Saturday 7th July 2012
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Sunday 8th July 2012
| Amadeus: Director's Cut |
Biographical drama. Once the highly regarded composer to the Viennese Court, Salieri is now an old man, unknown and confined to an asylum. After a suicide attempt he recounts his story to a young cleric, going back 30 years to his heyday at the court of Emperor Joseph II, where he first met the young Mozart. Despite Salieri's Machiavellian attempts to frustrate Mozart's progress, the great young composer attracts the favour of the Emperor. But his lifestyle and attitude may yet prove to be his tragic undoing.
| Happy-Go-Lucky |
(2008) Mike Leigh's Oscar-nominated comedy-drama stars Sally Hawkins as Poppy, an eternal optimist, who finds herself at odds with her driving instructor (Eddie Marsan). Strong language.
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Monday 9th July 2012
| Captial Justice (1/5) |
Helena Kennedy QC presents a new series uncovering the profound and powerful relationship between our financial and legal systems, between capitalism and the law, between freedom and justice.
The great British system of common law - judge made, ever evolving and adaptable - flourished in the 19th century under the growing dynamism of markets and new ideas of individual freedom. And market capitalism was given legal security and freedom to flourish in turn.
For centuries our financial and legal systems have been profoundly intertwined, a close arrangement of 'spontaneous order' that travelled to America and then around the world. So how has this dynamic really shaped the course of our history, and what have been its deepest moral and political consequences? The economist Adam Smith championed both free commerce and the rule of law, but feared a moral vacuum growing up between the two in society. Now, after years of deregulation, what happens when we turn to the law to set limits, both legal and moral, on what can be done in the name of market freedoms and the pursuit of profit? Can justice have any meaning in these terms?
This reflective series mixes the historical and contemporary with Helena Kennedy's sharp legal insight, exploring the connectedness between capitalism and the law that, beneath the surface, has so profoundly shaped our modern life.
Contributors include Naomi Klein, John Lanchester, John Grey, Julian Assange, Gillian Tett, Matt Ridley, Peter Oborne and Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls (and second most senior judge in England and Wales).
| Secrets of the Taxman |
Channel 4 Dispatches: An undercover report partly filmed in the Channel Islands promises new revelations about tax avoidance.
| Timeshift: The Men Who Built the Liners |
Many of the most famous passenger liners in history were built in the British Isles, several in the shipyards along the banks of the Clyde. This series combines personal accounts and archive footage to evoke a vivid picture of the unique culture that grew up in the Clyde shipyards. Despite some of the harshest working conditions in industrial history and dire industrial relations, it was here that the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 were built. Such was the Clyde shipbuilders' pride in their work, and the strength of public support, that in 1971 they were able to defy a government attempt to close them down and win the right to carry on shipbuilding.
| Britain on the Brink: Back to the 70s? - Panorama |
Britain today is suffering the longest peacetime slump in decades. Our economy is in a double-dip recession for the first time since 1975. Panorama asks whether Britain is ready and able to cope with a new age of austerity with surprising echoes of the 1970s. Reporter Adam Shaw examines if we're about to suffer the same social and political upheaval that emerged from that decade.
| Undercover Boss (2/6) |
The CEO of Britain's biggest nightclub chain goes undercover in his own business and sees the results of cheap drinks promotions, but also meets dedicated medics and cleaners.
| Coming Up (2/7) |
Ben (Lewis Reeves) has returned home from his first term at university, while his best friend, Lump (Thomas Turgoose) can't find a job and his dad insists he joins the army.
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Tuesday 10th July 2012
| The Reith Lectures (4/4) |
The historian Niall Ferguson examines institutions outside the political, economic and legal realms, whose primary purpose is to preserve and transmit particular knowledge and values. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he asks if the modern state is quietly killing civil society in the Western world? And what can non-Western societies do to build a vibrant civil society?
| Heart v Mind: What Makes Us Human? |
The heart is the most symbolic organ of the human body. Throughout history it has been seen as the site of our emotions, the very centre of our being. But modern medicine has come to see the heart as just a pump; a brilliant pump, but nothing more. And we see ourselves as ruled by our heads and not our hearts.
In this documentary, filmmaker David Malone asks whether we are right to take this view. He explores the heart's conflicting histories as an emotional symbol and a physical organ, and investigates what the latest science is learning about its structures, its capacities and its role. In the age-old battle of hearts and minds, will these new discoveries alter the balance and allow the heart to reclaim something of its traditional place at the centre of our humanity?
| Imagine: Just One Falsetto (3/5) |
From the Beach Boys to Queen and Jeff Buckley, falsetto singing has a long and distinguished presence in all types of music, one that continues to fascinate and enthral audiences. Alan Yentob delves into the world of falsetto singing, the high-pitched vocal range sung by men that comes closer to the female voice, and discovers why falsetto can express emotions that could not otherwise be achieved. With contributors including Frankie Valli, Brian May, Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire and Harrow School Chapel Choir, imagine... asks: Why men are compelled to sing in such a voice?
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Wednesday 11th July 2012
| Old Photographs Fever - the Search for China's Pictured Past |
A new and intense appetite for images of the country's past has resulted in a
publishing phenomenon: sales of books and magazines filled with historical
photographs have rocketed. China's turbulent history in the twentieth century
meant that archives of all kinds were destroyed: in warfare and revolutions.
During the Cultural Revolution of 1966-9, the process was continued by the Red
Guard. People also destroyed their own - now dangerously bourgeois - family
albums. Nearly a century of photographic history was erased.
The photographs that do survive were mostly taken by foreigners, living in or visiting China, who took them out of the country to safety. Professor Robert Bickers at the University of Bristol is leading the search to collect and digitise these photographs in order to restore a historical vision of China which is unfamiliar and fascinating to its citizens now. The online collection is extraordinary in its range and reflects all aspects of life in China. There are studio portraits, gruesome police photos, industrial and rural landscapes, tourist snaps and family albums.
One of the jewels in the collection is the work of Fu Bingchang, a senior Chinese diplomat, whose access to the elite of Chinese society in the first half of the twentieth century and whose talent as a photographer make for a unique and beautiful set of images. The photos were given by Fu's son Foo Chung Hung (Johnny) and his granddaughter Yee Wah, who recall finding them in twelve leather trunks of possessions which were smuggled out of China.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 prompted Chinese politicians to pursue an ambitious policy of historical education, to counteract a perceived lack of knowledge in young people about China's past. New museums are now huge tourist attractions in China and the desire for photographs has arisen from this resurgence of interest in the nation's history.
This fascinating documentary brings a new and surprising insight into China's past and present. It will be accompanied by an online exhibition.
http://hpc.vcea.net/Collection/Introduction
The photographs that do survive were mostly taken by foreigners, living in or visiting China, who took them out of the country to safety. Professor Robert Bickers at the University of Bristol is leading the search to collect and digitise these photographs in order to restore a historical vision of China which is unfamiliar and fascinating to its citizens now. The online collection is extraordinary in its range and reflects all aspects of life in China. There are studio portraits, gruesome police photos, industrial and rural landscapes, tourist snaps and family albums.
One of the jewels in the collection is the work of Fu Bingchang, a senior Chinese diplomat, whose access to the elite of Chinese society in the first half of the twentieth century and whose talent as a photographer make for a unique and beautiful set of images. The photos were given by Fu's son Foo Chung Hung (Johnny) and his granddaughter Yee Wah, who recall finding them in twelve leather trunks of possessions which were smuggled out of China.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 prompted Chinese politicians to pursue an ambitious policy of historical education, to counteract a perceived lack of knowledge in young people about China's past. New museums are now huge tourist attractions in China and the desire for photographs has arisen from this resurgence of interest in the nation's history.
This fascinating documentary brings a new and surprising insight into China's past and present. It will be accompanied by an online exhibition.
http://hpc.vcea.net/Collection/Introduction
| Building the London Underground |
A fascinating look at the great engineering leaps that built the London Underground, the biggest metro system in the world.
| The Town That Never Retired (1/2) |
Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford head up an experiment to send 70-something pensioners back into full time work in the city of Preston. The experiment reflects the Government's plans to raise the state pension age. They're more used to judging thrusting young apprentices, but this time the pair pluck 14 older workers out of retirement and set them to work in a chocolate factory, building site, restaurant, health clinic and estate agency.
Over the course of the week sceptical employers cut the 14 older workers no slack. Most of the bosses have never even considered employing workers of this age before and one admits that if he got one of their CVs he would normally just discard it. The recruits are expected to keep up with the production line despite spillages and fatigue, work in the wind and snow on an open building site and keep up to speed on the busiest night of the week at a high end restaurant.
Some pensioners are stuck in the past with woefully outdated knowledge of their profession and others have tools which wouldn't look out of place in a museum, but a few undergo their own personal transformations, embracing new techniques, loving the cut and thrust of the workplace and putting all their energies into trying to prove they're up to the job in a way that makes bosses and fellow workers begin to reassess their views of OAPs.
Nick and Margaret who are both in their sixties themselves, are genuinely concerned by the issues the programme brings up but they start the series with differing viewpoints. Nick is shocked to hear that his grandchildren may have to work until they're 77 and feels strongly that by 70, after a lifetime of work, people have earnt the right to some rest. Margaret on the other hand is convinced that with life expectancy now nearly ten years higher than when the state pension was introduced, many pensioners are perfectly capable of working longer.
The programme ends as the five employers have to choose whether they're prepared to keep any of the pensioners who made it through, on for a second week or send them back into retirement.
| Show Me Your Money |
In a groundbreaking experiment, the managing director of Pimlico Plumbers challenges his staff to tell each other how much they earn and to help establish a fairer system of pay.
| Irish Rappers Revealed |
Ireland's economic recession has caused a boom in one of the unlikeliest sectors of the music industry - Irish rap. This no-holds-barred film follows bands such as the Class A'z as they tour Dublin's working-class clubs trying to find an audience amongst the country's disaffected youth. Despite millions of internet hits the band remain unsigned and competition for dwindling audiences has led to feuds and fights amongst rival rappers. This is a warm-hearted film about growing up as a rapper in Ireland and the struggle to find fame in a genre that is frequently ridiculed.
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Thursday 12th July 2012
| Olympic Winners and Losers: Tonight |
With just weeks to go until the start of London 2012, this programme examines some of the Games' surprising winners and losers. Pas-de-Calais in northern France has hosted 248 national Olympic teams because of its proximity to London, while thousands of landlords in the capital cannot let out their homes because of an Olympic property glut. Fiona Foster reports. SUB
| The Town That Never Retired (2/2) |
Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford continue their experiment to send 70-something pensioners back into full-time work in the city of Preston to reflect the Government's planned rise in the state pension age.
During the first week there were trays of chocolates on the floor of the factory, arguments between pensioners and younger builders on the construction site and a nurse who couldn't bring herself to give advice against drinking red wine. But some pensioners who did manage to prove themselves to their bosses during week one have been kept on in their jobs. Now they face a real life challenge. They'll have competition from genuine young job-seekers aged between 18 and 25 who are brought in to work alongside them.
All the youngsters claim to be desperate for jobs and they're around 50 years younger than their pensioner rivals so the older workers will have their work cut out. But once things get started the generation clash brings up more than just a contrast in physical strength. Time-keeping, dress codes, staying power and people skills all go to emphasise the divide and in some cases what one generation can share with the other.
Nick and Margaret keep an eye on the five workplaces as they try to predict whether eager pensioners will have the stamina to last the course and whether the obvious advantage of youth, energy and knowledge of up-to-date technology will be enough to convince bosses that youth is best.
By the end it's hard not to route for some of the pensioners even though the youngsters are clearly in more need of the jobs. But it's all down to the bosses to decide whether in their eyes workers in their seventies could ever cut it back in the workplace.
| Bank of Dave (1/2) |
Businessman David Fishwick is so fed up with the banks he's opening his own to serve his local community in Burnley. The money starts pouring out Dave's bank, but not much is coming in.
| June Brown: Respect Your Elders |
June Brown explores the rise of care homes and society’s attitude towards growing old.
| White Noise |
(2005) Michael Keaton is in deep mourning for his dead wife Anna (Chandra West) when medium Ian McNeice shockingly tells him that she is attempting to contact him. Supernatural horror.
| White Noise: The Light |
(2007) Nathan Fillion tries to kill himself after witnessing his wife and child's murder but, brought back to life, he finds he can see the auras of those about to die. Supernatural horror.
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Friday 13th July 2012
| Legends: Roy Orbison - the "Big O" in Britain |
Roy Orbison was the best singer in the world. That's what Elvis Presley said, and he should know.
To mark the 20th anniversary of Orbison's death, this programme celebrates the extraordinary talent of 'The Big O' and his relationship with his most loyal and enduring fans, British musicians and the British public. Through a combination of interview and archive, it charts Orbison's career in Britain, from the sell-out tour with the Beatles that sky-rocketed him to international superstardom, right up to the collaboration with lifelong friend George Harrison on the Travelling Wilburys project in the late 1980s. Effortlessly cool, musically sophisticated, Orbison was a rock and roll legend, whose legacy continues to captivate both the listeners and performers of today.
| Arena: Woodie Guthrie |
First transmitted in 1988, Arena presents a documentary programme exploring the life of Woody Guthrie, the travelling American singer-songwriter who paved the way for the likes of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.
Born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912, Guthrie became a spokesman for a whole generation of downtrodden Americans during the 1930s, with poignant songs like Vigilante Man, Pastures of Plenty and the anthemic, This Land is Your Land.
