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 29 FEBRUARY 2020

SAT 19:00 Rick Stein's Long Weekends (b07cc9rt)
Bologna

Rick Stein's series of long weekends across Europe - taking in markets, restaurants and vineyards, the culture, history and scenery, and including fabulous dishes to cook at home.

This time Rick visits Bologna in northern Italy, a city so famous for its food that it's known as the stomach of Italy. He learns how to make the local fresh egg pasta used for tortellini, tagliatelle, ravioli and lasagne. There's stuffed rabbit filled with parma ham and parmesan frittata for dinner. At the market, Rick finds a fish stall and cafe, where he enjoys squid stuffed with mashed potato and capers.

Bologna is a medieval city with a university even older than Oxford, and Rick explores the local cloisters and the Whispering Walls. He even climbs Bologna's famous Asinelli Tower, despite vertigo. He also drives up into the hills to a cheese dairy, where he tastes 13-year-old parmesan. Nearby, there's lunch at a pig farm with restaurant attached. Out in the back, they're making brawn, but for the crew lunch they serve huge pork steaks, grilled over charcoal, with a big glass of local San Giovese wine. Delicious.


SAT 20:00 South Pacific (b00ks63z)
Endless Blue

A large part of the remote, blue wilderness of the South Pacific is a marine desert. Many animals that live in the ocean - among them sharks, whales and turtles - must go to extraordinary lengths to survive. Tiger sharks travel hundreds of miles to feast on fledging albatross chicks and, every year, sperm whales journey from one side of the South Pacific to the other in their search for food and mates. Theirs is a journey that can end in tragedy.

But the South Pacific is not all desert. New Zealand's super-rich coast supports huge pods of acrobatic dolphins; its coral reefs are some of the most diverse on earth; and there are few places richer in wildlife than the quirky Galapagos Islands, home to tropical penguins and surfing sea lions.

Using the greatest shipwreck story of all time - an event that inspired Moby Dick - the huge challenges of survival in this seemingly endless blue ocean are revealed.


SAT 21:00 Hidden (m000fvhx)
Series 2

Episode 3

The community gathers to mourn the passing of Geraint Ellis. Amongst the sea of faces, Mia sits alone. As night falls, Mia, Lee, and Connor head out into the night to an old ruin, a place with a dark history. A place of horror.


SAT 22:00 Clive James (m000fzl2)
Postcard from Cairo

Clive James makes his first visit to the Middle East, where he explores the pyramids, tries to buy a camel and talks to Omar Sharif about his love for Cairo's traditions of tolerance and cosmopolitanism.


SAT 22:50 After the Storm (m000g20s)
Author turned private detective Ryota struggles to make ends meet as he flitters away all the money he earns on gambling, barely able to pay child support for his son. After his father passes away, his mother seems to have moved on, but family tensions are high with both Ryota and his sister believing the other is taking advantage of their mother.

When a typhoon hits, Ryota, holed up in his mother’s house with his estranged wife and son, attempts to rekindle his relationships with his family.

In Japanese with English subtitles.


SAT 00:45 Top of the Pops (m000frf9)
Mark Goodier presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 13 April 1989 and featuring Cookie Crew with Edwin Starr, Ten City, T'Pau, INXS, Fine Young Cannibals, U2 and BB King, Paul Simpson ft Adeva, Bangles and Yello.


SAT 01:15 South Pacific (b00ks63z)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SAT 02:15 Rick Stein's Long Weekends (b07cc9rt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]



SUNDAY 01 MARCH 2020

SUN 19:00 Natural World (b04g4qm5)
2014-2015

Attenborough's Fabulous Frogs

As a boy, frogs were the first animals Sir David Attenborough kept and today he is still just as passionate about them. Through his eyes, the weird and wonderful world of frogs is explored, shedding new light on these charismatic, colourful and frequently bizarre creatures.

David reveals all aspects of the frogs' life, their anatomy, their extraordinary behaviour and their ability to live in some of the most extreme places on the planet, as he goes on an eye-opening journey into the fabulous lives of frogs.


SUN 20:00 The Science of Doctor Who (b03hybnv)
For one night only, Professor Brian Cox takes an audience of celebrity guests, including Charles Dance and Rufus Hound, and members of the public on a journey into the wonderful universe of the Doctor, from the lecture hall of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Drawing on the latest theories as well as 200 years of scientific discoveries and the genius of Einstein, Brian tries to answer the classic questions raised by the Doctor. Can you really travel in time? Does extra-terrestrial life exist in our galaxy? And how do you build something as fantastical as the Tardis?


SUN 21:00 Britain's Lost Masterpieces (b07yqgl3)
Series 1

Belfast

Bendor and Jacky visit the Ulster Museum to investigate what have long been disregarded as low-value copies of works by Flemish artist Peter Breughel the Younger. They also visit the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, in which a controversial painting once slashed with a knife is now kept in a room away from public view. The subject is believed to be William III and the pope - these two characters in one picture would be guaranteed to rouse the passions on both sides of the sectarian divide. But has the painting been a case of mistaken identity? Bendor and Jacky investigate.


SUN 22:00 Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues (b06qskdx)
Pirates

Few figures in British history have captured the popular imagination as much as the outlaw. From gentleman highwaymen, via swashbuckling pirates to elusive urban thieves and rogues, the brazen escapades and the flamboyance of the outlaw made them the antihero of their time - feared by the rich, admired by the poor and celebrated by writers and artists.

In this three-part series, historian Dr Sam Willis travels the open roads, the high seas and urban alleyways to explore Britain's 17th- and 18th-century underworld of highwaymen, pirates and rogues, bringing the great age of the British outlaw vividly to life.

Sam shows that, far from being 'outsiders', outlaws were very much a product of their time, shaped by powerful national events. In each episode, he focuses not just on a particular type of outlaw, but a particular era - the series as a whole offers a chronological portrait of the changing face of crime in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Sam takes to the high seas in search of the swashbuckling pirates of the golden age of piracy during the early 18th century. Following in the wake of the infamous Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Calico Jack and others, Sam charts the devastating impact these pirates had during an era of colonial expansion and how, by plundering the vast network of seaborne trade, they became the most-wanted outlaws in the world.


SUN 23:00 Alan Bennett's Diaries (b086kc2c)
Inspired by his acerbic and often hilarious diaries, this documentary shows Alan Bennett as he has never been seen before. The film follows Bennett to New York, the scene of his early triumph in Beyond the Fringe, to his community library in Primrose Hill which, he despairs, some would rather see turned into a pizza restaurant, to the East Coast railway line, which he would like to see renationalised, and to the village in Yorkshire he calls home.

Intimate encounters, filmed over a year, reveal a writer who is bemused by his own popularity and is still as angry and irreverent in his 80s as he was in his 20s. Leafing through private photographs, Bennett reflects on his modest beginnings and his enduring gratitude to a welfare state that paid for his education and looked after his parents in their old age. With a satirical force that has never left him, he also attacks the politics of today.


SUN 00:00 The History Boys (b01shmjd)
Alan Bennett's adaptation of his acclaimed, long-running play set in 1980s Yorkshire.

A class of likely lads, caught in a clash of educational styles as they prepare to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, find their loyalties as well as their intellects tested.


SUN 01:50 The Secret Life of Books (b07jhwf6)
The Secret Life of Children's Books

Five Children and It

Edith Nesbit is probably best known these days for The Railway Children, but her earlier book Five Children and It was even more influential, its blend of magic and the everyday paving the way for the Narnia stories and Harry Potter. A classic fantasy story about a group of siblings who discover a creature that can grant wishes, Nesbit's warm, witty children's fable was shaped by her own troubled family life.

In this film, actress and Nesbit fan Samantha Bond discovers how a rootless childhood and terrible personal tragedy influenced Five Children and It, delving into the origins and legacy of a book that can be arguably said to have kick-started modern children's fiction.


SUN 02:20 Britain's Lost Masterpieces (b07yqgl3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



MONDAY 02 MARCH 2020

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fzph)
Series 1

02/03/2020

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


MON 19:30 Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage (b00csp2p)
The Peloponnese

Architect and historian Francesco da Mosto embarks on a journey across the Mediterranean sea. The Black Swan docks near Athens - on route for Istanbul - so Francesco heads off alone on motorbike into the wild west of Greece, the Peloponnese. Here the people in the south have a reputation for, at best, unfriendliness, and it isn't long before Francesco runs into trouble with the locals. But there is plenty to marvel at.

Mystra, the ruined Byzantine town, once known as 'the Florence of the East', the ancient theatre at Epidaurus where a stage-whisper can be heard throughout an auditorium seating thousands, a tiny cave-like church that boasts incredible frescoes, and Vathia - the abandoned town of towers where neighbour fought against neighbour to get the upper hand.

Meanwhile, in the aptly named region of Arkadia, Francesco finds a sweet surprise - a field of beehives where the bees make the best honey in Greece and the biggest worry bead shop in Greece. At Methoni, he visits a great Venetian fortress at the sea's edge, the site of a massacre of his ancestors at the hands of the Ottoman empire.


MON 20:00 New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands (b07n2hmt)
New Arrivals

New Zealand was one of the last land masses to be found and settled by people. Lush and fertile, almost everything brought here flourishes, often with surprising consequences.

Told through the experiences of its native species - in particular, a charismatic and peculiar giant, flightless parrot - this is the moving story of the changing fortunes of New Zealand's wildlife since humans first arrived.


MON 21:00 Age of the Image (m000fzm9)
Series 1

A New Reality

Documentary series in which art historian James Fox explores how the power of images has transformed the modern world. James starts at the beginning of the 20th century, when an explosion of scientific and technological advances created radical new ways of looking at the world.

From the impact of aerial photography on modern art to our ability to peer inside the body and freeze time itself, the first episode is a dizzying journey of visual invention, which makes fascinating connections between the work of artists, film-makers, photographers and scientists.

Revealing Salvador Dali’s debt to Einstein, the groundbreaking trickery of Buster Keaton and shockingly modern fakery of WWI photos, James Fox offers an endlessly surprising, eye-opening look at the beginnings of our image-saturated age.


MON 22:00 Storyville (m000fzpl)
The Accused: Damned or Devoted?

In Pakistan, the blasphemy law prescribes a compulsory death sentence for disrespecting Prophet Muhammad and life imprisonment for desecrating the Qur’an.

This Storyville documentary follows the stories and fates of four people accused of blasphemy. The most famous of them is Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who claims she was falsely accused by her Muslim co-workers after a disagreement. As the elections in Pakistan loom, the country is split between those who feel the law is being misused and want to change it, and those who believe it must be preserved at any cost. Its greatest advocate, cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, goes on a mission to do just this. As his campaign heats up, he gathers millions of supporters, sympathetic to his goal, and silences anyone attempting to change the law by condemning them to death.

As the world awaits the outcome of Asia Bibi’s trial, Rizvi uses the blasphemy law as a key platform to run for prime minister of Pakistan in the upcoming elections. Amidst the hysteria, those who oppose him and even his own followers become pawns in the ultimate quest for power.


MON 23:15 Art of France (b08d7qlq)
Series 1

There Will Be Blood

Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how art in France took a dramatic turn following the French Revolution that ushered in a bold new world. From the execution of King Louis XVI and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte - a figure who simultaneously repelled and inspired artists of his time - through to the rise of Romanticism and an art of seduction, sex and high drama, Andrew explores artists including Jacques-Louis David - whose art appeared on the barricades and in the streets - as well as the work of Delacroix, Ingres and the tragic but brilliant Theodore Gericault.


MON 00:15 Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist (b09j0lp9)
British surrealist Leonora Carrington was a key part of the surrealist movement during its heyday in Paris and yet, until recently, remained a virtual unknown in the country of her birth. This film explores her dramatic evolution from British debutante to artist in exile, living out her days in Mexico City, and takes us on a journey into her darkly strange and cinematic world.


MON 01:15 Rude Britannia (b00ssrsg)
Presents Bawdy Songs and Lewd Photographs

A popular culture of rudeness managed to survive and even thrive in the long era of Victorian values, from the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 until the 1950s. The arrival of photography in the Victorian age sparked a moral panic, as rude and saucy images became available to anyone who had the money to buy them.

Current-day performers recreate the acts of celebrated rude music hall stars such as Champagne Charlie and Marie Lloyd, and there is a look at the satirical and rude world of one of Britain's first comic book icons, boozy anti-hero Ally Sloper. The documentary shows how a 20th-century seaside culture of rudeness emerged, with peepshows on the pier - the Mutoscopes - and the picture postcard art of Donald McGill.


MON 02:15 New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands (b07n2hmt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



TUESDAY 03 MARCH 2020

TUE 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fzsf)
Series 1

03/03/2020

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


TUE 19:30 The Yorkshire Dales (m0003yk1)
Series 1

Wensleydale

Adventurer and explorer Paul Rose heads for Wensleydale in this three-part series about the Yorkshire Dales. He starts his journey in the small town of Hawes, where locals now run many of their own services, including the buses.

Paul checks out why cycling is so popular in the Dales and tries to get to the top of the Buttertubs Pass, which is one of Wensleydale’s most difficult routes. Along the way he meets a family of beautiful Dales dormice – and spends time with a man who looks after one of Yorkshire’s most imposing castles.


TUE 20:00 King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons (b038rkw9)
Aethelstan: The First King of England

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

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

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


TUE 21:00 Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m000fzsh)
Series 1

Queen Anne and the Union

Lucy Worsley explores how Queen Anne’s reputation and legacy have been marred by a sustained campaign of historical fibs. When Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702, England looked set to be dominated by France and Spain. But Anne fought bravely to help England become a leading European power. She also helped unite England and Scotland to create Great Britain.

Anne was shy and reclusive. At first, she was supported as queen by her childhood friend and ‘favourite’, Sarah Churchill. However, they increasingly clashed over personal tensions and politics.

When Sarah’s cousin Abigail Masham became a lady-in-waiting, she began to replace Sarah in the queen’s affections. In revenge, Sarah helped pen a bawdy ballad claiming Anne and Abigail performed ‘dark deeds at night’. This led to endless rumours about Anne’s sexuality that persist to this day.

In the end, Sarah was dismissed. Thirty years after Anne’s death, Sarah took further revenge by publishing a tell-all story of her time as the queen’s favourite. Her portrait of Anne, as a foolish and stubborn woman, has been taken on board by most historians. But Lucy finds it is full of fibs.

Hollywood used Sarah’s version of history to create 2019’s The Favourite, destroying Queen Anne’s reputation for a whole new generation. Lucy reveals Anne to have been a smarter, more successful queen than history has ever acknowledged.


TUE 22:00 The Stuarts (p01lknsc)
And I Will Make Them One Nation

Presented by Dr Clare Jackson of Cambridge University, this three-part series argues the Stuarts, more than any other, were Britain's defining royal family. We tend to take today's modern United Kingdom for granted, but there was nothing inevitable about its creation. During the 17th century, the Stuarts grappled with the chaos of three separate Kingdoms, multiple religions and civil war. Britain has not known a century like it and some of the questions this dynasty faced have not gone away.

In the opening episode, Clare looks at James VI and I's attempts to unite Scotland and England under the umbrella of his crowns and persuade his subjects to feel more 'British'.


TUE 23:00 Armada: 12 Days to Save England (b05xj5t4)
Series 1

The Battle for England

In the second part of a major three-part drama-documentary series, Anita Dobson stars as Elizabeth I, and Dan Snow takes to the sea to tell the story of how England came within a whisker of disaster in summer 1588. Using newly discovered documents, Dan relives the fierce battles at sea and we go behind the scenes in the royal court of Elizabeth as the Spanish fleet prepares for full-on invasion.


TUE 00:00 Inside the Medieval Mind (b00b413s)
Belief

Leading authority on the Middle Ages, Professor Robert Bartlett, presents a series which examines the way we thought during medieval times. Our forebears believed they shared the world with the dead and that angels and demons battled for control of human souls. As the church's grip on our beliefs increased, men and women were dragged before religious courts and multitudes were killed in the name of God.


TUE 01:00 Rhythms of India (m00059b5)
Series 1

Ancient Melodies

Musician and composer Soumik Datta presents a musical travelogue around India. From a spectacular religious festival in Kerala to folk musicians in the deserts of Rajasthan, intimate performances on the banks of the Ganges to encounters with Delhi's hip hop superstars, Soumik takes us on an entertaining journey celebrating India’s remarkable musical diversity. Meeting and performing with folk, classical and pop musicians, he travels from the biggest cities to the most remote communities, exploring how music helps us understand India’s past and its rapidly changing present.

Soumik begins his journey in Kolkata, the city of his birth and the place where he learned to play the traditional Indian classical instrument, the sarod. Travelling from north to south, Soumik discovers how the ancient music of palaces and temples, India’s classical music, reveals two very different cultures and traditions - and tells a story of the role conquest and empire played in shaping the nation.


TUE 02:00 Genius of the Ancient World (b065gv2m)
Socrates

Historian Bettany Hughes is in Greece, on the trail of the hugely influential maverick thinker Socrates, who was executed for his beliefs.


TUE 03:00 Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (m000fzsh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 04 MARCH 2020

WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fzls)
Series 1

04/03/2020

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


WED 19:30 The Yorkshire Dales (m0004513)
Series 1

Swaledale

Explorer Paul Rose heads for Swaledale in the latest of his Yorkshire Dales adventures. Swaledale is the wildest of the Yorkshire Dales and Paul joins the farmers who look after rare upland hay meadows. Paul also visits Muker Show and enters the cake making contest using a pressure cooker he’s used on Everest.

He also goes underground to try and find rare industrial artefacts left behind by lead miners in the 19th century. Paul’s journey also includes a meeting with actor Peter Davison who played Tristan Farnon in the All Creatures Great and Small TV series.

He also joins a community choir whose members include 13 farmers.


WED 20:00 The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts (b0by3gfy)
Series 1

Episode 1

In this landmark living history series, a late 1800s Victorian arts and crafts commune in the Welsh hills has been painstakingly brought back to life as a group of 21st-century crafters move in to experience the highs and lows of living and working together as a creative commune. Over their month-long stay they are set to renovate four of the key rooms in the house.

In the first episode Anita Rani is joined by internationally renowned potter Keith Brymer Jones and arts and crafts expert and dealer Patch Rogers, as the six crafters are faced with the challenge of breathing life back into the Victorian parlour. Using original Victorian tools and techniques, they create arts and crafts objects including a Sussex chair, CR Ashbee bowl and William Morris-inspired wallpaper - all from scratch and all in a week.

All the while, they are also eating, working and living within the philosophies first outlined by the likes of John Ruskin and William Morris. Will their 1890s communal life help them to better understand the depth and scale of the Arts and Crafts movement, both as a power for artistic and social change? Will the arts and crafts life make them better crafters and reconnect them creatively to what they love?


WED 21:00 A Very British History (m000f4ym)
Series 2

Whatever Happened to the Boat People?

Therapist Rachel Nguyen tells the story of the Vietnamese Boat People who came to Britain in the 70s and 80s. British-born Rachel, whose parents fled post-war Vietnam, discovers how a new community came to exist in Britain when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher eventually agreed to take in 10,000 Vietnamese refugees.

Scattered around the country following a controversial ‘dispersal policy’, the new community became almost invisible – even to this day many in the UK might not realise Britain has a Vietnamese community.

Through meeting people who lived through these events and by accessing rare archive footage and government papers, Rachel learns more about the community she was brought up in and the country into which her parents and the other Boat People arrived. Whilst they faced huge difficulties, there was also kindness from local people. She goes on to explore how life in Britain has changed for Vietnamese people of her generation.


WED 22:00 The Stuarts (b03tv7f2)
A King without a Crown

This three-part series argues that the Stuarts, more than any other, were Britain's defining royal family.

After Charles I's disastrous attempt to militarily impose political and religious uniformity throughout his kingdoms, both the Stuart dynasty and its three kingdoms fell into an abyss. Charles lost his head and his family fled into exile.

In this second episode, Dr Clare Jackson reveals how the unprecedented religious violence of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms shaped the very DNA of British political culture and how the trauma suffered shaped subsequent constitutional crises in the years to come.


WED 23:00 Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain with Simon Sebag Montefiore (b06s5x0t)
Reconquest

Simon uncovers the truth about Spain's hero El Cid. He also investigates the horror of the Spanish Inquisition and in the process discovers an unsettling story about one of his own ancestors.


WED 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.


WED 01:00 Rhythms of India (m0005hh7)
Series 1

Music of the People

In the second episode of Soumik Datta’s musical travels around India, he goes in search of the country’s folk and religious music - the traditional music of ordinary people. In the southern Indian state of Kerala, home to some of the oldest religious music in India, he visits the Panchari Melam, a spectacular Hindu festival with extraordinary displays of massed drumming. And in Maharashtra, he discovers how the brass band tradition, with its origins in the military bands of the British Raj, is falling out of favour as the staple of Indian wedding processions. In Bengal he encounters Baul singers, part of a tradition of wandering musicians, mystic minstrels whose music is intended to to spread a message of spiritual enlightenment. And in the deserts of Rajasthan he discovers how the rich folk heritage of the region is drawing tourists from around the world and helping sustain communities. Throughout his journey, he marvels at how the music of ordinary people continues to play an important role in their lives and reflects the challenges facing communities across India as they adapt to a fast changing world.


WED 02:00 The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts (b0by3gfy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


WED 03:00 A Very British History (m000f4ym)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



THURSDAY 05 MARCH 2020

THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (m000fzm4)
Series 1

05/03/2020

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


THU 19:30 The Yorkshire Dales (m0004c12)
Series 1

Wharfedale

Paul Rose’s Yorkshire Dales adventure takes him to Wharfedale. He meets the butchers in Ilkley whose Yorkshire produce is being sold all over the country. Paul also heads for Bolton Abbey and spends time with the Duke of Devonshire. He then takes time out with the Calendar Girls, who shot to fame after their nude calendar became a worldwide sensation two decades ago, and has a close encounter with bats that live along the River Wharfe. Finally, he meets the families from inner-city Bradford who are having their first Dales experience.


THU 20:00 The Real T Rex with Chris Packham (b09ksl99)
Chris Packham goes on an investigative journey into the mysteries of planet Earth's super predator - Tyrannosaurus rex. The latest groundbreaking palaeontological discoveries combined with studies of modern animals are redefining this iconic dinosaur. Tackling everything from the way he looked, moved, socialised - even down to his terrifying roar - Chris strips away Hollywood myths to uncover the amazing truth, and utilizing the latest CGI wizardry, he rebuilds the most authentic T rex ever seen from the bones up.

Chris's journey begins in the badlands of Montana, where he has the chance to touch a T rex fossil still emerging from the 65-million-year-old rocks. From here he travels to Berlin to visit Tristan, a T rex skeleton recently excavated from the badlands. These bare bones pose more questions and Chris decides his challenge is to rebuild Tristan with CGI, using the latest discoveries to fill in the gaps. He visits palaeontologist Greg Erikson in Alabama, who is exploring the power of T rex's jaws by comparing them to what we can gauge from modern alligators.

Chris learns that although T rex bore similarities to reptiles, his musculature shows him to be more like a bird. He then takes a prehistoric paddle in the rivers of Dino-State Park in Texas, where exposed dinosaur footprints form long trackways that are the passion of dino-paw expert Glen Kuban. His findings lead Chris to compare T rex with modern flightless birds in an effort to work out just how fast he could move. With the help of palaeontologist and biomechanics expert John Hutchinson, he discovers that the huge tail was not a drag but the source of T rex's locomotive power - but that there were limits which we learn when they put a virtual Tristan on a treadmill.

Chris visits Larry Witmer in Ohio, who has used CT scanners to look into a fossilized skull and find the precise shape of T rex's brain. From this, he has identified supersized sensory zones - proving that he is a great hunter - but also an inner ear that indicates he was designed to hear ultra-low frequency infrasounds. Taking this lead, Chris goes to a sound studio in Berlin with palaeontologist Julia Clarke to experiment with recreating the surprising true roar of T rex.

In order to add the final look to Tristan, Julia Clarke, who has scoured microscopic samples of dinosaur skin for evidence of coloration, helps Chris find a palette based on melanin, as seen in modern birds of prey. Just before Tristan is finished, Chris takes one more trip to Alberta, Canada, where he meets palaeontologist Phil Currie, who suggests on the evidence of a recent fossil find that T rex may have been social predators, living in prides like African lions. Finally, Chris sets Tristan free and in a scene Chris has imagined his whole life, he finally gets to go nose to nose with an animal he has longed to meet.


THU 21:00 The Day the Dinosaurs Died (b08r3xhf)
The Day the Dinosaurs Died investigates the greatest vanishing act in the history of our planet - the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Experts suspect that the dinosaurs were wiped out after a city-sized asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico causing a huge crater. But until now, they haven't had any proof. In a world first, evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod joins a multimillion-pound drilling expedition into the exact spot the asteroid hit to get hard evidence of the link. The team overcomes huge obstacles as it attempts to drill 1,500 metres beneath sea level to pull up rock from the Chicxulub crater.

Meanwhile, paleopathologist Professor Alice Roberts travels the globe meeting top scientists and gaining exclusive access to a mass fossil graveyard in New Jersey - believed to date from the same time the asteroid hit. Alice also treks by horseback across the remote plains of Patagonia, to see if the effects of the asteroid impact could have wiped out dinosaurs across the world - almost immediately.

Alice and Ben's investigations reveal startling new evidence of a link between the asteroid and the death of the dinosaurs, presenting a vivid picture of the most dramatic 24 hours in our planet's history. They illustrate what happened in the seconds and hours after the impact, revealing that had the huge asteroid struck the Earth a moment earlier, or later, the destruction might not have been total for the dinosaurs. And if they still roamed the world, we humans may never have come to rule the planet.


THU 22:00 The Stuarts (b03vhjm8)
A Family at War

The final, dramatic act of the Stuart century saw the Stuarts fatally divided by religion: brother versus brother, and two daughters supporting the overthrow of their father. After Charles II's brother, the Catholic James VII and II, was deposed by protestant William of Orange in 1688, Britain became a constitutional monarchy.

However, the so-called 1688 'Glorious Revolution' came at a price, as Scotland lost her sovereignty and became part of Great Britain in 1707, whilst Ireland had been reduced from a kingdom to a colony. The politics of resentment has continued to trouble Ireland until the present day.


THU 23:00 Female Filmmakers: BBC Introducing Arts (m000fzm7)
Celebrating the next generation of female filmmakers, these short films from BBC Introducing Arts are all made by women. Presented by Janina Ramirez, these talented, emerging artists use comedy, drama and dance to tell stories from a contemporary female perspective.

Photo: Marco Cervi


THU 00:00 How We Built Britain (b007t297)
The South: Dreams of Tomorrow

David Dimbleby completes his journey through Britain, discovering how the nation's history has shaped its buildings, in the south of England, exploring its dramatic transformation in the 20th century. Modern technology opened up new worlds to ordinary people, changing the way they worked, lived and played. He begins in Metroland, part of the suburban explosion of the 1920s and 1930s, with its 'Tudorbethan' houses and sumptuous cinemas like Moorish palaces, traces the arrival of the bold new modern style at a glorious public swimming pool on the south coast, and sees what effect the war had on what we built - from much-loved prefabs to high-rise blocks. And he visits the new temples of money in the City of London - breathtaking towers of steel and glass - and asks how many of them will still be there one hundred years from now.


THU 01:00 Rhythms of India (m0005pr5)
Series 1

Sounds of the City

Soumik Datta’s musical journey around India ends with a look at the popular music scene, discovering how Bollywood is changing, the impact of the internet and the rise of hip hop.

He starts in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, where legendary screenwriter Javed Akhtar describes the roots of popular songs in Bollywood’s storytelling tradition. Soumik also meets, and performs with, famous Bollywood playback singer Kavita Krishnamurthy, the voice behind one of Soumik’s favourite Bollywood films, Mr India.

To discover how the internet is transforming the music industry, he visits the headquarters of T-Series in Delhi, India’s biggest music and film company whose internet channel is now the biggest on YouTube. And in Goa he meets Nucleya, an independent dance producer using WhatsApp to reach his huge young fanbase.

The film also explores how artists are finding different ways to mix western and Indian influences. At the NH7 festival in Pune, Soumik discovers how rock band Parvaaz, recently acclaimed by Rolling Stone as one of the most exciting bands in India, are making a name for themselves singing in their own regional language.

Back in Delhi, Soumik discovers how hip hop is shaking up the music industry. In a bedroom studio in west Delhi he meets the producers behind Mere Gully Mein, one of the anthems of Indian hip hop. A hugely influential celebration of life in the gullies or inner city backstreets, the song was the inspiration for a new Bollywood movie, Gully Boy. Soumik ends his journey at the launch of the movie in Mumbai, witnessing how the energy of India’s hip hop scene is now being embraced by the mainstream.


THU 02:00 Timeshift (b08dwxhn)
Series 16

Flights of Fancy: Pigeons and the British

Timeshift ventures inside places of sporting achievement, scientific endeavour and male obsession - the lofts of pigeon fanciers - to tell the story of a remarkable bird. As racer, messenger and even beauty pageant contestant, the humble pigeon has been a steadfast part of British life for centuries.

Pigeons have served in two world wars, flown over oceans and crossed barriers of age, class and race to take their place as man's best feathered friend. Meanwhile, pigeon fanciers have contrived to make them faster and more eye-catching, using backyard genetics to breed the perfect bird.

Popular affection for pigeons has nosedived in recent decades due to a growing distaste at what they leave behind, and legislation has seen them chased out of public spaces. But as this programme shows, dedicated British pigeon fanciers are determined to keep their pastime alive. So what does the future hold for the 21st-century pigeon?


THU 03:00 Age of the Image (m000fzm9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Monday]



FRIDAY 06 MARCH 2020

FRI 19:00 World News Today (m000fzlw)
The news programme for audiences who want more depth to their daily coverage. With a focus on Europe, Middle East and Africa.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (m000fzly)
Nicky Campbell and Sybil Ruscoe present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 20 April 1989 and featuring Transvision Vamp, Inner City, Holly Johnson, Metallica, Midnight Oil, The Cure, Simple Minds, Bangles and The Beatmasters with Merlin.


FRI 20:00 Cilla at the BBC (b067543w)
Much-mourned national treasure Cilla Black commenced her eminent career as a TV host in 1968 on the BBC. Her career as perhaps the nation's favourite female pop singer of the decade had already been established after landing her first Number 1 with Anyone Who Had a Heart, the biggest-selling hit by a female singer in the 1960s.

This tribute compilation celebrates the BBC's coverage of Cilla's 60s pop star years on programmes like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Not Only...But Also, The Ken Dodd Show, Top of the Pops and The Royal Variety Performance, before selecting just some of the golden moments from the long-running self-titled series she hosted for the BBC between 1968 and 1976 including the Paul McCartney-penned theme song Step Inside Love and that 1973 famous duet with Marc Bolan on Life's A Gas.


FRI 21:00 Top of the Pops (m000fzm0)
Gary Davies presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 27 April 1989 and featuring London Boys, Natalie Cole, De La Soul, Fine Young Cannibals, Morrissey, The Beatmasters with Merlin, Yazz, Bangles and Poison.


FRI 21:30 Classic Albums (b08pg5tq)
Carly Simon: No Secrets

Carly Simon is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of her generation. The classic album that made her a global star was No Secrets, which included the enigmatic song You're So Vain. The album spent five weeks at number one in the US chart.

In this new interview Carly ties together her life and work on No Secrets - she is at her most honest, sometimes defiant, but with a wit and wisdom that comes from her rich and turbulent life. She tells of how the second single from the album, Right Thing to Do, was a refreshingly realistic love song, choosing to ignore her lover's problems. That lover was James Taylor; Carly wrote the lyrics on a plane after looking over at James and thinking 'there's nothing you can do to turn me away.'

The album's title track, We Have No Secrets, struck a chord with a generation trying to reconcile honesty in relationships with the emotional consequences that followed. Carly had a number of highly public affairs in the early 70s and her experience fed into the album's most famous song, the global hit You're So Vain. She performs the missing fourth verse on the piano, the first time she has ever sung it along with the melody.

Carly tells of how her producer made her do the vocal track on 'Vain' over and over, and how Mick Jagger ended up on backing vocals. The film has access to the master tapes and we hear Jagger's vocal track. Her producer reveals Carly was 'so turned on' after singing with Jagger that she recorded the whole vocal again - and that is the one on the album.

Finally, the film includes footage of Taylor Swift and Carly Simon performing You're So Vain together, and extracts from an interview where Swift herself talks about her love for the song.


FRI 22:30 Guitar, Drum and Bass (m00023xl)
Series 1

On Bass... Tina Weymouth!

Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club celebrates the extraordinary contribution of bass to popular music, tracing its progress from street-corner doo-wop and the overlooked ‘guy at the back’ in rock ‘n’ roll, via Paul McCartney, the anonymous James Jamerson and Carol Kaye - whose genius bass lines underpinned The Beatles, Motown and LA sound respectively - British jazzer Herbie Flowers’s immortal line in Walk on the Wild Side, the emergence of 70s funky bass stars Bootsy Collins and Chic’s Bernard Edwards, the driving lead bass of postpunk maverick Peter Hook in both Joy Division and New Order, through to the growth of bass culture in reggae, whose sound systems sparked whole new genres in drum and bass, grime and beyond.

With Bootsy Collins, Dizzee Rascal, Ray Parker Jr, Nile Rodgers, Peter Hook, Carol Kaye, Herbie Flowers, Valerie Simpson, The Marcels’ Fred Jonson, DJ Aphrodite and Gail Ann Dorsey.


FRI 23:30 6 Music Festival (m000fzm2)
2020

Brittany Howard

Alabama Shakes singer serves roots, soul and irresistible funk


FRI 00:45 Girl in a Band: Tales from the Rock 'n' Roll Front Line (b06l17fn)
All too often, every great female rock musician has to answer a predictable question - what is it like being a girl in a band?

For many, the sight of a girl shredding a guitar or laying into the drums is still a bit of a novelty. As soon as women started forming their own bands they were given labels - the rock chick, the girl band or one half of the rock 'n' roll couple.

Kate Mossman aims to look beyond the cliches of fallen angels, grunge babes and rock chicks as she gets the untold stories from rock's frontline to discover if it has always been different for the girl in a band.


FRI 01:45 Cilla at the BBC (b067543w)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


FRI 02:45 Classic Albums (b08pg5tq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:30 today]




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

6 Music Festival 23:30 FRI (m000fzm2)

A Very British History 21:00 WED (m000f4ym)

A Very British History 03:00 WED (m000f4ym)

After the Storm 22:50 SAT (m000g20s)

Age of the Image 21:00 MON (m000fzm9)

Age of the Image 03:00 THU (m000fzm9)

Alan Bennett's Diaries 23:00 SUN (b086kc2c)

Armada: 12 Days to Save England 23:00 TUE (b05xj5t4)

Art of France 23:15 MON (b08d7qlq)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 MON (m000fzph)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 TUE (m000fzsf)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 WED (m000fzls)

Beyond 100 Days 19:00 THU (m000fzm4)

Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain with Simon Sebag Montefiore 23:00 WED (b06s5x0t)

Britain's Lost Masterpieces 21:00 SUN (b07yqgl3)

Britain's Lost Masterpieces 02:20 SUN (b07yqgl3)

Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues 22:00 SUN (b06qskdx)

Cilla at the BBC 20:00 FRI (b067543w)

Cilla at the BBC 01:45 FRI (b067543w)

Classic Albums 21:30 FRI (b08pg5tq)

Classic Albums 02:45 FRI (b08pg5tq)

Clive James 22:00 SAT (m000fzl2)

Female Filmmakers: BBC Introducing Arts 23:00 THU (m000fzm7)

Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage 19:30 MON (b00csp2p)

Genius of the Ancient World 02:00 TUE (b065gv2m)

Girl in a Band: Tales from the Rock 'n' Roll Front Line 00:45 FRI (b06l17fn)

Guitar, Drum and Bass 22:30 FRI (m00023xl)

Hidden 21:00 SAT (m000fvhx)

How We Built Britain 00:00 THU (b007t297)

Inside the Medieval Mind 00:00 TUE (b00b413s)

King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons 20:00 TUE (b038rkw9)

Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist 00:15 MON (b09j0lp9)

Natural World 19:00 SUN (b04g4qm5)

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands 20:00 MON (b07n2hmt)

New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands 02:15 MON (b07n2hmt)

Rhythms of India 01:00 TUE (m00059b5)

Rhythms of India 01:00 WED (m0005hh7)

Rhythms of India 01:00 THU (m0005pr5)

Rick Stein's Long Weekends 19:00 SAT (b07cc9rt)

Rick Stein's Long Weekends 02:15 SAT (b07cc9rt)

Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 21:00 TUE (m000fzsh)

Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley 03:00 TUE (m000fzsh)

Rude Britannia 01:15 MON (b00ssrsg)

South Pacific 20:00 SAT (b00ks63z)

South Pacific 01:15 SAT (b00ks63z)

Storyville 22:00 MON (m000fzpl)

The Day the Dinosaurs Died 21:00 THU (b08r3xhf)

The History Boys 00:00 SUN (b01shmjd)

The Real T Rex with Chris Packham 20:00 THU (b09ksl99)

The Science of Doctor Who 20:00 SUN (b03hybnv)

The Secret Life of Books 01:50 SUN (b07jhwf6)

The Stuarts 22:00 TUE (p01lknsc)

The Stuarts 22:00 WED (b03tv7f2)

The Stuarts 22:00 THU (b03vhjm8)

The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts 20:00 WED (b0by3gfy)

The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts 02:00 WED (b0by3gfy)

The Yorkshire Dales 19:30 TUE (m0003yk1)

The Yorkshire Dales 19:30 WED (m0004513)

The Yorkshire Dales 19:30 THU (m0004c12)

Timeshift 02:00 THU (b08dwxhn)

Top of the Pops 00:45 SAT (m000frf9)

Top of the Pops 19:30 FRI (m000fzly)

Top of the Pops 21:00 FRI (m000fzm0)

Treasures of Ancient Greece 00:00 WED (b05qqgrr)

World News Today 19:00 FRI (m000fzlw)