SATURDAY 04 JULY 2026

SAT 19:00 Natural World (m00157r7)
Short Versions

Africa's Lion Kings

A pride of lions has rewritten the rules - they have learnt to take down elephants.


SAT 19:05 Life on Earth (b01qgr5m)
The First Forests

For most of Earth's history there was no life on land. But over 400 million years ago some tiny plants began an invasion from the water, closely followed by the first animals - the ancestors of millipedes and insects.


SAT 20:00 Voyages of Discovery (b0074t3q)
The Making of Captain Cook

Explorer Paul Rose tells the story of one of the greatest ever sea adventures, which transformed Captain James Cook into a national hero and dramatically changed the course of history. Two and a half centuries later, Captain Cook is still a household name, but his achievements are often misunderstood, contrary to popular perception, he did not discover New Zealand and Australia. Intrepid Rose follows his journey down under and uncovers the real story of Captain Cook.


SAT 21:00 Starter for 10 (b03bvwft)
Comedy about Brian, a 1980s working-class boy stumbling romantically and academically through his first year at Bristol University. He tries to achieve his lifelong ambition to appear on TV quiz show University Challenge and falls in love with his teammate.


SAT 22:30 Keeping Up Appearances (b007b6j7)
Series 3

Violet's Country Cottage

When Hyacinth and Richard go to stay in a country cottage for a couple of days, events take several unexpected turns. Richard goes in search of a dog, and finds himself caught up with more than he bargained for.


SAT 23:00 One Foot in the Grave (b007bv14)
Series 2

Dramatic Fever

Margaret joins the local amateur dramatic society and takes Victor to a Bergerac party. Meanwhile, Margaret's mother manages to get stuck in the bath with wallpaper paste.


SAT 23:30 Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice (b01fkcdr)
Professor Alice Roberts reveals the natural history of the most famous of ice age animals - the woolly mammoth. Mammoths have transfixed humans since the depths of the last ice age, when their herds roamed across what is now Europe and Asia. Although these curious members of the elephant family have been extinct for thousands of years, scientists can now paint an incredibly detailed picture of their lives thanks to whole carcasses that have been beautifully preserved in the Siberian permafrost.

Alice meets the scientists who are using the latest genetic, chemical and molecular tests to reveal the adaptations that allowed mammoths to evolve from their origins in the tropics to surviving the extremes of Siberia. And in a dramatic end to the film, she helps unveil a brand new woolly mammoth carcass that may shed new light on our own ancestors' role in their extinction.


SAT 00:30 Life on Earth (b01qgr5m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:05 today]


SAT 01:25 Voyages of Discovery (b0074t3q)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SAT 02:25 The Interview (m002b6gp)
Celebrities

David Hockney: A Life in Art

David Hockney was one of the world's most successful and influential artists of our time. At 11, he wanted to be an artist. At 87, he was still creating new works - happiest when making 'joyful' art and always innovating with his iPad. His art has sold for millions.

In a film originally broadcast in April 2025, ahead of his biggest show ever opening in Paris, the Bradford-born star talks to Katie Razzall about growing old, a recent visit from the King and his two big loves - smoking and painting.


SAT 02:50 Face to Face (m000xh4r)
Revival

David Hockney

In an interview first broadcast in 1996, artist David Hockney talks to Jeremy Isaacs about painting, designing for the opera and his growing deafness.

SUNDAY 05 JULY 2026

SUN 19:00 Natural World (b013nhmg)
2011-2012

Heligan: Secrets of the Lost Garden

Looking at the secret lives of the wildlife in one of Britain's favourite gardens. Shot by Charlie Hamilton-James, this film follows various animals, from the family of foxes that play after hours in the pleasure gardens to the toads in the Italian garden and the badgers that clear up the tea rooms at night. Set against the background of the gardening year, these stories reveal life behind the scenes at Heligan.


SUN 20:00 Inside Classical (m002yql7)
Series 4

The Rite of Spring

The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Ludovic Morlot, presents a concert celebrating spring’s extraordinary creative power as a season of renewal and rebirth, through evocative lighting and musical soundscapes, from Manchester’s Aviva Studios. Presented by Ben Gernon.

Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring, which famously incited audience uproar in its 1913 Paris premiere, is an exhilarating start to the programme. With its asymmetrical rhythms, brutal harmonies and sonic aggression, it continues to fascinate audiences today and remains one of the most influential works of the 20th century.

The UK premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Chemiluminescence follows in calm contrast. This work for string orchestra introduces an atmosphere of contemplative beauty as science and the natural world are united through sound in the composer’s musical depiction of the creation of light from a non-light source.

An evocative programme of musical concepts, exploring spring’s explosive destruction and radiant light.


SUN 20:50 BBC Proms (b091gmbb)
2017

Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar

Two goliaths of 20th-century music, Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, recorded the studio album Passages together in 1989. The result was a unique fusion of Hindustani sitar music with American minimalism. Tonight the album is performed live and in full for the first time, with Shankar's daughter Anoushka playing the sitar alongside a dazzling array of Indian soloists and the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Karen Kamensek.


SUN 22:00 In Concert (b007x56g)
Ravi Shankar

Concert featuring Indian musician Ravi Shankar, first shown in 1974. He performs just one song, entitled Rag Behag.


SUN 22:35 South Asian Music at the BBC (m002kkpr)
To help mark 60 years of Asian broadcasting at the BBC, DJ Bobby Friction shares his love and knowledge of South Asian music with a journey back through the archives that celebrates some of the genre’s most important, enduring and spectacular acts from across the decades.

With artists ranging from Lata Mangeshkar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ravi Shankar right through to Asian Dub Foundation, Naughty Boy and Apache Indian, Bobby’s selection highlights the vast range of musical styles and sounds, as well as the unbridled joy that feels built into so many of the performances that he’s personally selected.


SUN 01:05 Natural World (b013nhmg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SUN 02:05 Inside Classical (m002yql7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


SUN 03:00 In Concert (b007x56g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]

MONDAY 06 JULY 2026

MON 19:00 University Challenge (m001mg1c)
2022/23

Grand Final

It’s the grand final of the series. Of the 28 teams that started the tournament, only two remain - but which will lift the trophy? Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.


MON 19:30 Only Connect (b00ry8w5)
Series 3

Hitchhikers v Strategists

Quiz show presented by Victoria Coren in which knowledge will only take you so far, as patience and lateral thinking are also vital.

In the second semi-final, three fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy lock horns with the cunning of the Strategists, a team bound by their love of obscure European board games.

They'll compete to draw together the connections between elements which at first glance seem utterly random.


MON 20:00 This World (b03q9r9n)
The Tea Trail with Simon Reeve

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to east Africa to uncover the stories behind the nation's favourite drink. While we drink millions of cups of the stuff each day, how many of us know where our tea actually comes from? The surprising answer is that most of the leaves that go into our everyday teabags do not come from India or China but are bought from an auction in the coastal city of Mombasa in Kenya.

From here, Simon follows the tea trail through the epic landscapes of Kenya and Uganda and meets some of the millions of people who pick, pack and transport our tea. Drinking tea with everyone from Masai cattle herders to the descendants of the original white tea planters, Simon learns that the industry that supplies our everyday cuppa is not immune to the troubles of the continent - poverty, low wages and child labour.


MON 21:00 Andy Warhol's America (p0b5mr4h)
Series 1

The American Nightmare

Charting Andy Warhol's response to the civil rights movement and the assassination of John F Kennedy, as well as other major historical events happening in America in the 1960s.

We hear stories about Warhol setting up the Silver Factory and managing The Velvet Underground, and also how he faced his own personal nightmare: he was shot by a Factory associate.


MON 22:00 American Visions (p00g6wgf)
The Empire of Signs

Robert Hughes examines America's development into the art capital of the west between 1945 and the late 1960s, with the advent of abstract expressionism and pop art.


MON 23:00 imagine... (m001717f)
2022

Jacob Collier: In the Room Where It Happens

Twenty-something virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, singer and arranger Jacob Collier has managed to outdo The Beatles by winning Grammy Awards for each of his first four albums. Alan Yentob meets Jacob and musicians he has collaborated with, including Stormzy, Chris Martin and film composer Hans Zimmer.

He also talks to music legends Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, who believe Jacob Collier is one of the most talented musicians on the planet today.


MON 00:10 Stolen: Catching the Art Thieves (m001c5tv)
Series 1

Frankfurt

The astonishing story of the theft of two Turners on loan from the Tate in 1994 sparking a high-stakes international hunt across Europe from London to Belgrade, deep into the world of Serbian war lords.


MON 01:10 Andy Warhol's America (p0b5mr4h)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


MON 02:10 imagine... (m001717f)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:00 today]

TUESDAY 07 JULY 2026

TUE 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj4g)
Series 15

Denham to Swindon

Beginning at London Marylebone, the last great Victorian railway terminus to be built in the capital, Michael Portillo embarks on a postwar exploration of Britain’s southern counties.

He travels to Denham in Buckinghamshire, where engineers are constructing a striking new viaduct, High Wycombe, a historic centre of furniture-making thanks to its abundant of beechwood forest, and Oxford, where he discovers the postwar origins of the charity shop.

In the Wiltshire countryside, Michael meets the head of the Soil Association and some of her saddleback piglets to hear how the organic movement was founded after the Second World War in reaction to the intensification of farming.


TUE 19:30 Only Connect (b00s01xk)
Series 3

Gamblers v Strategists

Quiz show presented by Victoria Coren in which knowledge will only take you so far, as patience and lateral thinking are also vital.

In the series final, cunning and tactics combine with logic, recall and tangential inspiration, as three committed Gamblers resist the temptation to take too many risks and the Strategists fight the impulse to err on the side of caution. Whose approach will win out in this battle of the giants?

They'll compete to draw together the connections between elements which at first glance seem utterly random, from Captain Scarlet to Reg Cox to Marty Hopkirk to Arnold J Rimmer.


TUE 20:00 Keeping Up Appearances (b007b6my)
Series 3

How to Go on Holiday without Really Trying

Sitcom about Hyacinth Bucket, an obsessive snob, and her embarrassing family. Hyacinth makes some very expensive holiday plans before dashing off to fulfil her voluntary church cleaning duties with the Ladies' Guild.


TUE 20:30 One Foot in the Grave (b007b9jg)
Series 2

Who Will Buy?

Unexpected visitors drop in and mistakenly suspect Victor of killing an elderly blind man. A concert gives Victor the chance to use his ventriloquist's dummy.


TUE 21:00 The Last Battle of the Vikings (b01p9fwg)
Nowhere in the British Isles was the Viking connection longer-lasting or deeper than in Scotland. Hundreds of years after their first hit-and-run raids, the Norsemen still dominated huge swathes of the country. But storm clouds were gathering. In 1263 the Norwegian king Haakon IV assembled a fleet of 120 longships to counter Scottish raids on the Norse Hebrides. It was a force comparable in size to the Spanish Armada over three centuries later. But like the Armada, the Norse fleet was eventually defeated by a powerful storm. Driven ashore near present-day Largs, the beleaguered Norsemen were attacked by a Scottish army. The outcome of this vicious encounter would mark the beginning of the end of Norse power in Scotland.

Marine archaeologist Dr Jon Henderson tells the incredible story of the Norsemen in Scotland. Visiting fascinating archaeological sites across Scotland and Norway, he reveals that, although the battle at Largs marked the end of an era for the Norsemen, their presence continued to shape the identity and culture of the Scottish nation to the present day.


TUE 22:00 The American Revolution (m002wx9s)
Series 1

The Most Sacred Thing (May 1780 – Onward)

The British Army under General Cornwallis struggles to pacify the southern states. Meanwhile, one of the most respected American generals betrays the cause and defects to the British. Supported by the French Army and Navy, Washington’s Continental Army wins the decisive victory at Yorktown. Peace is restored, independence is won, and Americans aspire for a more perfect union.

A film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt


TUE 23:00 Easter Island Origins (m0020545)
They are some of the most famous and mysterious monuments on the planet. Nearly 900 giant stone heads scattered across a remote island in the middle of the Pacific. Now, brand new evidence is challenging everything we thought we knew about Easter Island’s awe-inspiring statues – and those who made them. Drawing on the latest science, this authoritative documentary radically rewrites the story of Easter Island.


TUE 00:00 Only Connect (b00ry8w5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 on Monday]


TUE 00:30 Only Connect (b00s01xk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


TUE 01:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj4g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


TUE 01:30 The American Revolution (m002wx9s)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:00 today]


TUE 02:30 This World (b03q9r9n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 on Monday]

WEDNESDAY 08 JULY 2026

WED 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj3q)
Series 15

Chippenham to Yeovil

Michael Portillo joins Navy Wings pilots for a spectacular close formation flight in the skies over Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton. He also visits the magnificent Elizabethan mansion of Longleat, seat of the Marquesses of Bath, to find out about the estate’s remarkable survival after the Second World War.

At Chippenham in Wiltshire, Michael pays a call on a signalling manufacturer that has been at the heart of British railway projects for decades and has a go on the centre’s simulator, driving the Elizabeth Line train to Paddington.


WED 19:30 Canal Boat Diaries (m0015f6v)
Series 3

Wigan to Burnley

Narrowboater Robbie Cumming begins his 170-mile journey across the north of England and soon runs into difficulty when he encounters a problem with his craft's propeller in Wigan and runs aground in Blackburn. Nevertheless, he pushes on to navigate a true wonder of the waterways, the Burnley Embankment.


WED 20:00 Universe (p09ybz58)
Series 1

The Big Bang: Before the Dawn

Professor Brian Cox asks the ultimate question: how did the universe come to be? It is daunting in its scale. We live on one planet of eight that orbit just one of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy, which in turn is one of trillions in the universe. Yet it is amongst those galaxies that we have been able to unravel the story of the universe’s creation. Thanks to a series of discoveries, our most powerful space missions have unravelled 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution and revealed the story of our universe from its birth all the way to the arrival of our nascent civilisation.

Our guide on this odyssey back to the dawn of time is light. Telescopes are time machines - by looking out into the distant universe, they open a window to the past. One telescope more than any other has helped us journey through the history of the universe: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Over the course of three decades, Hubble has shown us cosmic evolution in action – including stars and planets being born and galaxies colliding. Remarkably, Hubble has even found one of the first galaxies ever to exist in the universe, which was born some 13.4 billion years ago. It's a discovery that hints at the beginnings of our own Milky Way. Vivid CGI brings this ancient galaxy to life, allowing us to witness for ourselves the first dawn. It was the beginning of a relationship between stars and planets that would, on a faraway world, lead to the origin of life - and ultimately to us.

Hubble’s incredible discoveries have allowed scientists to piece together much of our cosmic story, but it cannot take us back to the most important moment in history: the Big Bang. For decades, the moment the universe began was the subject of pure speculation, but by combining astronomy and cosmology, scientists have finally found a way to put their theories to the test and study the momentous events that took place during the Big Bang. They can do this because the European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has seen the afterglow of the Big Bang itself – something we call the cosmic microwave background. The unparalleled detail Planck gave us has helped confirm something remarkable: the Big Bang may not be the beginning. There was a time before the dawn – a place beyond anything we can comprehend. Brian transports us back to the fraction of a second before the Big Bang, when the seeds of our universe were planted.

The story of our universe's origin is an improbable odyssey, one that helps us understand how we came to be here, contemplating this vast cosmic drama.


WED 21:00 The Nazis: A Warning from History (b0074kqm)
The Road to Treblinka

'We used to shoot them, give them up as lost, and that was it.' - Petras Zelionka, former member of the Nazi killing squad.

How could it happen? How was it possible that the Nazis created killing factories in order to exterminate the Jews and others they thought 'undesirable'?

Filmed in Poland, Germany and Lithuania, this documentary demonstrates how the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in the fulfilment of Hitler's ideological vision, was a crucial catalyst to the radicalisation of the Nazi policy against the Jews.

With the help of archive discoveries and frank interviews with victims, bystanders and a former member of a Nazi killing squad, The Road to Treblinka traces the decision-making process that led to one of the greatest crimes the world has ever seen - the Holocaust.


WED 21:50 Afoot Again in the Past (m002yqlk)
Hampton Court

Simon Thurley investigates the forgotten tunnels of Henry VIII's sewage system at Hampton Court.


WED 22:00 Our Friends in the North (p00yh3r9)
Series 1

1979

As a new decade approaches, the friends are divided again. Nicky stands for Parliament, Tosker falls in love with the woman of his dreams and Geordie begins to deal in drugs.


WED 23:10 Our Friends in the North (p00yh4h3)
Series 1

1984

1984: The miners' strike dominates both the country and the lives of the four friends.


WED 00:20 The Nazis: A Warning from History (b0074kqm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


WED 01:10 Canal Boat Diaries (m0015f6v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


WED 01:40 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj3q)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


WED 02:10 Universe (p09ybz58)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

THURSDAY 09 JULY 2026

THU 19:00 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj4j)
Series 15

Swanage to Portchester

Michael Portillo reaches England’s south coast to continue his exploration of postwar Britain. He begins in Dorset on the Swanage Railway, riding a glorious 1940s steam locomotive on the trail of one of Britain’s most popular children’s authors, Enid Blyton.

In Poole, Michael discovers an icon of the Swinging Sixties – the lava lamp, invented in the town by an eccentric accountant. At Romsey, Michael heads to the magnificent Broadlands Estate, once home of Louis Mountbatten, first Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

Michael’s last stop on this leg of the journey is Portchester, on the northern edge of Portsmouth Harbour, where he visits a factory manufacturing a marine craft pioneered in the 1950s – the hovercraft.


THU 19:30 Canal Boat Diaries (m0015f8k)
Series 3

Barrowford to Bingley

Narrowboater and film-maker Robbie Cumming crosses the Pennines on the picturesque Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and lends a hand to hire boaters in Gargrave, North Yorkshire. He also encounters Bingley Five Rise Locks, a wonder of the inland waterways.


THU 20:00 Gods and Monsters: Homer's Odyssey (b00vtwnz)
Virginia Woolf said that Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.


THU 21:00 Bletchley Park: Codebreaking's Forgotten Genius (b069gxz7)
Gordon Welchman was one of the original elite codebreakers crucial to the allies defeating the Nazis in World War II. He is the forgotten genius of Bletchley Park.

Filmed extensively at Bletchley Park, the centre for codebreaking operations during World War II, this documentary features the abandoned buildings where thousands of people worked tirelessly trying to crack the codes; Hut 6, where Welchman pioneered his groundbreaking work; and the machines that Welchman helped design.

Post-war, Welchman moved to the United States to be at the nerve centre of the computer revolution. He was employed by the Mitre Corporation, a US defence contractor, and engaged in top secret work. Recently released top secret documents reveal that the case of Gordon Welchman reached the desk of the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, which then led to questions being asked in the House of Commons after Welchman's death.

Welchman's legacy continues to this day as Professor John Naughton and former CIA analyst Cynthia Storer reveal how Welchman's pioneering work in the field of traffic analysis led directly to the modern secret surveillance state, and particularly the use of metadata - as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.


THU 22:00 Blade Runner (b00plcmt)
The 2007 final cut of Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic.

Los Angeles, 2019. Mankind has succeeded in creating replicants - near-perfect humanoids superior in intelligence even to humans - but as a result of a mutiny on a human colony in outer space, it is now illegal for unlicensed replicants to be on Earth. The punishment, if they are caught, is death.

Four replicants have escaped and fled back to Earth, and android hunter or 'blade runner' Deckard is charged with identifying and 'retiring' them...


THU 23:50 Jane Eyre (b01c9w5q)
Charlotte Bronte's classic about an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess in a gloomy manor in Yorkshire, where she falls in love with the mysterious Edward Rochester.


THU 01:25 Canal Boat Diaries (m0015f8k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 01:55 Great British Railway Journeys (m001xj4j)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


THU 02:25 Gods and Monsters: Homer's Odyssey (b00vtwnz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]

FRIDAY 10 JULY 2026

FRI 19:00 Women's Test Cricket (m002yqln)
England v India 2026

Day 1

Highlights and analysis of day one of the Lord's Test match between England Women and India Women.


FRI 20:00 Top of the Pops (b09wgscy)
Simon Bates and Richard Skinner present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 4 July 1985. Featuring Tears for Fears, Simply Red, Dead or Alive, Fine Young Cannibals and The Damned.


FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (m000yw8k)
Bruno Brookes presents the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 11 July 1991 and featuring OMD, Billy Bragg, Bros and Bryan Adams.


FRI 21:00 Words and Music (m002yqlr)
Cults & Classics

Tracey MacLeod introduces a series celebrating the art of songwriting in which classic pop songs are stripped back to basics and performed by their original composers.

Iggy Pop - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Richard Berry - Louie Louie
Bee Gees - To Love Somebody
Tony Joe Wright - Rainy Night in Georgia
Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us
Jimmy Webb - By the Time I Get to Phoenix
Neil Finn - Don't Dream It's Over
Debbie Harry and Chris Stein - Heart of Glass


FRI 21:40 The Old Grey Whistle Test (m001nc55)
Blondie in Concert: 1979

Blondie perform live at the height of their powers in 1979 at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow, with Debbie Harry wowing the audience with such hits as Dreaming, Union City Blue, Atomic, Picture This, Heart of Glass, Hanging on the Telephone and Sunday Girl.


FRI 22:20 In Concert (m002yqlt)
Jimmy Webb

American songwriter and performer Jimmy Webb sings some of his hit compositions, including All My Love's Laughter, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman and MacArthur Park.


FRI 23:05 Glastonbury (m000xh34)
2021

Iggy and the Stooges at Glastonbury 2007

Iggy and the Stooges' legendary performance on the Other Stage at 2007's Glastonbury, which took audience participation at the festival to another level.


FRI 00:05 Top of the Pops (b09wgscy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


FRI 00:40 Top of the Pops (m000yw8k)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


FRI 01:10 The Old Grey Whistle Test (m001nc55)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:40 today]


FRI 01:50 In Concert (m002yqlt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 22:20 today]


FRI 02:35 Glastonbury (m000xh34)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:05 today]