Saturday 11th May 2013
| The Magic Tricks of JJ Abrams: a Culture Show Special |
A topical series featuring the best arts and culture stories of the week. One of the hottest talents in Hollywood today, JJ Abrams talks to Mark Kermode about his latest turn at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, his lifelong love of filmmaking and the passion for mystery that lies at the heart of everything he does. New York born Abrams has conquered both television and film, bringing landmark TV series Lost to the small screen while collaborating with film industry royalty Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg for box office hits Mission: Impossible III and Super 8. Self-confessed geek and ultimate fan boy, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams is about to take on the daunting task of directing the new Star Wars film. In this programme JJ takes Mark on an exclusive tour of Bad Robot, the top secret Los Angeles hub of his production company and provides a rare glimpse into where the magic happens.
| How to Win Eurovision |
Greg James and Russell Kane present an entertaining look at all the ingredients needed to become a Eurovision winner, adding a strong gimmick to what not to wear and throwing in a pinch of out-of-tune singing for good measure. They celebrate the UK's Eurovision success stories and delve into the depths of our Eurovision hall of shame, all in the name of finding out how to win Eurovision. Featuring interviews with Graham Norton, Bucks Fizz, Scott Mills and Daz Sampson.
| My Tattoo Addiction |
An uplifting, warm, and often eye-watering documentary, which discovers, through candid interviews, what leads people to go under the needle.
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Sunday 12th May 2013
| Not like Any Other Love: The Smiths - a Culture Show Special |
It's 30 years since Manchester four-piece The Smiths changed the face of British pop with their debut single Hand In Glove. In this half-hour Culture Show special, fellow Mancunian and lifelong fan Tim Samuels sets out to find out why The Smiths have such a special place in the hearts of a generation of Brits. The Smiths were only around for five years in the mid-eighties, but to this day the sentiment their music evokes is strong. Samuels pays visits to a variety of dedicated fans including fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, poet Simon Armitage, Labour MP Kerry McCarthy and Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher to analyse the look, the lyrics, the issues and the riffs that made The Smiths Britain's first, and arguably best ever, indie rock band.
| Perspectives |
David Suchet follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, the famous Fleet Street photographer Jimmy Jarche, in a quest to capture on camera how Britain has changed in the past century. Talented amateur photographer David is sent on assignments across Britain to experience what it is like to be a press photographer. He shoots similar subjects to those his grandfather found, a task that involves tracking down unknown Welsh mining villages and taking pictures of the miners and their families. He experiences what it is like to be a war photographer when he photographs a training exercise with the British Army and feels the pressure of the paparazzi as he takes pictures of David Cameron and the Queen.
| Wings over the World |
TV special featuring footage filmed throughout Wings' tour of 1975/1976, following the band in England, Australia and America. It contains live concert performances featuring fifteen of Wings' greatest songs and home movies of Paul McCartney and his family, providing a fascinating profile of the McCartneys' life off-stage.
The tour itself was a major triumph for Wings - the first time the group had appeared in Australia and America, and Paul's first performance in the States for ten years. Three million people saw the shows and a then-world record attendance for an indoor concert of 67,053 was set at the Kingdome, Seattle.
Starting with Paul and Linda in Scotland, the special features the gradual build-up of the band and follows Wings on tour with hit songs such as Jet, Maybe I'm Amazed, Yesterday, Silly Love Songs and Band on the Run. The Wings line-up for the tour was Paul and Linda McCartney, Denny Laine, Jimmy McCulloch and Joe English.
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Monday 13th May 2013
| Jobs for the Boys?: Panorama |
Former England and Arsenal footballer Sol Campbell investigates why the unemployment rate for young black British men is roughly double that of their white counterparts. He follows four under-25-year-olds in their search for that all-important first job, and asks: are employers to blame, or do young black men need to work harder at finding work.
| Frost on Sketch Shows |
Many of Britain's biggest comedy stars cut their teeth on sketch shows and many of our most loved comedy series began as sketches.
Sir David Frost traces the development of the sketch show over the last fifty years - from the variety theatre to peak-time television, from Arthur Haynes to Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies, from Monty Python to Not the Nine o'Clock News and Catherine Tate.
He is joined by TV comedy greats including Ronnie Corbett, Stephen Fry and Michael Palin as they look back on the highs and lows of their own sketch show experiences. And together with comedy veterans Michael Grade and Richard Curtis they ask if, in an age dominated by stand-up and sitcoms, the sketch show can continue to flourish and survive.
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Tuesday 14th May 2013
| Keeping Britain Alive: the NHS in a Day |
This episode takes a look at the country's single biggest killer, heart disease. Every day 282 people will have a heart attack and 200 will die. In Manchester, a specialist team race to treat a steady stream of heart attack victims, some of whom have a 20 year history of heart disease. In Liverpool six-month-old Kyran undergoes open heart surgery to correct a defect first detected in the womb and in Yorkshire, air ambulance paramedics attempt to resuscitate an 80-year-old mechanic who has collapsed while working on a neighbour's car.
Despite improvements in treatment, our increasingly sedentary lifestyle combined with an ageing population will only add to the pressure on the NHS, a dilemma playing out across the whole organisation as demands increase and the money to pay for it doesn't.
| Mary Queen of the High Street |
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Wednesday 15th May 2013
| Bankers |
With gripping first-hand accounts from banking insiders, regulators and politicians this film tells the story of two recent multi-billion pound trading disasters that rocked the City. It shows that some bankers are still taking reckless risks, five years after the crash that brought the world's economy to its knees. Risk is the engine of growth but reckless risk can have catastrophic consequences, especially in volatile times like the turbulent financial world of today. The film charts the thirty-year effort to manage financial risk through mathematical modelling and shows how this can encourage some traders to behave as if they have mastered risk altogether. With Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, former JP Morgan executive Bill Winters and regulator Martin Wheatley.
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Second in a series unlocking the BBC archives to tell the story of modern art in the words of the artists themselves - from the tortured images of Francis Bacon born of the horror of the Second World War to the joyous, sometimes ironical celebration of consumer affluence in the pop art of Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol to the hedonistic freedom of the paintings of David Hockney.
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Thursday 16th May 2013
| America and Its Guns: Tonight |
The Sandy Hook massacre is now recognised as the most notorious and shocking mass shooting in the USA. Twenty children were killed in cold blood alongside their teachers, in a place that should have meant care and safety, not death and fear. Three months on, and despite grieving parents and presidential promises, it is unlikely that much will be done to change the gun laws. ITV News Washington correspondent Robert Moore travels across the States, examining the attachment between Americans and their firearms. He talks to gun owners about why they have guns - and why they would never give them up. He meets families who have suffered the consequences of a society where ownership of these weapons is so ingrained, and in an extraordinary interview, he meets a father whose son accidentally shot his little sister.
| Bradford: City of Dreams |
Bradford was one of the richest cities on Britain a century ago and it has always been a magnet for economic migrants. From the Irish rural poor who came to work in the mills in the 1800s via German Jewish merchants who traded in cloth at the turn of the 19th century, on through the waves of Asian immigration in the second half of the 20th Century and the latest arrival of Central Europeans in the last 15 years. Over the last 50 years the city's industrial base has collapsed but despite this, there are still new waves of Bradfordians managing to fulfill their dreams here.
Dinesh Patel, known as Dennis, is living the dream that led his father to spend 13 years in the mills before starting a shop in the mid 1970s. Two generations later the family, having ridden the video rental market in the 90s and the the mobile telephony boom of the 2000s, have become big players in East European food retailing.
Marcin, from Poland, has his foot on the first rung of a similar ladder. He arrived in Bradford 8 years ago and after a few years working for others he decided having his own business was the way to go. He started by building a smokehouse in his garden to produce hams and sausages and now he processes several pigs a week. While the fresh meat brings in a decent return, he is focused on finding new customers.
Even when cash is tight the city's Muslim population spare no expense when it comes to weddings, a fact that Sahida, a single mother of three girls, has made the most of with a rapidly expanding chain of bridal make-up salons. She also trains other Muslim women in bridal makeup, providing a handy female-only income stream.
| The Tube: an Underground History |
In 2013 London Underground is 150 years old. The world's first underground railway is spending its anniversary year celebrating its own history. They're sending a steam train back underground, and there's a Royal visit to prepare for. On the tube, history is everywhere - it's down every tunnel, in every tunnel, in every sign and design, and in the lives of the unsung people who built it and run it today.
Following on from BBC2's The Tube series, this programme tells the story of the underground through the eyes of the people who work for it. Farringdon station supervisor Iain MacPherson reveals why his station - the original terminus - was constructed in the 1860s, and recalls the dark days of Kings Cross in the 1980s. Piccadilly line driver Dylan Glenister explains why every Edwardian station on his line has its own unique tiling pattern and how, in the 1930s, the construction of new stations expanded the borders of London. And there's Head of Design and Heritage, Mike Ashworth, whose predecessor pioneered the art of branding in the 1920s and Customer Service Assistant Steve Parkinson, who was part of a wave of new recruits from the Caribbean from the 50s.
With privileged access to disused stations and rare archive footage, this is the tube's hidden history, revealing why it was first built and how it has shaped London ever since.
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Friday 17th May 2013
| Rock 'n' Roll Britannia |
Long before the Beatles there was British rock 'n' roll. Between 1956 and 1960 British youth created a unique copy of a distant and scarce American original whilst most parents, professional jazz men and even the BBC did their level best to snuff it out.
From its first faltering steps as a facsimile of Bill Haley's swing style to the sophistication of self-penned landmarks such as Shakin' All Over and The Sound of Fury, this is the story of how the likes of Lord Rockingham's XI, Vince Taylor and Cliff Richard and the Shadows laid the foundations for an enduring 50-year culture of rock 'n' roll.
Now well into their seventies, the flame still burns strong in the hearts of the original young ones. Featuring Sir Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Bruce Welch, Cherry Wainer and the Quarrymen.
