Saturday 14th April 2012
Wall-E
BBC 1, 5.25pm - 7.00pm
In the distant future Wall-E is a small waste collecting robot, the last remaining on a now abandoned, rubbish-soiled planet Earth. When a strange but beautiful robot visitor arrives from space, Wall-E wants to make friends and inadvertently finds himself going on the adventure of a lifetime.
| The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera |
...Caught on Camera: An extraordinary minute-by-minute anatomy of the Costa Concordia disaster, made almost entirely from passengers' mobile phone and video camera footage.
Unreliable Evidence (2/4)
Radio 4, 10.15pm - 11.00pm
Clive Anderson and guests discuss whether our planning law strikes the right balance between encouraging economic growth and the protection of the environment. The programme explores concerns that the Government's new National Planning Policy Framework tilts the playing field in favour of the developers.
Planning lawyer Nathalie Lieven QC argues that the new NPPF sweeps away detailed and useful planning guidelines in favour of the meaningless concept of a presumption in favour of sustainable development. The lack of clear details, she says, will create work for lawyers for many years.
And all the guests agree that, at the end of the day, if you want to stop a development, whether it's a high-speed rail network, a airport runway or a new supermarket, identifying a threat to the habitat of great crested newts or badgers will be most effective.
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Sunday 15th April 2012
| Mark Lawson Talks to Mark Rylance |
Mark Lawson talks to Mark Rylance, one of the best stage actors of his generation, about his life and illustrious career. In this insightful interview, Rylance discusses how acting helped him overcome a childhood speech impediment; his lifelong relationship with Shakespeare and his controversial ideas about Shakespeare's authorship; how his role in the film Intimacy raised his respect for porn stars; and how he prepares for his highly-acclaimed role as Johnny Rooster Byron in the award-winning play Jerusalem.
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Monday 16th April 2012
| Billionaires Behaving Badly?: Panorama |
It's the biggest company you've never heard of. Glencore - a commodity giant that trades huge quantities of wheat, coal and much of the world's copper. John Sweeney talks exclusively to its boss, Ivan Glasenberg, who became a billionaire five times over when the company was listed on the London stock exchange last year. But, in Congo and Colombia, Glencore stands accused of reckless greed. Panorama investigates.
| The 70s (1/4) |
Historian Dominic Sandbrook presents the 1970s as a vital and exciting era in which the old Britain of the post-war years was transformed into the nation we see around us today.
Sandbrook is as interested in how ordinary people were changing Britain as he is in politicians. In this episode, he reveals a country brimming with aspiration as millions get on the property ladder, take their first foreign holidays and start to challenge the old class boundaries to their lives. It was a decade in which ordinary British people first felt the thrill of freedom and money, but Sandbrook shows us it was also a decade in which raging conflicts about the economy and Europe loomed large.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012
| Balalaika Born Again |
Pat Metheny or Paganini? Who is Alexey Arhipovskiy?
This is the story of the humble, three-stringed balalaika and the story of a maverick Russian virtuoso, Alexey, who wants to transform the balalaika's image; to show it is more than a piece of folksy soviet souvenir kitsch. Alexey has developed a beautiful new sound and a new repertoire for the balalaika, mixing a classical music sensibility with the temperament of prog rock. With his trusty manager, Mikhail, he wants to take the balalaika out of Russia and beyond the former Soviet borders. But can he take Russia out of the balalaika? Nick Baker travels to Moscow to meet him.
He finds a musical rebel and an intriguing character who combines both adult seriousness and childlike enthusiasm for an instrument once played only by peasants. At the Gnessian Musical Academy, Alexey's Professor recalls a gifted musical student who took his formal classical training and turned it into something else. He added his own spirited individualism, as well as some electronic effects.
In Dubrovnik, Croatia, Nick meets up with Alexey again as he prepares to perform at the Julian Rachlin and Friends Chamber Music Festival. He is virtually the only non-classical act on the bill. The festival is full of five star ex-Russian prodigies whose families left Russia in the 1980s and brought with them tried and tested classical music. What happens next?
| My Name is Not "Hey Baby" |
In 2011 the Slutwalks which took place around the UK made headlines when women, carrying placards and shouting slogans, protested against the blaming of victims of rape and sexual assault rather than the perpetrators.
Yasmeen Khan meets the organiser of the London Slutwalk to see what impact it made, as well as young activists who are raising awareness of street harassment and encouraging women to raise their voices against it. At a Hollerback meeting students describe the verbal assaults which can build up from quasi-compliments to threatening physical assault, and how they can or should react.
The grey area between a flirtatious comment and unwanted attention is sometimes a fine one, and makes this area of sexuality difficult to deal with. Yasmeen talks to men and women about how they perceive it, and also to women in India, Sweden and New York about how a new generation is trying to make the rules of sexual engagement clearer.
The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister issued a statement on International Women's Day on March 8 this year stating that they 'are working towards signing the Council of Europe's Convention on Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence'. Vera Baird, QC, the chair of Labour's Commission on Women's Safety, talks about the way the judiciary have been influenced, and a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police's anti-rape Sapphire Unit describes how their specialist police officers now deal with victims of serious sexual assault.
Yasmeen Khan also asks how the sexualisation of society, in which advertising, the internet and pop music all play a part, has affected young teenagers, and what efforts are being made to counter their influence.
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Wednesday 18th April 2012
| 127 Hours |
(2011) Films for Life: Solo mountain climber James Franco gets into a life-threatening predicament and takes a desperate measure to free himself. Strong language and graphic gory injury.
| 2012 Olympic Games: 100 Days to Go |
Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson previews the 2012 Olympics, which promises to be one of sport's great events. Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Ben Ainslie, who boast multiple gold medals and are aiming for more in London, give their insight into what makes the Olympics so special. There is also an interview with one of the potential stars of this year's Games, Great Britain's teenage diving world champion Tom Daley.
And with 100 days to go until the Games start, the programme meets British filmmaker Danny Boyle, the artistic director of the opening ceremony, who plans to give the 2012 Olympics a memorable lift-off on July 27th.
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Thursday 19th April 2012
| Why isn't Britain Working?: Tonight |
Unemployment is at its highest level for 18 years, but some companies say that they are having trouble recruiting suitable staff. Jonathan Maitland meets employers who are resorting to desperate measures in an attempt to fill vacancies.
| Stuff: a Horizon Guide to Materials |
Engineer Jem Stansfield looks back through the Horizon archives to find out how scientists have come to understand and manipulate the materials that built the modern world. Whether it's uncovering new materials or finding fresh uses for those we've known about for centuries, each breakthrough offers a tantalising glimpse of the holy grail of materials science - a substance that's cheap to produce and has the potential to change our world. Jem explores how a series of extraordinary advances have done just that - from superconductors to the silicon revolution.
| The Wrestler |
(2008) Films for Life: Oscar-nominated Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei star in this drama about a burnt-out wrestler's relationship with a stripper. Bloody violence/strong language/drug use.
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Friday 20th April 2012
| Reggae Britannia |
The acclaimed BBC4 Britannia series moves into the world of British reggae. Showing how it came from Jamaica in the 1960s to influence, over the next 20 years, both British music and society, the programme includes major artists and performances from that era, including Big Youth, Max Romeo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jerry Dammers and the Specials, the Police, UB40, Dennis Bovell, lovers rock performers Carroll Thompson and Janet Kay, bands like Aswad and Steel Pulse and reggae admirers such as Boy George and Paul Weller.
The programme celebrates the impact of reggae, the changes it brought about and its lasting musical legacy.
| Reggae at the BBC |
An archive celebration of great reggae performances filmed in the BBC Studios, drawn from programmes such as The Old Grey Whistle Test, Top of the Pops and Later... with Jools Holland, and featuring the likes of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Gregory Isaacs, Desmond Dekker, Burning Spear, Althea and Donna, Dennis Brown, Buju Banton and many more.
