Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London report on the events that are shaping the world.
Brooklyn's The Wiyos entertain the Barbican audience with their quirky mix of vaudevillian ragtime and finely crafted 1920s style tunes.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)