Saturday 3rd December 2011
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
More 4, 9.00pm - 10.25pm
The story of the brilliant, flashy, playful movies in the English-speaking world in the 90s, from Tarantino to the Coen brothers, Baz Luhrmann and the digital film revolution.
| 100 Years at the Palladium |
Cliff Richard, Bruce Forsyth, Michael Crawford and Andrew Lloyd Webber are among the stars sharing the gossip, glamour and behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the world's most famous theatre as it celebrates its 100th birthday.
| Taken |
(2008) Action thriller starring Liam Neeson as a former CIA operative desperate to track down his daughter after she is kidnapped while on a European holiday. Shocking gory violence.
| Achive on 4: When reporters cross the line |
How did the notion of journalistic impartiality develop? Former ITN editor Stewart Purvis explores how the line that separates reporting from opinion - and even propaganda - has been drawn and redefined over the past 80 years. Through rare archive and through interviews with some of the twentieth century's best-known correspondents, he charts the move from wartime censorship and Cold War clashes between broadcasters and the Government to more authored styles of reporting including Martin Bell's famous 'journalism of attachment'.
Stewart Purvis is Professor of Television Journalism at City University, London. Newsreel historian Jeff Hulbert helped with the archive research for this programme. The producer is Helen Grady.
The Host
Film 4, 11.40pm - 1.55pm
(2006) Korean monster horror in which a mutant kidnaps the daughter of a fast-food stand owner. The authorities refuse to help, so the father and his family attempt a rescue operation.
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Sunday 4th December 2011
| The party's over: How the West went bust |
In the teeth of the worst financial crisis in living memory, BBC Business Editor Robert Peston examines how the world got to this point and how the collossal imbalances in the global ecoonomy have left the UK in need of a radical economic overhaul.
In this first of two programmes Peston examines how, thirty years ago, momentous decisions were taken which shaped the world we live in today. In China, Deng Xiao Ping opened up the country to foreign capitalists; in Britain and America, the free market revolution was unleashed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. "The Party's Over" compares the lives of workers in a Chinese company with their co-workers in Britain.
Robert Peston interviews bankers, politicians and economists, and concludes that the boom we enjoyed before the crash was based on an illusion, and that the world's economy is now so unbalanced that in the West we face a sobering wake-up call.
| Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook |
In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 800 million users, and a possible value of $100 billion. His idea to 'make the world more open and connected' has sparked a revolution in communication, and now looks set to have a huge impact on business too.
Emily Maitlis reports on life inside Facebook. Featuring a rare interview with Zuckerberg himself, the film tells the story of Facebook's creation, looks at the accuracy of The Social Network movie, and examines Facebook's plans to use the personal information it has collected to power a new kind of online advertising.
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Monday 5th December 2011
| The truth about supermarket price wars: Panorama |
With their price drops, rollbacks and brand matches - as well as that old firm favourite, the two-for-one offer - Britain's leading supermarkets are doing battle for customers' cash. They claim their price war is good news for shoppers in these tough times, but are their money-saving offers all they seem?
Sophie Raworth takes her trolley round the aisles of Britain's biggest supermarket chains and reveals some nasty surprises at the checkout.
| Landlords From Hell: Dispatches |
Jon Snow and a team of undercover reporters find out what really happens to those desperate to find a home, now that the housing minister wants councils to work with private landlords.
| The Great British Property Scandal |
Two million families are on the UK housing list, but there are a million empty homes in Britain. George Clarke tries to find out why and to get some families housed in time for Christmas.
| RBS: Inside the bank that ran out of money |
The Royal Bank of Scotland was once a famous Scottish institution; a bank with a reputation for prudence. But in October 2008, less than a decade after Fred Goodwin took over as chief executive, it came within hours of collapsing. RBS later posted the biggest loss in UK corporate history - 24 billion pounds - which damaged the bank's reputation for financial prudence and Scotland's image as a global financial centre. Using previously unbroadcast footage of the bank's top executives and interviews with bank insiders, this documentary tells the compelling story of a national catastrophe.
| Ned Kelly |
Period crime adventure loosely based on the real story of the Irish immigrant who wreaked havoc in 1870s Australia. After being falsely accused of a crime, the Kelly brothers form a gang and go on the rampage, committing a series of robberies and hijacking an entire town. They soon become notorious, managing to evade the oppressive local police force - but can their luck hold out?
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Tuesday 6th December 2011
| Money (part 2/3) |
The second episode in Vanessa Engle's three-part documentary series exploring our personal attitudes to money.
This film about couples looks at how money affects our personal relationships. The top five causes of conflict in relationships are money, sex, work, children and housework - in that order. Couples from around the country - young and old, rich and poor - reveal the intimate truth about the role money plays in their relationships.
| Time to remember |
In the 1950s, the newsreel company Pathe mined their archive to produce a series of programmes for television called Time to Remember. Made by the producer Peter Baylis, they chronicled the political, social and cultural changes that occurred during the first half of the 20th century.
Each episode was narrated by a prominent actor such as Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, Edith Evans, Basil Rathbone and Joyce Grenfell, all reading scripts recalling historic, evocative or significant moments from an intriguing past.
In 2010, the material from the original Time to Remember has been collected together thematically to create a new 12-part series under the same title that offers a rewarding perspective on the events, people and innovations from history that continue to shape and influence the world around us.
Archive footage from the theatres, music halls and cinemas of the 1920s and 30s combines with characterful voiceover to give a glimpse of the entertainment industries in their early 20th century golden age. It includes footage of Charles Laughton applying his own stage make-up, chorus line auditions and rehearsals in the West End, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visiting Europe, and Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie, 1929's Blackmail.
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Wednesday 7th December 2011
| Storyville |
Charles Ferguson's Academy Award-winning forensic analysis of the 2008 global financial crisis. The film traces the emergence of a rogue culture within the finance industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. At a cost over $20 trillion, the crisis caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly caused global financial collapse.
| Perez Hilton Superfan |
New series in which Hollywood gossip blogger Perez Hilton catches up with top celebrities in a bid to find out just what makes them tick. In this episode, Perez spends time with his friend Lady Gaga in Hollywood, California and Sydney, Australia. The duo share close conversation, private and exclusive interviews and some fun antics - including cooking together in pyjamas. Perez also follows Gaga behind the scenes at performance dress rehearsals and heads backstage at concerts.
Catch-22
ITV 4, 11.45pm - 1.35am
Adaptation of Joseph Heller's classic anti-war novel, set in 1944 on a US Air Force base. As the number of bombing raids increases, a captain finds his life becoming ever more bizarre and horrific. He decides to have himself declared mentally unfit to fly but soon learns that, since no sane person would want to fly, anyone making such a request must be sane - and that the logic of this deadly Catch-22 operates at every turn. With Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Arthur Garfunkel, and Jack Gilford.(1970)
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Thursday 8th December 2011
| Mary and Max |
(2009) Adult-themed claymation film about the 20-year pen-pal relationship between a girl living in Melbourne, Australia, and a man 35 years her senior living in New York.
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Friday 9th December 2011
Backstage Tales
Radio 4, 11.00am - 11.30am
Getting a music tour on the road is a massive undertaking, particularly if the star has a large entourage. A big tour can be the size of a small town, and every night it ups sticks and takes to the road again. Just feeding the crew is a military operation, which takes an army of caterers. So how do they do it? Having spent nearly 30 years on the road, Midge Ure is perfectly placed to spill the beans on musicians on tour. As Midge says, it is an incredible thing to be part of but it is also a hermetically sealed bubble, detached from the real world and creating its own reality.
In this programme, Midge Ure goes backstage into the bizarre world of musicians on tour, to explore how touring has changed since his heyday in the 80s and to meet the army of crew behind the scenes who put the tour together: the roadies, lighting technicians, sound engineers, tour managers, caterers, and the artists themselves. He hears their backstage tales and finds out exactly what it takes to get the show on the road.
| The people's post: a narrative history of the Post Office |
Introduced by Henry VIII to aid the spread of intelligence, the first 200 years of Royal Mail saw a series of attempts to reform the postal system with mixed results. By the early 19th century the system had reached breaking point as all social classes sought ever more ingenious ways to avoid the high cost of postage.
Launched in 1516, the Royal Mail was intended to support official communications and bolster intelligence. It was only a rise in literacy and trade that stimulated a demand for a public service. In the paranoid era of the English Civil War the postal network became an important instrument of state control. In a secret room deep in the post office building, agents opened and copied letters from suspected dissidents on a grand scale.
Launched in 1680, The London Penny Post was the first accessible and cheap method for sending mail within the capital for the equivalent of £6.
During the eighteenth century an expanding postal network offered new possibilities for long-distance relationships. From travelling preachers to sailors and their families, people from all backgrounds found ways to write home.
Introduced in 1784 the mail coach slashed journey times by two thirds, provided a new state of the art form of public transport, and allowed newspapers to reach the provinces within 24 hours. The timepieces carried by guards also had the unintended consequence of creating standard UK time in the era before GMT.
In the early 1800s the post office operated an expensive and illogical payment system. This forced letter-writers into ever more imaginative ways of avoiding postage, from using private couriers, to sending coded newspapers. MPs were allowed to send letters for free, but as only a signature was required it created a system that was ripe for abuse.
| Public Enemy: prophets of rage |
In the late 1980s Public Enemy were the biggest rap group on the planet. Their mission: to raise the consciousness of a generation. With a rebellious attitude to match their militant image they sold millions of records preaching pro-black politics to fans of all races, all done through a groundbreaking wall of noise that changed the sound of hip hop. White, middle Americans were outraged, but their kids loved it.
Not surprisingly, this confrontational approach attracted controversy. Critics claimed the group themselves were racist, exposing racial divides rather than promoting equality. They were banned from some TV and radio stations and when one member reportedly made anti-Semitic remarks in a newspaper interview the resulting media-storm threatened to end their career. Tensions were running high and arguments within the band ended in violence. Could they keep it together long enough to get their message across?
Includes exclusive new interviews with Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, Hank and Keith Shocklee and the S1Ws. Plus contributions from Run DMC, Method Man (Wu-Tang Clan), Anthrax's Scott Ian, Jurassic 5's Chali 2na, Bahamadia, writer and activist Kevin Powell and DJ Dave Pearce.
| The Nations Favourite Bee Gees Song |
Amanda Holden narrates a special programme celebrating the amazing catalogue of Bee Gees hits and counting down the top 20 to reveal the nation's favourite. The show reveals the stories behind the songs and features in-depth interviews with Barry and Robin Gibb as well as a version of Stayin' Alive which has been lost since 1977. The Gibb brothers have created some of the greatest songs in modern music history - but which is the greatest of the lot? With tracks including How Deep Is Your Love, Chain Reaction, Tragedy, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart and Night Fever, voters are spoilt for choice. There are also contributions from celebrity fans including Elton John, Cliff Richard, Ronan Keating, Mick Hucknall, Dave Grohl and Katie Melua.
| Hip hop at the BBC |
Hip hop through the decades from the BBC archives, including the Sugarhill Gang in 1979, Run DMC, LL Cool J and Eric B & Rakim in the 80s, Ice T, Monie Love, Fugees and the Roots in the 90s and concluding with Dr Dre & Eminem, Dizzee Rascal and Jay-Z.
