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 08 JUNE 2019

SAT 19:00 Super Giant Animals (b03bvxt5)
Steve Backshall travels across the world to encounter the most charismatic super giant animals and discovers the remarkable things that their size enables them to do. Highlights include Steve swimming with Nile crocodiles in Botswana, dodging two-tonne elephant seals in California and diving with sperm whales in the Caribbean.


SAT 20:00 Japan: Earth's Enchanted Islands (p02n9vgl)
Hokkaido

Hokkaido is Japan's northernmost - and wildest - island, a place totally unlike the rest of the country. Every year, it swings from a bitter Siberian winter into the warmth of a Mediterranean-like summer, when the thaw reveals a landscape changed beyond all recognition. It takes tough animals and tough people with real ingenuity to survive, and even thrive, in this ever-changing place.


SAT 21:00 Inspector Montalbano (m0005wqw)
A Diary from '43

As Vigata celebrates St George’s Day, an elderly man, born locally, returns to Sicily after having lived in America for many years. On the same day a diary dating from WWII is discovered hidden in an old bunker. Inspector Montalbano is entrusted with the dark secrets revealed in the diary and starts to research the time around which it was written. But during his investigation, a 90-year-old businessman is found murdered in his own home. Montalbano starts to think that the events cannot possibly be unrelated.

In Italian with English subtitles.


SAT 22:55 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.


SAT 23:55 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.


SAT 00:55 Timeshift (b00wwlll)
Series 10

Italian Noir: The Story of Italian Crime Fiction

Timeshift profiles a new wave of Italian crime fiction that has emerged to challenge the conventions of the detective novel. There are no happy endings in these noir tales, only revelations about Italy's dark heart - a world of corruption, unsolved murders and the mafia.

The programme features exclusive interviews with the leading writers from this new wave of noir, including Andrea Camilleri (creator of the Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) and Giancarlo De Cataldo (Romanzo Criminale), who explains how his work as a real-life investigating judge inspired his work. From the other side of the law, Massimo Carlotto talks about how his novels were shaped by his wrongful conviction for murder and years spent on the run from the police.

The film also looks at the roots of this new wave. Carlo Emilio Gadda (That Awful Mess) used the detective novel to expose the corruption that existed during Mussolini's fascist regime and then, after the Second World War, Leonardo Sciascia's crime novels (The Day of The Owl) tackled the rise of the Sicilian mafia. These writers established the rules of a new kind of noir that drew on real events and offered no neat endings.

Also featuring Italian writers Carlo Lucarelli and Barbara Baraldi, the film uses rarely seen archive from Italian television.


SAT 01:55 Japan: Earth's Enchanted Islands (p02n9vgl)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SAT 02:55 Super Giant Animals (b03bvxt5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



SUNDAY 09 JUNE 2019

SUN 19:00 Engineering Giants (b01l9m3h)
Gas Rig Strip-Down

Engineer turned comedian Tom Wrigglesworth and Rob Bell, rising star of mechanical engineering, tell the story as an entire North Sea Gas installation, the Lima Platform, is pulled from the sea by floating cranes, brought back to Newcastle, and then torn into tiny pieces for recycling.

But the platform is not just thousands of tons of steel. It was once home to the men and women called the North Sea Tigers. They pioneered gas and oil exploration in the UK and now some of them are ending their careers as part of the decommissioning process. As the gas platform is stripped down, these engineers reveal the secrets of this vital part of our energy supplies, but they also reveal the emotional bonds to the engineering marvel that formed such an important part of their lives.


SUN 20:00 Timeshift (b08mp2l8)
Series 17

Dial "B" for Britain: The Story of the Landline

Timeshift tells the story of how Britain's phone network was built. Incredibly, there was once a time when phones weren't pocket-sized wireless devices but bulky objects wired into our homes and workplaces. Over the course of 100 years, engineers rolled out a communications network that joined up Britain - a web of more than 70 million miles of wire. Telephones were agents of commercial and social change, connecting businesses and creating new jobs for Victorian women. Wires changed the appearance of urban skylines and the public phone box became a ubiquitous sight.

Yet despite ongoing technical innovation, the phone service often struggled to meet demand. When the mobile phone arrived, it appeared to herald the demise of the landline. Yet ironically, now we're more connected than ever, it's not the telephone that's keeping us on the landline.

In 1877, Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell returned to Britain from America to showcase a revolutionary new electric device - the telephone. After impressing no less than Queen Victoria, Bell helped drive uptake of the telephone in Britain, tapping into the growth of a growing commercial phenomenon - the office. Soon, whole networks of telephone lines were being built, connected together by exchange switchboards. Female switchboard operators were preferred by telephone companies as they were cheaper and perceived as more polite, opening up new employment opportunities for women in late Victorian Britain.

At first only the wealthiest people had phones in their homes, but the public call box soon emerged, although when the GPO - the General Post Office - took over the private networks, it initially struggled to find an acceptable design for its box and met some resistance to its now iconic bright red colour.

The introduction of direct dial telephones and automatic exchanges, as well as services like the 999 emergency number and the speaking clock, helped drive private uptake of phones in the 1930s. However, with the onset of World War Two, military concerns took priority. Gene Toms, a switchboard operator, recalls her time during the war, trying to work while wearing a helmet during air raids, dealing with self-important officers and doing her best to assist servicemen phoning home.

A renewed drive to restore, modernise and expand the network after the war kept a legion of engineers busy. Former GPO engineers Jim
Coombe, Bryan Eagan and Dez Flahey share their memories of dubious safety practices and difficult customers. Despite the expansion, the network still had limited capacity relative to demand, and one cheaper solution was the "party line", shared with another household, although it created problems of privacy.

The introduction of STD - subscriber trunk dialling - in the late 1950s enabled callers to make long distance calls without the help of an operator. But STD, like the network itself, was taking a long time to roll out; and despite the introduction of stylish coloured telephones and the Trimphone in the 1960s to tempt customers, the service acquired a bad reputation among many users. Even an episode of the children's series Trumpton reflected the general frustration. Archive footage shows the then postmaster general, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, being grilled by an interviewer about the shortcomings of the phone service.

But there was an exciting new symbol of the future under construction - the Post Office Tower, part of a network of towers designed to expand the capacity of the network using a wireless, microwave system. By the 1970s telephone supply was catching up with demand. People were increasingly moving home around the country, relocating for work, and young families expected to have a phone as a standard mod con. An advertising campaign featuring a talking cartoon bird - Buzby - encouraged customers to make more calls. What was once a service had become a thriving business, and British Telecommunications was privatised in 1984.

The arrival of the mobile phone soon threatened to supersede the landline - but the internet, a technology that the founding fathers of telephony could never have dreamed of, has given the landline a new lease of life.


SUN 21:00 Horizon (b01r6dys)
2012-2013

The Truth About Meteors: A Horizon Special

On a bright, cold morning on 15 February 2013, a meteorite ripped across the skies above the Ural mountains in Russia, disintegrating into three pieces and exploding with the force of 20 Hiroshimas. It was a stark reminder that the Earth's journey through space is fraught with danger. A day later, another much larger 143,000-tonne asteroid passed within just 17,000 miles of the Earth.

Presented by Professor Iain Stewart, this film explores what meteorites and asteroids are, where they come from, the danger they pose and the role they have played in Earth's history.


SUN 22:00 The Sky at Night (m0005wqx)
Return to the Moon

In the first of two programmes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings, the Sky at Night team take a look at the latest plans to return to the Moon. Recently, China, Israel and India have all sent major missions to the Moon. The Europeans and Americans are planning to build a space station in permanent orbit around the Moon. And NASA has just announced that they plan to land astronauts on the Moon’s surface within five years. It all suggests that we are on the verge of a new golden age in lunar exploration.


SUN 22:30 Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories (b08kz9qz)
A unique insight into the life and work of celebrated painter Paula Rego directed by her son, film-maker Nick Willing. Notoriously private and guarded, Rego opens up for the first time, surprising her son with secrets and stories of her unique life, battling fascism, a misogynistic art world and manic depression.

Born in Portugal, a country which her father told her was no good for women, Rego nevertheless used her powerful pictures as a weapon against the dictatorship before settling in London, where she continued to target women's issues such as abortion rights. But above all, her paintings are a cryptic glimpse into an intimate world of personal tragedy, perverse fantasies and awkward truths.

Nick Willing combines a huge archive of home movies and family photographs with interviews spanning 60 years and in-depth studies of Rego at work in her studio. What emerges is a powerful personal portrait of an artist whose legacy will survive the years, graphically illustrated in pastel, charcoal and oil paint.


SUN 00:00 Treasures of Ancient Greece (b05qqgrr)
The Classical Revolution

Alastair Sooke unpicks the reasons behind the dazzling revolution that gave birth to classical Greek art, asking how the Greeks got so good so quickly. He travels to the beautiful Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, and to the island of Mozia to see the astonishing charioteer found there in 1979, and marvels at the athletic bodies of the warriors dragged from the seabed - the Riace Bronzes.

It was a creative explosion that covered architecture, sculpting in marble, casting in bronze, even painting on vases. Perhaps the most powerful factor was also its greatest legacy - a fascination with the naked human body.


SUN 01:00 The BBC at War (b060h43j)
Into Battle

An enthralling series exploring how the BBC fought not only Hitler but also the British government to become the institution it is today. Hailed and derided in equal measure, the BBC in 1939 had yet to seal its reputation. With the advent of war, the corporation found itself thrust into a battle against the Nazis and the machinations of the British government. This series examines how the conflict transformed the BBC, what impact its broadcasts had at home and abroad, and uncovers the battles that raged with the government over its independence - out of which was forged the template for the modern BBC.

Wholly unprepared for what was the world's first broadcast war, the BBC fended off complete government takeover and emerged a trusted global news source, transmitting in 47 languages. Using a wealth of preserved recordings and previously unseen documents, Jonathan Dimbleby uncovers the compelling story of how the BBC went into battle against Hitler and Whitehall's ministers, and its part in the social revolution the war provoked. He also considers the voices of the BBC at war - many of whom became household names but would never have been allowed near a microphone in different circumstances.

From an early Nazi propaganda coup that forced the BBC into action and how fears of a crisis in morale at home led to class barriers being swept away on the airwaves to how determination and technical improvisation enabled broadcasting from the heart of the war zone, BBC at War reveals how World War II was the making of the BBC - and nearly its breaking.

In this programme, Jonathan Dimbleby looks at how the BBC prepared to report from the front line during World War II.


SUN 02:00 Engineering Giants (b01l9m3h)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SUN 03:00 Timeshift (b08mp2l8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



MONDAY 10 JUNE 2019

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m0005wry)
Series 1

10/06/2019

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


MON 19:30 What Do Artists Do All Day? (m0005ws0)
Frank Bowling's Abstract World

Internationally renowned abstract artist Frank Bowling became the first black Royal Academician in 2005. Now 85 years old and the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain, Bowling talks to Brenda Emmanus about his long career. Featuring interviews with critics and fellow artists who discuss the significance of his work in the history of British art.


MON 20:00 Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here (b01pz9d6)
Professor Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary periods in British history: the Industrial Revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions that by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. It was a time that transformed the way people think, work and play forever.

He traces the unprecedented explosion of new ideas and technological inventions that transformed Britain's agricultural society into an increasingly industrial and urbanised one. The documentary explores two fascinating questions - why did the industrial revolution happen when it did, and why did it happen in Britain?

Professor Black discusses the reasons behind this transformation - from Britain's coal reserves, which gave it a seemingly inexhaustible source of power, to the ascendency of political liberalism, with engineers and industrialists able to meet and share ideas and inventions. He explains the influence that geniuses like Josiah Wedgewood had on the consumer revolution and travels to Antigua to examine the impact Britain's empire had on this extraordinary period of growth.


MON 21:00 Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard (b072nxtm)
With unparalleled access to Pompeii and featuring cutting-edge modern technology, Mary Beard guides us through this amazing slice of the ancient world.

For the first time ever, CT scanning and x-ray equipment bring new light to the secrets of the victims of the 79 AD eruption. Mary unpacks the human stories behind the tragic figures - gladiators, slaves, businesswomen and children.

She goes behind the scenes of the Great Pompeii Project, where restoration teams have gradually removed the layers of time and deterioration from the frescoes and mosaics of houses closed to the public for decades. And with the help of point-cloud scanning technology, Pompeii is seen and explained like never before.

Mary has unprecedented access to hidden storerooms and archaeological labs packed to the hilt with items from daily life: plumbing fittings, pottery, paint pots, foodstuff and fishing nets. As she pieces it all together, Mary presents a film that is a celebratory and unique view of life in this extraordinary town.


MON 22:00 The Alan Clark Diaries (b0074py6)
Foreign Parts

Dramatisation of the colourful memoirs of the late Conservative MP. Clark revels in his new-found status as minister of trade and his new diary secretary but soon finds himself prisoner to a gruelling travel schedule, deep jet lag and infuriating civil servants. As he forges on with his precious anti-fur legislation, personal and political pressures begin to escalate.


MON 22:30 The Alan Clark Diaries (b0082cp3)
Defence of the Realm

Dramatisation of the colourful memoirs of the late Conservative MP. Clark has finally made it into the coveted Ministry of Defence. But his triumph is short-lived when he finds himself once again walking on thin ice with his old rival Tom King. All the while, the political temperature is rising - poll tax riots rage, the Gulf War breaks out, and The Lady's iron grip on the Tory party appears to be slipping fast.


MON 23:00 Clydebuilt: The Ships that Made the Commonwealth (p01n8dv0)
HMS Hood

In this episode, David Hayman meets some of the men who sailed on HMS Hood. He travels to Scapa Flow to experience what life was like for the hundreds of people working to protect the vital North Atlantic convoys.

In Australia, he uncovers the legacy of her flag-waving visits and he tries his hand at riveting to understand what it took to make this battlecruiser strong and watertight. David also investigates why this 'mighty' ship was flawed from the very day she was launched.


MON 00:00 Pacific Abyss (b00d7h8z)
Episode 2

Underwater wildlife series in which Kate Humble sets sail on a 2,000 mile adventure across the Pacific with a team of top natural history filmmakers and deep water marine biologists. The second programme in the series sees the team of explorers travelling through some of the most remote islands of Micronesia.

Kate Humble's scuba team encounter spectacular underwater wildlife while the extreme deep divers and scientists dive as deep as humans can without a submersible and continue to find fish that have never been seen before.

In this environment, even the most experienced member of the deep team is not immune to unexpected equipment failure.


MON 01:00 Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History (b0bcy4kd)
Brenda Emmanus follows acclaimed artist Sonia Boyce as she leads a team preparing a new exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery highlighting artists of African and Asian descent who have helped to shape the history of British art.

Sonia and her team have spent the past three years scouring our public art archives to find out just how many works of art by artists of African and Asian descent the nation really owns. They have found nearly 2,000, but many of these pieces have rarely, if ever, been displayed before. We go into the stores to rediscover these works and, more importantly, meet the groundbreaking artists from the Windrush generation, the 60s counterculture revolution and the Black Art movement of the 80s.

Contributors include Rasheed Araeen, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Shonibare, the BLK Art Group and Althea McNish.


MON 02:00 Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here (b01pz9d6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


MON 03:00 Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard (b072nxtm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



TUESDAY 11 JUNE 2019

TUE 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m0005wqz)
Series 1

11/06/2019

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


TUE 19:30 Folk America at the Barbican (b00jd3xb)
Carolyn Hester

'Texas Songbird' Carolyn Hester performs at a special Greenwich Village Revisited concert with songs penned by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Ed McCurdy and her take on the classic House of the Rising Sun.


TUE 19:45 FIFA Women's World Cup (m0005wr1)
2019

USA v Thailand

World Cup holders, the USA, get their campaign underway in Reims against a Thailand side ranked amongst the lowest at the tournament. Their biggest-ever defeat came against today's opponents in 2016, when the USA ran out 9-0 winners.


TUE 22:00 Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley (b06vm9qp)
Reinventing Russia

Lucy Worsley travels to Russia to tell the extraordinary story of the dynasty that ruled the country for more than three centuries. It's an epic tale that includes giant figures such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, the devastating struggle against Napoleon in 1812, and the political murders of Nicholas II and his family in 1918 which brought the dynasty to a brutal end.

In this first episode, Lucy investigates the beginning of the Romanovs' 300-year reign in Russia. In 1613, when Russia was leaderless, 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov was plucked from obscurity and offered the crown of Russia. Mikhail was granted absolute power and began the reign of the Romanovs as the most influential dynasty in modern European history.

Lucy also charts the story of Peter the Great, the ruthless and ambitious tsar who was determined to modernise Russia at the end of the 17th century. Lucy traces Peter's accession to the throne as a nine-year-old, when he witnessed a revolt led by royal guards and the slaughter of his uncles and close advisors. Sixteen years later, Peter would vengefully execute a thousand rebellious guards. Throughout his reign, Peter would demonstrate an unwavering commitment to establishing Russia as a naval power - Lucy explores the lengths to which Peter would go to ensure this became a reality, including the creation of a new maritime capital, St Petersburg.

Lucy shows how the Romanovs embraced and sponsored the arts on an astonishing scale - from building spectacular palaces to commissioning grand artworks - that all still dazzle today.

As well as studying this unique royal family, Lucy also considers the impact the Romanovs had on the lives of ordinary Russians, who were often little better than slaves to the elite.


TUE 23:00 Forces of Nature with Brian Cox (b07k7m4z)
The Universe in a Snowflake

Brian uncovers how the stunning diversity of shapes in the natural world are shadows of the rules that govern the universe. In Spain, he shows how an attempt by hundreds of people to build the highest human tower reveals the force that shapes our planet.

In Nepal, honey hunters seek out giant beehives that cling to cliff walls. The perfect hexagonal honeycombs made by the bees to store their honey conceal a mathematical rule.

Off the coast of Canada, Brian explains how some of the most irregular, dangerous shapes in nature - massive icebergs that surge down from Greenland and into shipping lanes of the Atlantic - emerge from a powerful yet infinitely small force of nature. Even the most delicate six-sided snowflake tells a story of the forces of nature that forged it.


TUE 00:00 Storyville (b04m3k1q)
Russia's Toughest Prison: The Condemned

With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners.

In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life.

A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to.


TUE 01:20 Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism (b09tbh10)
Series 1

California

In this episode Charles Hazlewood tracks down the pioneers of minimalism, which began on America's west coast in the 1950s. Describing them as 'prophets without honour', Charles explores La Monte Young's groundbreaking experiments with musical form that included notes held for exceptionally long periods of time, and drones inspired by Eastern classical music and Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

He drives out into the Californian countryside to the ranch of Terry Riley and discusses the musician's revolutionary experiments with tape recording looping and phasing, along with early synthesizer sound. The episode includes excerpts from key early minimalist pieces, including Riley's now famous In C, performed by Charles Hazlewood's All Stars Collective and detailed workshopping by Hazlewood where pieces are deconstructed musically.

The key attributes of minimalism, its reliance on repetition, its mesmerizing transcendent qualities and innovative use of technology are also discussed with broadcaster and writer Tom Service; Gillian Moore, Director of Music at the Southbank Centre; composers Morton Subotnick, Max Richter and Bryce Dessner, and musicians Jarvis Cocker and Adrian Utley.


TUE 02:20 Our Classical Century (b0bs6xv8)
Series 1

1918 - 1936

Our Classical Century brings together the greatest moments in classical music in Britain over the last 100 years in a four-part series that celebrates moments of extraordinary music ambition and excellence, deep emotion and of great pleasure, and the artists who have brought audiences this music. Over the course of the series, viewers see and hear how, over the past one hundred years, classical music has shown dazzling virtuosity and innovation, and how music provided a unifying soundtrack to the times when national identity and destiny was at stake.

Presented by Suzy Klein and Sir Lenny Henry, this first programme captures the profound influence of the First World War on our classical music - how it affected a generation of musicians and composers and how the music they created became a crucial part of the nation’s sense of identity. From the martial might of Mars in Gustav Holst’s The Planets to the pastoral beauty of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ much-loved The Lark Ascending, this film tells the story of the music which brought together the United Kingdom.

Suzy and Lenny reveal the phenomenal popularity of the musical extravaganza Hiawatha by the now relatively unknown Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and examine the enduring impact of the American Jazz Age with George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. They also look at how Hubert Parry’s wartime composition to William Blake’s poem Jerusalem became the anthem of the Suffragette movement and at how the opening of Glyndebourne saw the start of a new chapter for opera in Britain.



WEDNESDAY 12 JUNE 2019

WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m0005wsh)
Series 1

12/06/2019

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


WED 19:30 Folk America at the Barbican (b00lbnmy)
The Wiyos

Brooklyn's The Wiyos entertain the Barbican audience with their quirky mix of vaudevillian ragtime and finely crafted 1920s style tunes.


WED 19:45 FIFA Women's World Cup (m0005wsk)
2019

France v Norway

After the big opening night in the capital, France head south to take on 1995 winners Norway, one of the original powerhouses in international women's football. Can either team book an early place in the knockout stage?


WED 22:00 Madagascar (b00ymh67)
Island of Marvels

Madagascar, the world's oldest island, broke off from Africa and India and has been on its own for more than 70 million years. In splendid isolation, it has evolved its very own wildlife - more than 80 per cent of it is found nowhere else. And that wildlife is quite extraordinary. In this episode, we reveal the island's most bizarre and dramatic places, and the unique wildlife that has made its home in each, thanks to the geology and isolation of this Alice-in-Wonderland world.

The stars are the lemurs, Madagascar's own primates. A family of indris leaps like gymnasts among rainforest trees, and crowned lemurs scamper around Madagascar's weirdest landscape, the razor-sharp limestone tsingy, which looks like something from another planet. And sifakas, ghostly white lemurs, move like ballerinas across the forest floor.

Madagascar's wildlife is famously strange. Bright red giraffe-necked weevils use their necks to build leaf nests with the complexity of origami. Chameleons stalk the forests, none more intriguing than the pygmy chameleon, the world's smallest reptile, delicately courting a female in its giant world. The fearsome fossa, Madagascar's only big mammal predator, looks for a mate - 15 metres up a tree. And in the southern 'spiny desert', a spider hauls an empty snail shell, 30 times its own weight, up into a bush as a shelter - something never before filmed, and possibly never observed in the wild before.

At the end of the episode, we go 'behind the camera', to reveal the challenges of capturing the behaviour of the little-known wildlife of this island. How do you go about filming a rare, secretive lemur that lives in the middle of Madagascar's biggest lake?


WED 23:00 Britain's Lost Masterpieces (b0bg5t91)
Series 3

Devon

In Knightshayes Court Devon the team are examining a work that is a copy of a Rembrandt. But, might it be the real thing, a genuine self-portrait?

Bendor discovers a small portrait of Rembrandt in the collection of a National Trust house, Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Devon. The painting is thought to be a later copy of a self-portrait by Rembrandt now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, but Bendor believes it is in fact a study for the finished picture by Rembrandt himself. There is a third version in a collection in Germany that was always thought to be the original until the Amsterdam version was found in a Glasgow attic in 1959.

The picture is sent to be restored and have a later background overpaint removed while Bendor sets out to see all three versions and in the process visits the world-expert on Rembrandt, Ernst van de Wettering, in Amsterdam. But Ernst is not persuaded by the painting. Bendor decides to try and use scientific investigation to prove the portrait is not a later copy.

Emma explores the history of the house and its eccentric opium smoking Victorian Gothic architect, William Burges. She investigates the history of the lace factory in the town of Tiverton on which the family fortune was based, and tries her hand at golf, as the last family member in the house was British Ladies Golf Champion five times in the 1920s.


WED 00:00 Andrew Marr's Great Scots: The Writers Who Shaped a Nation (b04g1h39)
Walter Scott

As Scotland stands on the brink of a momentous decision, Andrew Marr explores the writers who have reflected, defined and challenged Scottish national identity over the last 300 years.

Andrew examines the life of Walter Scott, a prolific novelist and poet who wrote swashbuckling tales of romance and derring-do, which sold by the bucket load, both north and south of the border. But he is less well known as a political fixer who believed in a proud Scotland inside the United Kingdom. He brought King George IV to Scotland and swathed him in tartan, helping to create an enduring myth of Scotland as a land of romance populated by a brave race doing brave deeds, all clad in the kilt. An image that centuries later, Scotland is still trying to shake.


WED 01:00 Utopia: In Search of the Dream (b090c2pj)
Series 1

Blueprints for Better

In this first episode, Prof Richard Clay explores how utopian visions begin as blueprints for fairer worlds and asks whether they can inspire real change.

Charting 500 years of utopian visions and making bold connections between exploration and science fiction - from radical 18th-century politics to online communities like Wikipedia - Richard delves into colourful stories of some of the world's greatest utopian dreamers, including Thomas More, who coined the term 'utopia', Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek.

Richard builds a compelling argument that utopian visions have been a powerful way of criticising the present, and he identifies key values he believes the imagined better futures tend to idealise. He shows how the concept of shared ownership, a 'commons' of both land and digital space online, has fired utopian thinking, and he explores the dream of equality through the campaign for civil rights in the 1960s and through a feminist theatrical production in today's America.

Immersing himself in a terrifying '1984' survival drama in Vilnius, Lithuania, Richard also looks at the flip side, asking why dystopias are so popular today in film, TV and comic book culture. He explores whether dystopian visions have been a way to remind ourselves that hard-won gains can be lost and that we must beware of humanity's darker side if we are ever to reach a better place.

Across Britain, Germany, Lithuania and America, Richard talks about the meaning of utopia with a rich range of interviewees, including Katherine Maher, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols, explorer Belinda Kirk, football commentator John Motson and Hollywood screenwriter Frank Spotnitz.


WED 02:00 Our Classical Century (m0002dx7)
Series 1

1936 - 1953

Suzy Klein and John Simpson explore the power of classical music between the coronations of George VI and Elizabeth II, through WWII and into peacetime, to console, unite and inspire the nation.

Our Classical Century brings together the greatest moments in classical music in Britain over the last 100 years in a four-part series celebrating extraordinary pieces of music and performance, revealing how music has provided a unifying soundtrack when national identity and destiny are at stake.

In this episode presenter Suzy Klein is joined by music lover and BBC world affairs editor John Simpson to explore how classical music underscored the coronations of George VI and Elizabeth II, how it provided succour and inspiration during WWII and how it responded to social change as we emerged into peace. They explain how William Walton, creator of the radical, witty piece Facade with Edith Sitwell in the 1920s, composed Crown Imperial for George VI’s coronation, full of Elgarian pomp and circumstance. With the outbreak of war, Suzy investigates the remarkable legacy of pianist Myra Hess, her signature tune, Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, and how Kenneth Clark encouraged her to create a series of morale-boosting lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery in the heart of war-torn London. An audience member remembers the moving and inspiring impact of Myra’s music on those enduring the Blitz. From the tragic destruction of Queen’s Hall, traditional home to the Proms, the episode charts the triumph of the first Prom in its new home, the Royal Albert Hall. John talks about the remarkable reception that greeted one of the pieces played at the prom, the first performance of Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony, the Leningrad. Written under siege, the piece only arrived in Britain after the score was elaborately smuggled on film out of Russia via Iran to London. Paul Patrick, the BBC Philharmonic’s principal percussionist, tells how he prepares for the demanding task of recreating the sound of war in the symphony.

The war over, our presenters chart the emergence of our love of classical music in peacetime, with the unexpected success of young composer Benjamin Britten’s complex opera Peter Grimes and its hugely popular performance at Sadler's Wells. Tenor Stuart Skelton performs excerpts and reflects on why it struck such a chord. A new Labour government believed music should be part of everyone’s experience and the 1944 Butler Education Act helped put music on the school curriculum for the very first time. Our presenters explore the creation of Britten’s classic The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in 1945, and Malcolm Sargent’s film of it, unforgettably introducing classical music to generations of children. Through the Festival of Britain, which brought music to the heart of the nation, this episode arrives at the 1953 Coronation. By then two and a half million homes had TVs and, with an audience of 20 million, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II became a showcase of our best classical music for its biggest audience ever: Elgar, Holst, Vaughn Williams, Purcell, Handel’s Zadok the Priest, and the whole event crowned by William Walton’s Orb and Sceptre, a fresh youthful-sounding coronation march for a young queen.

Between the coronations of Elizabeth II and her father, the nation had undergone immense trauma, social and political change. This programme charts the role classical music played in sustaining our cultural life and responding to the challenges of a new era.


WED 03:00 Madagascar (b00ymh67)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]



THURSDAY 13 JUNE 2019

THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m0005wrt)
Series 1

13/06/2019

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.


THU 19:30 The Sky at Night (m0005wqx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 on Sunday]


THU 20:00 Rome's Invisible City (b05xxl4t)
With the help of a team of experts and the latest in 3D scanning technology, Alexander Armstrong, along with Dr Michael Scott, explores the hidden underground treasures that made Rome the powerhouse of the ancient world. In his favourite city, he uncovers a lost subterranean world that helped build and run the world's first metropolis and its empire.

From the secret underground world of the Colosseum to the aqueducts and sewers that supplied and cleansed it, and from the mysterious cults that sustained it spiritually to the final resting places of Rome's dead, Xander discovers the underground networks that serviced the remarkable world above.


THU 21:00 Our Classical Century (m0005wrw)
Series 1

1980s to the present

Music broadcaster Suzy Klein and West-End star Alexandra Burke chart how, in the 80s and 90s, a new generation of young musicians – from Simon Rattle and Nigel Kennedy to Vanessa-Mae - defied tradition and burst out of the accepted confines of the classical genre. We look at Torvill and Dean’s triumph at the Winter Olympics, the Three Tenors at Italia 90, Tavener’s haunting anthem accompanying the funeral of Princess Diana and the successful launch of Classic FM.

Alexandra meets Torvill and Dean to explore how Maurice Ravel’s Bolero burst into the pop charts in 1984. The skaters reveal why it was chosen and why it worked so well. Composer Richard Hartley explains to Suzy how he had to re-orchestrate Ravel’s composition on the synclavier to get it to the right length for the Olympic performance.

In 1989 Nigel Kennedy burst onto the scene with his punk loom and ferocious playing. A protege of Yehudi Menuhin, he tore up the conventions of the classical concert hall. Producer Barry McCann reveals how they marketed Kennedy and his chart-topping version of Vivaldi’s Summer and we see Kennedy in action today performing Jimmy Hendrix.

Sir Simon Rattle reveals how classical music transformed the reputation and fortunes of a city – Birmingham. The Midlands was the birthplace of Heavy Metal, music forged in the din of its industrial heritage. But the car industry had collapsed and in 1980 the arrival of Rattle, a charismatic young conductor with a passion for Mahler, proved the unlikely catalyst for Birmingham’s transformation. Suzy goes behind the scenes at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, one of the world’s finest concert halls while Sir Simon reveals why The Queen stayed away from the opening ceremony

In 1990 Puccini’s Nessun Dorma brought opera to a whole new audience of football supporters when the BBC used Pavarotti’s 1972 recording as their title music. When Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo performed together for the first time on the eve of the final, The Three Tenors became icons of popular culture. At Arsenal FC’s Emirates stadium, Alexandra meets football fans inspired by Nessun Dorma to create the FA Fans Choir.

Until 1993 the options to hear classical music were through records, concert hall or Radio Three. Broadcaster Petroc Trelawny tells the inside story of the early days of the country’s first commercial classical radio station, Classic FM. Its recipe of popular music for a broad audience was an immediate hit, but Trelawny reveals that ‘the critics were quite sniffy.’ He also tells how founder Michael Bukht would reprimand him on air if the talking got in the way of the music.

During a rare interview with Vanessa-Mae, we see her barnstorming arrival on the music scene. Mae made her debut with the London Philharmonia aged 10 and at 13 set a world record as the youngest soloist to record both the Tchaikovsky and Beethoven violin concertos. A child of the 80s, a fan of Michael Jackson and Prince, Mae wanted to experiment, which she did with an album heavily influenced by pop and rock. To accompany it, she was filmed in pop videos shot cavorting in hot pants in Ibiza and playing the violin in the sea. It shocked the classical world, but gained Mae instant popularity and recognition with the young.

But as classical music was flirting with the pop world, it retained its power to unite the nation in exceptional times. The funeral of Princess Diana was a moment of national mourning, with John Tavener’s piece Song for Athene at the heart of the service. Martin Neary, who conducted the choir, explains why he chose the piece. Suzy explores why it so aptly captured the sense of ancient ritual and tradition, modernity and spirituality for the congregation and the millions watching the event on television. World-class cellist, Stephen Isserlis, performs excerpts from Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, a piece composed for him, and discusses the spiritual quality of the music.
In 2007, an ensemble of 12- to 26-year-olds from Venezuela’s most troubled neighbourhoods rocked the Royal Albert Hall with the Telegraph asking, ‘Was this the greatest Prom of all time?’ The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra was the product of a government-sponsored initiative known as El Sistema. Our presenters explore this remarkable illustration of how the idea of who can play classical music was transformed.

Crashing through the sound barrier the programme finally looks at the work of one of the UK’s most exciting young composers, Anna Meredith, who combines classical, electronic, pop, vocal and visual styles in her work.

Our Classical Century climaxes with a look to the future in which barriers between musical genres and performance styles are breaking down. Sir Simon Rattle explains: ‘Music’s like the virus you don’t get rid thankfully of because it’s incurable! We just try and spread it to as many people as we can and it should be in everybody’s life in some way or other. Music’s like weeds, it’s amazing where it grows.’


THU 22:00 This World (b03sr67n)
The Coffee Trail with Simon Reeve

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Vietnam to uncover the stories behind the nation's morning pick-me-up. While we drink millions of cups of the stuff each week, how many of us know where our coffee actually comes from? The surprising answer is that it is not Brazil, Colombia or Jamaica, but Vietnam. Eighty per cent of the coffee we drink in Britain isn't posh cappuccinos or lattes but instant coffee, and Vietnam is the biggest supplier.

From Hanoi in the north, Simon follows the coffee trail into the remote central highlands, where he meets the people who grow, pick and pack our coffee. Millions of small-scale famers, each working two or three acres, produce most of the coffee beans that go into well-known instant coffee brands.

Thirty years ago Vietnam only produced a tiny proportion of the world's coffee, but after the end of the Vietnam war there was a widescale plan to become a coffee-growing nation, and Vietnam is now the second biggest in the world. The coffee industry has provided employment for millions, making some people very rich indeed, and Simon meets Vietnam's biggest coffee billionaire. But he also learns that their rapid success has come at a cost to both the local people and the environment.


THU 23:00 Horizon (b07z8034)
2016

The Lost Tribes of Humanity

Alice Roberts explores recent discoveries in the study of human origins, revealing the transformation that has been brought about in this field by genetics.

Traditional paleo-anthropology, based on fossils, is being transformed by advanced genome sequencing techniques. We now know that there were at least four other distinct species of human on the planet at the same time as us - some of them identified from astonishingly well-preserved DNA extracted from 50,000-year-old bones, others hinted at by archaic sections of DNA hidden in our modern genome. What's more, we now know that our ancestors met and interacted with these other humans, in ways that still have ramifications today. Alice uses these revelations to update our picture of the human family tree.


THU 00:00 Ice Age Giants (p018cbd4)
Land of the Sabre-tooth

Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the Ice Age. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the Ice Age giants back to life.

The Ice Age odyssey begins in the 'land of the sabre-tooth' - North America, a continent that was half covered by ice that was up to two miles thick. Yet this frozen land also boasts the most impressive cast of Ice Age giants in the world.

High in a cave in the Grand Canyon, Alice discovers the mummified excrement of the loveable, grizzly bear-sized Shasta ground sloth. Lying in the sands of Arizona are the shelled remains of a glyptodon, surely the weirdest mammal that ever lived. On the coastal plains of California, Alice encounters the vast Columbian mammoth, an animal far larger than any elephant today.

These leviathans all have one thing in common: they were stalked by the meanest big cat that ever prowled the earth, armed with seven-inch teeth and hunting in packs - Smilodon fatalis, the sabre-toothed cat.


THU 01:00 Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (b01nln7d)
There is a battle playing out inside your body right now. It started billions of years ago and it is still being fought in every one of us every minute of every day. It is the story of a viral infection, the battle for the cell.

This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a security system for everything passing in and out of the cell, the dynamic highways that transport cargo across the cell and the remarkable turbines that power the whole cellular world to the amazing nucleus housing DNA and the construction of thousands of different proteins all with unique tasks. The virus intends to commandeer this system to one selfish end: to make more viruses. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Exploring the very latest ideas about the evolution of life on earth and the bio-chemical processes at the heart of every one of us, and revealing a world smaller than it is possible to comprehend, in a story large enough to fill the biggest imaginations. With contributions from Professor Bonnie L Bassler of Princeton University, Dr Nick Lane and Professor Steve Jones of University College London and Cambridge University's Susanna Bidgood.


THU 02:00 Rome's Invisible City (b05xxl4t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


THU 03:00 Our Classical Century (m00041tg)
Series 1

1953 - 1971

From the films Brief Encounter and Bridge on the River Kwai, to the glamorous classical stars Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim, this is the story of how classical music thrived in post-war Britain and found vast popular audiences. Suzy Klein and broadcaster and music lover Joan Bakewell explore a new world of musical collaborations with classical music – from Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, Rick Wakeman and David Bowie, and Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic.

Elizabeth II’s coronation was a remarkable showcase for British classical music. It was watched by millions on their new TV sets. Suzy explores how the BBC transformed the Last Night of the Proms into a live TV extravaganza under the baton of the dynamic ‘Flash Harry’, Malcolm Sargent. Joan Bakewell meets Sylvia Darley, his private secretary for 20 years, who reveals the ‘love affair’ between Sir Malcolm and the promenaders.

TV was one medium that had grasped the potential of classical music – now film did too. David Lean had already co-opted Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto to unforgettable effect in Brief Encounter. Suzy reveals how Lean commissioned the piece which brought Oscar glory for Best Score to British composer Malcom Arnold in 1958, for Lean’s cinematic tour de force Bridge on the River Kwai. Arnold – an eclectic, dynamic and prolific composer - produced a powerful score for this film about prisoners in a Japanese camp building a bridge for the Burma Railway. Composer Neil Brand reflects on Arnold’s ability to conjure the pain and hardship of wartime imprisonment and forced labour.

As the Sixties began, a piece deeply inspired by the wartime experience - The War Requiem - helped seal the reputation of composer Benjamin Britten. It was written for Coventry, a city devastated by WW2 bombing. An experiment in the healing power of music, it was a controversial choice for the reopening of Coventry Cathedral, as Britten was a conscientious objector. Against the backdrop of the Cold and fears of apocalyptic nuclear war, Britten created a piece that resounded with his deeply held opposition to war. Joan Bakewell visits the Red House in Aldeburgh where Britten wrote the piece, and examines Britten’s hand-written score that warns of the inhumanity and consequences of war. Suzy meets a member of the original 1962 audience who recalls the stunned silence that greeted its first performance, and Roderick Williams sings a powerful extract.

As the Sixties arrived and classical music thrived on TV, in cinemas, on records – a glamorous new classical star for a new age burst onto the scene – the dynamic, virtuoso Jacqueline du Pré. With cellists Moray Welsh and Julian Lloyd Webber, Joan Bakewell explores the secrets of du Pré’s magnetic style and the piece that she made her own: the Elgar Cello Concerto. Written in the aftermath of WW1, Du Pré invested the piece with a virtuosic romanticism that sold millions of records. Acclaimed young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason plays excerpts and reveals the impact Du Pré’s version had on him as a young player.

The sixties saw a new era of musical collaborations, one famously involving Yehudi Menuhin of whom Albert Einstein said, "The day of miracles is not over. Our dear old Jehovah is still on the job." Menuhin’s musical curiosity lead him to collaborate with Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar. Brilliant contemporary musician Nitin Sawhney helps Suzy examine the secrets of Shankar’s brilliance and the ingredients of their memorable collaboration in their legendary album ‘West Meets East’. The record won a Grammy and brought Indian musical tradition to a western audience. On 24th September 1969 another epic musical collaboration took place between Jon Lord with the heavy metal band Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold at the Royal Albert Hall. Ian Gillan describes how the orchestra turned up their noses at a collaboration with a heavy metal band.

This was the era of experimentation, and in 1971 David Bowie – a fan of Stravinsky and Holst – involved classically-trained Rick Wakeman in the classic Life on Mars. With Rick at the keyboard, Suzy explores the making of this revolutionary song, in which classical music collides with pop brilliance.

In the 70s, political uncertainty and industrial disputes dominated. With advertising guru Sir Frank Lowe, Joan Bakewell looks at how classical music was co-opted by advertisers to hark back to more certain times. Lowe explains how he took a brass band version of the theme from Dvorak’s New World Symphony and transformed it into a nostalgic tune to sell Hovis bread. The programme reveals how the piece was written by a middle European as he travelled through the American West, and was deeply influenced by African-American spirituals.

As post-war Britain changed, opened up to new media and new global cultural influences, so Britain fell in love with classical music in new ways



FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2019

FRI 19:00 World News Today (m0005wwh)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m0005wwk)
Mike Read and Simon Bates present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 7 January 1988 and featuring Sinitta, Jellybean, Depeche Mode, George Michael, Terence Trent D'Arby, GOSH, The Stranglers, Pet Shop Boys and Joyce Sims.


FRI 20:00 Buble at the BBC (b081vcx0)
Claudia Winkleman meets Michael Buble in this entertainment spectacular. Michael performs classic tracks including Cry Me a River and Feeling Good alongside songs from his brand new album, including Nobody but Me.

Michael also goes undercover as a sales assistant at a London department store to surprise a few unsuspecting fans.


FRI 21:00 I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock (m0005wwn)
Series 1

Episode 1

Part one of Katie Puckrik’s voyage through a halcyon period of Los Angeles studio craft when studio-based artists like The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates produced the smoothest R&B and married it to adult themes about longing, aspiration and melancholy.

In its day this music was never identified as a genre, but in the 21st century, in a nod to its finely crafted nature, it has come to be known as yacht rock. Katie’s account of yacht rock is both the soundtrack of her American teen years and a reappraisal of a critically neglected era of music, when the sophisticated smooth sounds of the West Coast were a palliative for an America in turmoil.

Starting with the forerunners of this soft sound, Katie looks at the singer-songwriters of Laurel Canyon as well as soft rock pioneers such as the band America, whose songs offered Americans an escape from economic depression at home and the enduring conflict in Vietnam abroad. Popularised by a boom in FM radio stations, this smooth, easily digestible sound found mainstream appeal. Katie argues that the pure yacht sound was born in 1976, when seasoned session musician Michael McDonald joined The Doobie Brothers. Alongside The Doobies’ mellow tracks, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates also delivered perfect studio-engineered productions that remain as escapist and indulgent a listen today as they did when they were made.

The gleaming yacht sound was in part defined by a group of session players and composers, including McDonald, who played across the range of ‘yacht’ bands, informing their specific tone and level of musicianship. In this film, one such musician, Jay Graydon, talks about the yacht phenomenon and being part of the scene back in the day. Meanwhile John Oates reveals some of the inspirations behind his hit She’s Gone. Other contributors include producer Mark Ronson and JD Ryznar, creator of internet hit the Yacht Rock Show.


FRI 22:00 Top of the Pops (b03mpphy)
1979 - Big Hits

1979 Top of the Pops collection, offering 60 minutes of the year's greatest, cheesiest and oddest performances. 1979 was the year music went portable with the launch of the Sony walkman and another year Top of the Pops, the BBC's flagship music show, managed to still draw over 15 million viewers every Thursday night.

The mod revival and 2 Tone was in full stomp, featured here with the Jam, the Specials, Madness and the Selecter. If new wave was your bag there is Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Gary Numan. In 1979 there was little chance of seeing a show on TV featuring Dame Edna's performance of Waltzing Matilda alongside the Ruts with Babylon's Burning, but the British public's eclectic taste predicted the chart and thus saw them together on TOTP in June.

With singles sales at their peak, it was a regular occurrence for groups like Racey and The Nolans to sell over a million copies and their performances may tell us why, or maybe not! Plus new wave pop from Lene Lovich, disco from Chic and a peek at the nation's favourite, Chas & Dave, singing Gertcha.


FRI 23:00 The People's History of Pop (b08h9j0n)
1997-2010 Closer Than Close

Sara Cox looks at the time when the internet opened up new worlds for music fans and brought them closer to their musical heroes than ever before.

It starts in the years leading up to the year 2000 - a time when information overload and uncertainty about new technologies was creating an anxiety about the future.

We hear from fans who loved a band that were tackling this millennial angst head-on with a new album - Radiohead with their 1997 album OK Computer.

As this new technology enters our lives, we meet people who are starting to change the relationship between fans and bands - a fan who saves his favourite band Travis from the bad press reviews of their second album with a letter written to Melody Maker in 1999 and a chart pop fan who manages to meet his favourite pop heroes with an ingenious, homemade piece of memorabilia.

From the same period, we get an insight into the new clubbing trends - from the outfits, photos and magazine articles saved by a pioneer of a new, fan-powered tribe on the dancefloor - the Crasher Kids - who become the identity of Sheffield club Gatecrasher, to a fan whose flyers chart the rise of grassroots sound UK garage, which went from the airwaves of pirate radio and Sunday night clubs scene in London to the top of the charts.

In the 2000s, fans could now decide who their pop stars were going to be and we meet a mother and daughter whose lives were changed by Will Young, who in turn change his life by voting for him in Pop Idol.

With the arrival of file sharing in the early 2000s, a fan recounts how the unconventional rise of The Arctic Monkeys was all thanks to fans sharing music on online forums and Myspace. And as technology develops, we see how a fan's canny use of YouTube opened up the grime scene of east London to the world.

Along the way we hear the remarkable stories behind photos and signed set-lists from Amy Winehouse, the one-off fan club magazine from The Libertines and footage of a gig in Pete Doherty's flat, and footage of the moment when Adele gave her stage over to two very surprised fans.


FRI 00:00 Top of the Pops (m0005wwk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


FRI 00:30 The Old Grey Whistle Test (b0074t8q)
California Comes to the Whistle Test

A compilation of BBC performances by artists who lived and worked in California in the 1970s. Featuring Jackson Browne, Little Feat, Ry Cooder, Judee Sill, Bonnie Raitt and a rare duet between James Taylor and Carly Simon.


FRI 01:30 Top of the Pops (b03mpphy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]


FRI 02:35 I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock (m0005wwn)
[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)

Andrew Marr's Great Scots: The Writers Who Shaped a Nation 00:00 WED (b04g1h39)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 MON (m0005wry)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 TUE (m0005wqz)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 WED (m0005wsh)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 THU (m0005wrt)

Britain's Lost Masterpieces 23:00 WED (b0bg5t91)

Buble at the BBC 20:00 FRI (b081vcx0)

Clydebuilt: The Ships that Made the Commonwealth 23:00 MON (p01n8dv0)

Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley 22:00 TUE (b06vm9qp)

Engineering Giants 19:00 SUN (b01l9m3h)

Engineering Giants 02:00 SUN (b01l9m3h)

FIFA Women's World Cup 19:45 TUE (m0005wr1)

FIFA Women's World Cup 19:45 WED (m0005wsk)

Folk America at the Barbican 19:30 TUE (b00jd3xb)

Folk America at the Barbican 19:30 WED (b00lbnmy)

Forces of Nature with Brian Cox 23:00 TUE (b07k7m4z)

Gregory Porter's Popular Voices 22:55 SAT (b09gvqj9)

Horizon 21:00 SUN (b01r6dys)

Horizon 23:00 THU (b07z8034)

I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock 21:00 FRI (m0005wwn)

I Can Go for That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock 02:35 FRI (m0005wwn)

Ice Age Giants 00:00 THU (p018cbd4)

Inspector Montalbano 21:00 SAT (m0005wqw)

Japan: Earth's Enchanted Islands 20:00 SAT (p02n9vgl)

Japan: Earth's Enchanted Islands 01:55 SAT (p02n9vgl)

Madagascar 22:00 WED (b00ymh67)

Madagascar 03:00 WED (b00ymh67)

Our Classical Century 02:20 TUE (b0bs6xv8)

Our Classical Century 02:00 WED (m0002dx7)

Our Classical Century 21:00 THU (m0005wrw)

Our Classical Century 03:00 THU (m00041tg)

Pacific Abyss 00:00 MON (b00d7h8z)

Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories 22:30 SUN (b08kz9qz)

Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard 21:00 MON (b072nxtm)

Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard 03:00 MON (b072nxtm)

Popular Voices at the BBC 23:55 SAT (b09gvqjc)

Rome's Invisible City 20:00 THU (b05xxl4t)

Rome's Invisible City 02:00 THU (b05xxl4t)

Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell 01:00 THU (b01nln7d)

Storyville 00:00 TUE (b04m3k1q)

Super Giant Animals 19:00 SAT (b03bvxt5)

Super Giant Animals 02:55 SAT (b03bvxt5)

The Alan Clark Diaries 22:00 MON (b0074py6)

The Alan Clark Diaries 22:30 MON (b0082cp3)

The BBC at War 01:00 SUN (b060h43j)

The Old Grey Whistle Test 00:30 FRI (b0074t8q)

The People's History of Pop 23:00 FRI (b08h9j0n)

The Sky at Night 22:00 SUN (m0005wqx)

The Sky at Night 19:30 THU (m0005wqx)

This World 22:00 THU (b03sr67n)

Timeshift 00:55 SAT (b00wwlll)

Timeshift 20:00 SUN (b08mp2l8)

Timeshift 03:00 SUN (b08mp2l8)

Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism 01:20 TUE (b09tbh10)

Top of the Pops 19:30 FRI (m0005wwk)

Top of the Pops 22:00 FRI (b03mpphy)

Top of the Pops 00:00 FRI (m0005wwk)

Top of the Pops 01:30 FRI (b03mpphy)

Treasures of Ancient Greece 00:00 SUN (b05qqgrr)

Utopia: In Search of the Dream 01:00 WED (b090c2pj)

What Do Artists Do All Day? 19:30 MON (m0005ws0)

Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History 01:00 MON (b0bcy4kd)

Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here 20:00 MON (b01pz9d6)

Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here 02:00 MON (b01pz9d6)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (m0005wwh)