Saturday 9th February 2013
| And the Academy Award Goes to… In the Heat of the Night |
It makes for uncomfortable viewing. A Southern policeman insolently challenges Sidney Poitier, a detective from 'up North'.
"So, boy, what do they call you in Philadelphia?"
"They call me Mister Tibbs!"
It's one of the great movie lines in history, from Sidney Poitier's favourite of all his films. But was "In The Heat of the Night" a worthy winner of the Best Picture?
Up against tough competition, including "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde", it has been suggested that this might have been an Oscar vote carried on a tidal wave of outrage during the peak years of the Civil Rights movement.
In 1967, "In The Heat of the Night" seemed to speak out against an America riven with racial tensions. The Watts Riots had just devastated Los Angeles, close to Hollywood. The film was set in Mississippi, but the crew were forced to choose Illinois in the North as a safer location. The murder of Martin Luther King, and his subsequent funeral, delayed the Oscar ceremony in 1968 by several days - enabling the cast and crew of "In The Heat of the Night" to attend his funeral.
All these stories and more are told to Paul Gambaccini, in the second in the Oscar series "And The Academy Award Goes To.", by veteran director - Norman Jewison, and he also hears from his legendary producer - Walter Mirisch - a man who at the age of 91, still makes his way to his film studios in Hollywood, and takes lunch as Spagos. He also hears from one of the world's great cinematographer's Haskell Wexler - who was the first to devise lighting especially for darker skin tones - and sets the scene for Norman Jewison's dramatic reconstruction of a country divided along racial lines that has echoes today.
| Howard Goodall's Story of Music (3/6) |
Composer Howard Goodall looks at the age of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin. This was an era - from 1750 to 1850 - in which composers went from being the paid, liveried servants of princes and archbishops to working as freelancers, who, most of all, needed to appeal to a new, middle-class audience. Or starve.
This period saw tremendous social upheaval. The American, French, and Industrial revolutions. And yet, until 1800 or so, composers for the most part wrote music that seemed oblivious to the tumultuous social changes unfolding all around it.
In this era, the symphony was born. Initially, as a musical form that was purely abstract, an enjoyable and brain-teasing meander through variations of a simple tune. The music of Haydn and Mozart - with the exceptions of some of Mozart's operas - ignored the darker side of life, and concentrated on the upside.
In the hands of Beethoven, though, the template for the tormented composer-as-genius, music radically changed gear. Beethoven's music became deadly serious, rather than aimed at pleasing an after-dinner audience. His orchestras grew bigger and bigger. Nature itself became a metaphor for the composer's own psychology. Beethoven's near contemporary, Schubert, brought the melancholy voice-and-piano love song to the status of high art. In the hands of an artist like Adele, it's still with us today.
Beethoven's Ode to Joy announced that music could, as he believed, convert the whole world to the ideal of universal brotherhood. That music should henceforth be about reforming humanity was a challenge that younger composers eagerly accepted.
Following Beethoven's lead in his Pastoral Symphony, a whole musical movement began that painted pictures in sound. Brilliantly in the hands of Mendelssohn. The Age of Elegance & Sensibility closes with Chopin, whose delicate, deceptively complex piano music inspired a generation to learn to play the new factory-made instruments, for which vast swathes of piano music was written. The piano, at last, gave women a chance to compose music.
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Sunday 10th February 2013
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Monday 11th February 2013
| Inside Barclays: Banking on Bonuses - Panorama |
After a series of controversies, bosses at Barclays say they're changing the culture of the bank. But what went wrong? Reporter Richard Bilton investigates the bonus culture that drove one of our biggest banks.
| Penguins - Spy in the Huddle (1/3) |
Penguins as they have never been seen before. From the freezing Antarctic to the scorching tropics, 50 spy cameras capture unique footage of three extraordinary species.
Emperor penguins cross a treacherous frozen sea to reach their breeding grounds, and on the way one becomes lost in a blizzard. Once there, the females flipper flight over the males and those that succeed 'waddle walk' with their partners. They must lay their eggs without touching the ice, but it is the males that face the greatest challenge - overwintering alone in the coldest place on earth.
Rockhoppers brave the world's stormiest seas, only to come ashore and face a daunting assault up a 300-foot cliff, hopping most of the way up. Having laid their eggs, these plucky birds face airborne attacks from skuas and vultures.
Humboldts are a strange tropical penguin that has rarely been filmed. To reach their desert nests they negotiate 20,000 predatory sea lions, dodge vampire bats and battle half a million sharp-beaked seabirds.
The hard work for all the penguins finally pays off when their tiny, vulnerable chicks begin to hatch.
Among the spy cameras capturing unique behaviour is a technological first - robotic penguins with cameras for eyes.
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Tuesday 12th February 2013
| The Railway: Keeping Britain on Track (1/6) |
Documentary following the staff at London's King's Cross station, the gateway to Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh for the 47 million people who travel through the station every year.
The 1970s concourse at King's Cross is cramped and dark, doing nothing to help the spirits of the passengers - something that Alexis, who works on the passenger information point, knows all too well from her experience of dealing with frustrated travellers. Steve, who sells tickets in the travel centre, says he regularly relies on his conflict resolution training.
There is hope that a brand new concourse will lift everyone's spirits. East Coast manager Steve Newland wants the opening to coincide with customer service levels worthy of a five-star hotel, a vision that is frustrated when broken-down trains and fatalities on the line bring everything to a standstill.
Laxman has worked at the station for 35 years, during which time he has witnessed both an IRA bombing and the King's Cross fire. He is a much-loved staff member but will not be there to see the new concourse filled with passengers, as retirement beckons. His last day at work is a very sad one for everyone at the station.
| The Sound and the Fury: a Century of British Music (1/3) |
The first episode looks at the shift in the language and sound of music from the beautiful melodies and harmonies of the giants of classical music such as Mozart, Haydn and Brahms into the fragmented, abstract, discordant sound of the most radical composers of the new century - Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky and beyond.
It examines how this new music, which can perplex and upset even the most contemporary of audiences, was a response to the huge upheaval in the world at the start of the 20th century - with its developments in technology, science, modern art and the tumult of the First World War.
Featuring specially-shot performances of some of the key works of the period, performed by the London Sinfonietta, members of the Aurora Orchestra and the American composer and pianist Timothy Andres, the story of this radical episode in music history is brought to life through the contributions of some of the biggest names in modern classical music, among them Steve Reich, John Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin and Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker.
From the atonal experiments of Vienna to the jazz-infused sounds coming from New York in the 1920s, the film travels the world to place this music in context and to uncover the incredible personalities and lives of the composers whose single-minded visions changed the course of classical music for ever.
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Wednesday 13th February 2013
Thursday 14th February 2013
| Britain's Secret Shoppers (1/5) |
In this new series business expert Justin Preston tries to turn Britain's normally shy shoppers into savvy hagglers, from cars to kitchens, and from holidays to designer clothes.
| The Genius of Invention (4/4) |
Our ability to see and record live events from right across the world has shrunk the globe, making virtual neighbours of us all. It is a defining characteristic of our modern world. The final episode in the series reveals the fascinating stories that made such everyday miracles possible. It tells the story of the handful of extraordinary inventions and their inventors who tackled the complexities of chemistry and electronics and discovered how to capture and reproduce still and moving images.
Michael Mosley and academics Prof Mark Miodownik and Dr Cassie Newland tell the amazing story of three of the greatest and most transformative inventions of all time - photography, moving pictures and television.
The experts explain how these inventions came about by sparks of inventive genius and steady incremental improvements hammered out in workshops and studios. They separate myth from reality in the lives of the great inventors and celebrate some of the most remarkable stories in British history.
This Week |
A political review of the week presented by Andrew Neil, with Michael Portillo and guests.
| Sea City (1/3) |
The programme also meets port chaplain Rev Roger Stone and shows how one of the few female stevedores handling cargo deals with getting luxury cars loaded dent-free.
| Arena: the Brian Epstein Story (1/2) |
First in a two-part documentary examining the turbulent life and career of Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Gay when homosexuality was illegal, a gambler, shopkeeper and failed actor, he was also pop king with a midas touch who, in the 60s, was as well known as the band he managed.
| Arena: the Brian Epstein Story (2/2) |
Part two of the documentary on Beatles manager Brian Epstein. By the mid 60s, Epstein was lured into the world of gambling, sex and drugs and in 1967 he was found dead in his London mansion at the age of 32."
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