage, Bill Drysdale, Christine Cartwnght, James Rinehart and members of the Players' Theatre, London.
FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (b04w0fz1)
1980 - Big Hits
British pop and the BBC's flagship chart show said goodbye to the 70s and trembled on the edge of a new era for the show, for British music and for British society. This meant a continuing love for the nutty boys, Madness, who feature in this compilation with My Girl, and the man with the best cheekbones in pop, Adam Ant, gave us Antmusic.
We get to check out The Pretenders' first number one, Brass in Pocket, alongside Dexys Midnight Runners' tribute to soul legend Geno Washington. There are the early stirrings of new romantic with Spandau Ballet, and it's a veritable mod revival with The Piranhas and 2-Tone with The Beat.
Plus Hot Chocolate, OMD, Motorhead and many more top hits proving the 80s were truly beginning.
FRI 22:00 Gregory Porter's Popular Voices (b09gvqj9)
Series 1
Truth Tellers
Gregory examines how early 20th-century blues growlers like Bessie Smith paved the way for the rhyme and flow of hip-hop, how truth became a quest of rock 'n' roll's greatest poets from Woody Guthrie to Gil Scott-Heron, from Lou Reed to Suzanne Vega, and why great popular voices, including Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Kurt Cobain, don't have to be technically perfect to resonate so deeply and stir our souls. With Dave Grohl, Suzanne Vega and KRS-One.
FRI 23:00 Popular Voices at the BBC (b09gvqjc)
Series 1
Truth Tellers at the BBC
This compilation is a companion piece to the Truth Tellers episode of Gregory Porter's Popular Voices. Join us for a nostalgic look back at some of the most outspoken, thought-provoking and lyrically gifted songsters to have visited the BBC studios. From socially discerning troubadours like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, to modern-day poets Patti Smith and Gil Scott-Heron, and rap disrupters like KRS-One (performing with Boogie Down Productions), as well as more recent social observers Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave and George the Poet.
Featuring clips from The Old Grey Whistle Test, Top of the Pops, Later with Jools Holland and Britpop Now, these performers show us that you don't need fancy vocal acrobatics or sensuous murmurings if your message is powerful.
FRI 00:00 Live at Eden (b09b4qy0)
Series 1
Bastille
Bastille performing live at Cornwall's Eden Project in June 2017. Their performance was a highlight of the 16th year of the Eden Sessions and they played many of their best known songs including Glory, Good Grief, Icarus and Pompeii. The Eden Sessions began in 2002 and are renowned for the stature of the artists they attract and the unique setting of the Eden arena against the backdrop of the biomes.
FRI 00:55 Top of the Pops (b04w0fz1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 01:55 The Girl from Ipanema: Brazil, Bossa Nova and the Beach (b07mlkzl)
Documentary in which Katie Derham travels to Rio de Janeiro (where her father was born) to explore the story behind Brazil's most famous and enduring song. Written in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim with lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes, and a later English translation by Norman Gimbel, The Girl from Ipanema defines the moment Brazil charmed the world with a laid-back song about a haunting woman.
It's a vibrant musical journey to the stunning beaches, majestic mountains and buzzy clubs of Rio, where Katie meets key musicians and architects of bossa nova, including Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Joyce, Daniel Jobim and Marcos Valle, witnesses intimate musical performances, and uncovers the genesis and story behind Brazil's most successful musical export.
The Girl from Ipanema is quintessential bossa nova and tracing its roots reveals the fascinating story of this unique musical style. Invented by a gang of young bohemians in Rio in the late 50s, bossa grew into a 60s phenomenon, especially in the US where it became a youth craze and later a significant part of the modern jazz repertoire. The Girl from Ipanema, as sung by Astrud Gilberto with sax from Stan Getz, went top five in the US and became a major international hit in 1964.
Nothing sums up Rio as well as the simple and seductive lyrics to The Girl from Ipanema. What better way to get to understand the city, its people and its mid-60s zeitgeist than through its most famous song?
FRI 02:55 Queens of Jazz: The Joy and Pain of the Jazz Divas (b01sbxqw)
A celebration of some of the greatest female jazz singers of the 20th century. It takes an unflinching and revealing look at what it actually took to be a jazz diva during a turbulent time in America's social history - a time when battle lines were being constantly drawn around issues of race, gender and popular culture.
The documentary tracks the diva's difficult progress as she emerges from the tough, testosterone-fuelled world of the big bands of the 30s and 40s, to fill nightclubs and saloons across the US in the 50s and early 60s as a force in her own right. Looking at the lives and careers of six individual singers (Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Annie Ross), the film not only talks to those who knew and worked with these queens of jazz, but also to contemporary singers who sit on the shoulders of these trailblazing talents without having to endure the pain and hardship it took for them to make their highly individual voices heard above the prejudice of mid-century America.
This is a documentary about how these women triumphed - always at some personal cost - to become some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, women who chose singing above life itself because singing was their life.
LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)
A Blackpool Big Band Boogie: Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra
00:50 SAT (b0645530)
A303: Highway to the Sun
23:00 TUE (b0116ly6)
Arena
22:00 TUE (b0074prh)
Arena
02:55 TUE (b0074prh)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 MON (b09gvfqc)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 TUE (b09gvfqj)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 WED (b09gvfqp)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 THU (b09gvfqw)
Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome
20:00 MON (b0680lw2)
Building the Ancient City: Athens and Rome
02:40 MON (b0680lw2)
Darcey Bussell's Looking for Audrey
20:00 TUE (b04w7mfk)
Darcey Bussell's Looking for Audrey
01:55 TUE (b04w7mfk)
Detectorists
22:00 WED (b09gvm77)
Digging for Britain
21:00 WED (b09gvm75)
Digging for Britain
02:55 WED (b09gvm75)
From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's Television
21:00 TUE (b06t3mhm)
From Scotland with Love
23:30 MON (b047lx52)
Great Continental Railway Journeys
19:00 SUN (b08h80hy)
Gregory Porter's Popular Voices
22:00 FRI (b09gvqj9)
How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears
20:00 WED (b044z1k0)
How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears
01:55 WED (b044z1k0)
Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails
20:00 THU (b00drtpj)
Live at Eden
00:00 FRI (b09b4qy0)
Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson
02:30 THU (b01pgrk2)
Naples '44: A Wartime Diary
23:00 SUN (b09gvjc2)
Natural World
19:00 SAT (b042vptl)
Natural World
01:50 SAT (b042vptl)
Natural World
22:00 SUN (b03dzjx5)
Natural World
02:20 SUN (b03dzjx5)
Nigel Kennedy at the BBC
20:00 SUN (b04w0fyx)
Nigel Kennedy at the BBC
00:20 SUN (b04w0fyx)
Popular Voices at the BBC
23:00 FRI (b09gvqjc)
Premium Bond with Mark Gatiss and Matthew Sweet
23:00 WED (p02sx893)
Queens of Jazz: The Joy and Pain of the Jazz Divas
02:55 FRI (b01sbxqw)
Revolution and Romance: Musical Masters of the 19th Century
00:55 TUE (b07d9rwv)
Revolution and Romance: Musical Masters of the 19th Century
00:55 WED (b07f2blk)
Revolution and Romance: Musical Masters of the 19th Century
01:30 THU (b07g9q4w)
SAS: Rogue Warriors
00:30 THU (b08g89l7)
Shark
21:00 SUN (b05wdbyk)
Shark
01:20 SUN (b05wdbyk)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
00:40 MON (b00kvbny)
Storyville
22:00 MON (b09gvjc0)
Storyville
21:00 THU (b09gvnty)
The Beginning and End of the Universe
22:30 THU (b0754t74)
The Beginning and End of the Universe
23:30 THU (b075dxsq)
The Girl from Ipanema: Brazil, Bossa Nova and the Beach
01:55 FRI (b07mlkzl)
The Good Old Days
20:00 FRI (b09gvqj7)
The League of Gentlemen
22:30 WED (p008wlxf)
The Maharajas' Motor Car: The Story of Rolls-Royce in India
00:00 TUE (b00j4c2s)
The Mekong River with Sue Perkins
20:00 SAT (b04t0b30)
The Mekong River with Sue Perkins
02:50 SAT (b04t0b30)
The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum
21:00 MON (b01rrld8)
The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum
01:40 MON (b01rrld8)
The Vietnam War
22:50 SAT (b096v3f2)
Timeshift
23:55 WED (b06l0v9d)
Top of the Pops
21:00 FRI (b04w0fz1)
Top of the Pops
00:55 FRI (b04w0fz1)
University Challenge
19:30 SUN (b09gvdt4)
University Challenge
19:30 MON (b06tl2l1)
University Challenge
19:30 TUE (b06tl310)
University Challenge
19:30 WED (b06tl3bq)
University Challenge
19:30 THU (b06tl3l6)
University Challenge
19:30 FRI (b06tl4hv)
What a Performance! Pioneers of Popular Entertainment
23:50 SAT (b06r7xz4)
Witnesses
21:00 SAT (b09h3nwt)
Witnesses
21:55 SAT (b09hd2p8)
World News Today
19:00 FRI (b09gvfr2)