Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Size Matters

How can a hamster survive falling from the top of a skyscraper, ants carry over 100 times their own body weight and geckos climb across the ceiling?

In the first of this year's Christmas lectures, Dr Mark Miodownik investigates why size matters in animal behaviour. He reveals how the science of materials - the stuff from which everything is made - can explain some of the most extraordinary and surprising feats in the animal kingdom.

By the end, you will understand why you will never see an elephant dance.

Dr Mark Miodownik zooms into the microscopic world beneath our fingertips. In this unfamiliar landscape, strange forces dominate the world and common sense goes out of the window. He reveals how this tiny hidden world can make objects behave like magic, and discovers the secrets of the extraordinary metals that make jet engines possible.

With a mass audience taste test, Mark reveals why chocolate is actually one of the most sophisticated and highly engineered materials on the planet, using special crystals designed to melt in the mouth. He looks forward to new era of self-healing materials where a broken mobile phone or car bumper could heal itself and how, one day, material scientists might even create artificial life.

Why is the tallest building on earth less than half a mile high? Why don't we have mountains as tall as those on Mars?

In the last of this year's Christmas Lectures, Dr Mark Miodownik investigates the world of the very big and very tall. He reveals that, at this scale, everything is governed by a battle with one of the strangest forces in the universe - gravity.

With help from acrobats, levitation devices, spiders, birthday cake candles and even some sticky goo, Mark discovers how gravity can make solid rock behave like a liquid and investigates whether one day it might be possible to build a structure from Earth into space, taking us beyond the reach of gravity without the use of rocket.

BBC4 * 28-30 December 2010 * 3 x 60 minutes

The War You Don't See

In this new documentary John Pilger, the winner of journalism's top awards for both press and broadcasting, including academy awards in the UK and US, questions the role of the media in war. In The War You Don't See, Pilger, himself a renowned correspondent, asks whether mainstream news has become an integral part of war-making. 

Focusing on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pilger reflects on the history of the relationship between the media and government in times of conflict stretching back to World War I and explores the impact on the information fed to the public of the modern day practice of public relations in the guise of 'embedding' journalists with the military. 

Featuring interviews with senior figures at major UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, and high profile journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Rageh Omaar and Dan Rather, the film investigates the reporting of government claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction. 

Pilger also speaks to independent film makers, and whistleblowers, including the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and to former senior British Foreign Office official Carne Ross to investigate why what he believes were key voices and key details did not figure prominently on the mainstream media's agenda. The film also includes hard-hitting footage from independent media sources showing scenes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including footage leaked to Wikileaks. 

Dan Rather, the famous CBS news anchor, and BBC World Affairs Correspondent Rageh Omaar both reflect on their own roles during the lead up to hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lessons they have learned. Rather speaks about pressure felt by journalists who face the danger of becoming what he calls mere 'stenographers'. Rageh Omaar speaks about the proliferation of 24 hour news and the effects this has on war reporting, including his own experience reporting on the liberation of Basra. 

Fran Unsworth, the BBC Head of Newsgathering and David Mannion, Editor in Chief of ITV News, both face questioning on their news departments' reporting of the Iraq war and the scrutiny of George Bush and Tony Blair's claims about weapons of mass destruction. 

The documentary also focuses on the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers and speaks to Phil Shiner, a lawyer who is representing a number of Iraqi victims. It examines the notion that our media distinguishes between 'worthy' and 'unworthy' victims of conflicts and how that influences the reporting of Iraqi civilian deaths. 

The War You Don't See also looks at the balance of the media's reporting on the hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis, with particular focus on mainstream broadcasters' coverage of the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla in Gaza earlier this year. Both the BBC and ITV are asked about the influence of Israeli government efforts to shape the reporting of such incidents on their coverage.

ITV1 * 14 December 2010 * 90 minutes

Panorama: Baby P

Panorama reveals the controversial video-taped interview with the mother of Baby P and asks whether crucial warning signs were missed.

Tracey Connelly tells clear lies in the training interview with a senior social worker. But she also gives some vital clues about what was going on in her son Peter's life.

Panorama investigates whether these clues were adequately followed up, and examines the ground-breaking research into child protection that is now a part of Baby P's legacy.

BBC1 * 13 December 2010 * 30 minutes

Panorama: Addicted to Games?

As pester power kicks in and the computer games' industry launches its latest products on to the Christmas market, Panorama hears from youngsters who've dropped out of school and university to play games for anything up to 21 hours a day. They describe their obsessive gaming as an addiction. Reporter Raphael Rowe, meets leading experts calling for more independent research into this controversial subject, and reveals the hidden psychological devices in games that are designed to keep us coming back for more.

BBC1 * 6 December 2010 * 30 minutes

The Battle of Barking

Laura Fairrie's film records an historic moment in British politics through the microcosm of one east London constituency. Made over the course of a year, the film follows two very different political opponents as they battle towards the 2010 General Election.

Long-standing Labour MP Margaret Hodge is a stalwart of the New Labour establishment. Running against her is Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader. Griffin is a controversial figure, with a conviction for inciting racial hatred, who nonetheless commands considerable support.

As it chronicles the rise and fall of the far-right BNP, it gives a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the 'BNP family' and the working class disillusionment with the Labour party that fuelled the BNP campaign, offering an honest, moving and humorous portrait of a white working class community forced to face the changes brought by new immigrant populations.

More4 * 1 December 2010 * 90 minutes

Imagine...The Weird World of Eadweard Muybridge

Pioneer photographer, forefather of cinema, showman, murderer - Eadweard Muybridge was a Victorian enigma. He was born and died in Kingston upon Thames, but did his most famous work in California - freezing time and starting it up again, so that for the first time people could see how a racing horse's legs moved. He went on to animate the movements of naked ladies, wrestlers, athletes, elephants, cockatoos and his own naked body, projecting his images publicly with a machine he invented and astounding audiences worldwide with the first flickerings of cinema. Alan Yentob follows in Muybridge's footsteps as he makes - and often changes - his name, and sets off to kill his young wife's lover. With Andy Serkis as Muybridge.

BBC1 * 30 November 2010 * 60 minutes

Ancient Worlds 5-6

Republic of Virtue

How did an insignificant cluster of Latin hill villages on the edge of the civilised world become the greatest empire the world has known? In the fifth programme of the series, archaeologist and historian Richard Miles examines the phenomenon of the Roman Republic, from its fratricidal mythical beginnings, with the legend of Romulus and Remus, to the all too real violence of its end, dragged to destruction by war lords like Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar.

Travelling to Sicily and North Africa, Richard tells the story of Rome's century-long struggle for dominance with the other great regional power, Carthage. It was a struggle that would end with the total destruction of this formidable enemy and the transformation of landlubber Rome into a seapower, and the Republic into an Empire. But with no-one left to beat, the only enemy that Rome had left was itself.

City of Man, City of God

In the last of the series, archaeologist and historian Richard Miles examines the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

At the height of its power, the Roman Empire extended the benefits of its civilization to a 60 million citizens and subjects in a swathe of territory that extended from Hadrian's Wall to the banks of the Euphrates. Even under the rule of mad, bad and dangerous emperors, the imperial system proved to be robust, buttressed by the support of elite families in the far-flung corners of the empire whose loyalty was ensured by a system of cultural aspiration, economic opportunity and military coercion.

But the material benefits of the 'good order' delivered by Roman rule provided its citizens and subjects with the security to ask profound questions about the meaning of life, questions that the pragmatic, polytheistic Roman belief system was ill-equipped to answer. Christianity grew to fill the spiritual vacuum at the heart of Roman civilization, eventually claiming an Emperor, Constantine, as its greatest prize. The City of Man would be eclipsed the City of God.

BBC2 * 8-15 December 2010 * 2 x 60 minutes

Alesha Dixon: Don't Hit My Mum

Alesha Dixon explores the trauma and fall-out from domestic violence, from a child's perspective. Alesha highlights the neglect of children at the centre of domestic violence and how, left unheard, those children can be emotionally scarred for life.

Alesha witnessed her mum Beverley being beaten by her live-in boyfriend when she was very young. In this film, she meets girls and boys who have witnessed domestic violence and discovers how it affected their lives.

This is a journey for Alesha as she, in parallel with her own experiences, examines what happens when relationships break down – between parents, between local authorities and between parent and child. And she looks ahead to see how those broken bonds can be healed.

BBC1 * 22 November 2010 * 60 minutes

Ancient Worlds 3-4

The Greeks

Richard Miles explores the power and the paradox of the 'Greek Thing' - a blossoming in art, philosophy and science that went hand in hand with political discord, social injustice and endless war.

He paints a fascinating picture of the internal and external pressures that fuelled this unique political and social experiment, one that would pioneer many of the political systems that we still live with today, from oligarchy to tyranny, from totalitarianism to democracy.

Return of the King

In Richard Miles's epic story of civilization, there have been plenty of examples of the great men of history, but none came close to the legend of Alexander of Macedon, known to us as 'the Great'. Uniting the fractious Greek city-states, he led them on a crusade against the old enemy, Persia, and in little more than a decade created an empire that stretched from Egypt in the west to Afghanistan in the east.

But it was Alexander's successors, the Hellenistic Kings, who had to make sense of the legacy of this charismatic adventurer. By knuckling down to the hard graft of politics, taxation and public works, they created something far more enduring than a mere legend - they built a civilization.

Richard traces Alexander's battle-scarred route through Turkey, Syria and Lebanon to Egypt and ultimately to the western Punjab, Pakistan, where he discovers fascinating traces of a city where Greek west and Buddhist east were united in an intriguing new way.

BBC4/BBC2 * 29 November/1 December 2010 * 2 x 60 minutes

Ancient Worlds 1-2

Come Together

Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles explores the roots of one of the most profound innovations in the human story - civilisation - in the first episode of an epic series that runs from the creation of the first cities in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Starting in Uruk, the 'mother of all cities', in southern Iraq, Richard travels to Syria, Egypt, Anatolia and Greece, tracing the birth and development of technology and culture.

Age of Iron
Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles looks at the winners, losers and survivors of the great Bronze Age collapse, a regional catastrophe that wiped out the hard-won achievements of civilisation in the eastern Mediterranean about 3,000 years ago. In the new age of iron, civilisation would re-emerge, tempered in the flames of conflict, tougher and more resilient than ever before.

BBC4/BBC2 * 15-17 November 2010 * 2 x 60 minutes

Turn Back Time: The High Street 5-6

The 60s

A group of modern shopkeepers and their families are trading their way through one hundred years of history. They've set up shop in a 21st century town in a bid to make its residents fall in love with its high street once more. They are overseen by a Chamber of Commerce, led by Masterchef judge and greengrocer Gregg Wallace.

In this episode the shopkeepers move into the swinging sixties, and big changes hit the high street. Every shop has transformed completely - 1960s mass production of meat, bread and clothing means the bakers find themselves running a milk bar, the butcher sells hardware and the dressmaker is now running a hair salon. The grocers has become self-service, bringing a more modern shopping experience to customers. The bakers have to produce milkshakes and burgers, while the dressmaker turns her hand to bouffants and beehives. The butcher finds himself in direct competition with the grocer.

As the shopkeepers struggle with the changes in their trades, the town sees first-hand why Britain turned its back on traditional shops and embraced the supermarket. At the end of the week, history dictates that, for some, it is time to leave, and customers realise just what they're losing.

The 70s

In this episode, it's the end of the journey for the shopkeepers and their customers as they move into the 1970s. There are two new arrivals, the Sandher family take over the general store and David Lashmar has the challenge of selling vinyl to 21st century shoppers from his 1970s record shop. A '70s boutique keeps customers abreast of fashion fads and townsfolk are soon decked out in glam rock, lounge wear and punk. Amidst the explosion of popular culture the supermarket reminds everyone of the part the 1970s played in our quest for cheap food and convenient shopping. At the cornershop the Sandher kids find out just how hard their dad worked when his family left India to set up shop in Britain and they are shocked to hear his memories of the 1970s. The record shop treats the town to a Eurovision winning band performance and all the traders prepare for a Silver Jubilee street party. The town has experienced one hundred years of high street history, but will power cuts, the 1970s shopping experience and the Great British weather dampen the community spirit that has built up over the years?

BBC1 - 30th November/7th December 2010 - 2 x 60 minutes

Turn Back Time: The High Street 3-4

The 1930s

A group of modern shopkeepers and their families are on the journey of a lifetime - they're taking over empty shops in a neglected market square in Shepton Mallet to see if they can turn back time for the British High Street. They'll live and trade through six key eras of history and in this episode they move into to the 1930s.

Life should be sweeter this week, as government regulations reduce working hours and cheap sugar means lots of sweets, confectionary and cake. Nostalgia boosts sales for the grocers, who have masses of 1930s recognisable brands, the dressmaker has to sell thirties glamour to the town, and the butcher has good old British beef.

The Edwardian bazaar is now a toy shop, reflecting the shopkeepers' target customers - children. But it is far from plain sailing; the Bakers find themselves running a cake shop, but cakes aren't their forte. Rivalry builds between the grocers and the butchers, underminding the community spirit of the high street.

The shopkeepers spend a week selling the 1930s to the town, but they have to pull out all the stops for Empire day - can they persuade a whole new generation of the joys of the traditional high street?

WW2

In this episode the shopkeepers and their customers are plunged into World War Two.

For the first time profit isn't everything, as the shopkeepers find themselves dealing with rationing, promoting make do and mend, and trying to persuade an entire town to pull together as it would have done sixty years ago.

The grocer family struggle with wartime rules and regulations, and customers have to decide whether to stick to rations or to buy from the black market. The bakers feed the town from their British restaurant, while the butcher promotes mutton to modern shoppers. The dressmaker and the blacksmith convince the town of the benefits of 1940s style recycling.

But shortages, an air raid and hungry customers all take their toll; will they keep the town onside in the run up to the VE day celebrations at the end of the week?

BBC1 - 16/23 November 2010 - 2x60 minutes

Turn Back Time: The High Street 1-2

Victorian

A group of modern shopkeepers and their families are on the journey of a lifetime - they're taking over empty shops in a neglected market square in Shepton Mallet to see if they can turn back time for the British High Street. They'll live and trade through six key eras of history and in this episode they begin their journey in the 1870s, when the high street was born.

The shopkeepers make up the key trades; there's the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and the grocer. Overseeing it all is an expert Chamber of Commerce, headed up by greengrocer and MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace.

The shopkeepers soon learn that Victorian trading means truly going back to basics. The bakers struggle with back-breaking work and baking through the night. The butcher must sell every bit of a giant pig, and the Ironmonger realises that there isn't much call for mangles and mole traps in 2010. Over at the grocer's, 21st-century customers must wait for coffee to be roasted, tea to be mixed and butter to be patted. While the town finds Victorian produce hard to stomach, all the shopkeepers struggle to keep their customers onside in the run-up to market day.

Edwardian

The butcher, the baker, the grocer and the ironmonger are joined by a dressmaker, and together they must provide a modern town with the exceptional service and luxuriant shop displays worthy of the Edwardians.

The baker's family find themselves running an Edwardian tea shop, while the butchers must sell game in all its gory glory to modern customers. The grocer has trained staff, but the challenge of creating an early 20th century wedding breakfast piles on the pressure.

All the shopkeepers struggle with maintaining standards, and it becomes clear that underneath its glossy veneer the Edwardian high street was a tough place for women and children. The arrival of call-up papers reminds the traders and the town of the terrible impact that World War One had on Britain's communities.

BBC1 - 2-9 November 2010 - 2 x 60 minutes

Coppers 5

The final programme in the series takes viewers to the heart of a riot.

With exclusive access to Greater Manchester Police's Tactical Aid Unit, cameras accompany officers as they police violent clashes between thousands of opposing demonstrators.

English Defence League supporters are marching on Bolton town centre, with counter-demonstrators from Unite Against Fascism waiting for them. Tactical Aid Unit officers, who are trained to tackle heavy duty jobs, from knocking down doors to controlling football crowds, are expected to hold the line between the two opposing groups. It's their job to keep the peace, whatever it takes.

But as protester numbers swell and the crowds become harder to control, violence and scores of arrests ensue. As events unfold, five camera crews are at the very heart of the action with the TAU officers, giving a candid picture of both sides of the divide, protesters and police.

This episode features in-vision signing for the deaf

Channel 4 - 3 December 2010 - 60 minutes

Coppers 3-4

Emergency

Emergency calls to the police have risen by 50 per cent over the last 15 years, although recorded crime has dropped by a third over the same period.

The series follows the police responding to emergency calls and reveals the incredible things people choose to call 999 about: from mobile phones running out of credit to arguments about whose turn it is to have a go on the Nintendo Wii.

Kent constabulary receive a quarter of a million 999 calls every year, with 80% classed as non-emergencies and many seen as 'nuisance calls'.

'We're seeing a generation divide,' says Chief Inspector Nicola Faulconbridge of Kent's Force Communications Centre. 'Whereas the older generation won¿t call us for almost anything, even in an emergency, the younger generation are much more willing and ready to call us about almost any issue.'

Police officers are spending much of their time acting as counselors, settling petty squabbles and relationship problems. 

'Sometimes you just want to bang people's heads together and go 'Come on, look at you - you're 40 and you're acting like you're 12!'' says PC Neil Cronin.

Another issue prompting an increasing number of calls to 999 calls is Facebook. When virtual threats get out of hand, the police have no choice but to treat it as a real emergency, sending cars racing to the scene.

Saturday Night

The series joins police officers on the Saturday night beat, where drunks, abuse and violence - as well as marriage proposals and requests to urinate in your helmet - are all part of the job.

Typical of towns and cities up and down the country, every weekend the streets of Wakefield and Leeds in West Yorkshire are filled with people getting as drunk as they can as fast as they can. Trying to keep them in order, and stop them hurting themselves or others, are a handful of officers, alongside city council night marshals.

'We get nothing but grief and abuse and we can't say anything back, can we?' says PC Phillippa Child in Wakefield.

'If we locked up everybody who swore or spat or urinated or got involved in a pushing and shoving match, within about an hour of being out on town, just about everybody on that city centre would be waiting in the cells to be booked in,' says PC Chris Merrick.

When they're not arresting people, the female PCs are fending off protestations of love: ''Can I have your number? You're lovely. You're really nice. Why are you a copper? You're too beautiful to be a copper.' And I'm thinking get lost!' says PC Child.

(This episode features in-vision signing for the deaf)

Channel 4 15-26 November 2010 2 x 60 minutes

Coppers 1-2

Custody

The Medway custody suite in Gillingham, Kent is one of the busiest in the country. The first programme in the series joins its staff, who process 40 suspected criminals every day.

From burglary to shop-lifting and assault to drugs possession, Custody Officer Sergeant Sean O'Conner and his team have seen generations progress through their criminal careers and witness a never-ending cycle of deprivation, drugs, crime, violence, and - for some of the women they meet - prostitution.

With frustration, resignation and sometimes anger - as well as flashes of frequently dark humour - ordinary police officers offer a raw insight into the harsh realities of policing modern Britain.

Traffic

The series takes to the fast lane with Cambridgeshire's traffic cops: the petrolheads who are happiest racing to the rescue, or nicking drink drivers, and like nothing better than 'giving out love' (issuing speed tickets) with their 'love scope' (speed gun).

'I love nicking people,' says PC Leigh Fenton. 'I'd lock everybody up all day if I could.' The film reveals the close bonds that develop between the officers, and the banter they use as a shield against the part of the job they all dread: informing the next of kin when someone dies as a result of a traffic accident.

PCs Terry Sharpe and Stuart Appleton have spent three years sharing driving duties in their Volvo V70: 'People have said we're like an old married couple. We bicker and we argue. We have a laugh,' says PC Sharp.

But, despite the training and camaraderie, informing the next of kin after accidents never gets any easier: 'Saying the words that 'I've just been to an accident and it's my duty to tell you that your wife has died.' And there's no beating around the bush. You've got to tell them in no uncertain terms, that 'your wife has died.' And the reaction you get after that... that's the thing you think about,' says PC Appleton.

Channel 4 1-8 November 2010 2x60 minutes

The Genius of British Art, episodes 5 & 6

Modern Times

Modern Art has made us who we are and it has certainly made Janet Street Porter who she is.

Beginning in the stifling 1950s, Janet revisits her teenage years to show how modern art has been at the forefront of social and cultural changes, which define Britain today, from Patrick Heron through Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Joe Tilson, Richard Hamilton, Gilbert and George, and the Sex Pistols, to Damien Hirst and the 'Sensation' generation of British artists.

Janet speaks to Hirst, Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry about how art has seeped into the very heart of British culture.

The Art of War

Former war reporter Jon Snow presents a timely reminder of how British artists have expressed and defined our response to the horror of war and, in the process, have triggered a debate about the role of art in British life. As the grandson of a First World War general, it's a story with a personal resonance for Jon.

A hundred years ago, artists were the first to challenge the view that war was all about victory and glory. Jon, a keen amateur artist himself, traces this legacy from the artists of the First World War - Richard Nevinson, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer - right up to the work of contemporary artists such as John Keane, Jeremy Deller and Steve McQueen.

Britain's war artists have pushed the boundaries in their drive to bring home to us the true cost of war. We once celebrated war's valour and glory, but they have encouraged us to feel its pain and tragedy. They have given us an artistic legacy that will continue to provoke and to move generations to come.

Channel 4. 31 Oct-7 Nov 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

LRC Recordings

This is the blog of the Learning Resource Centre of Yale College of Wrexham. 

Under the terms of the ERA Licence, we record a variety of television programmes for use by our staff and students in their courses.

This blog is a record of those programmes. 

Kara Tointon: Don't Call Me Stupid

'I want to know where my personality begins and dyslexia ends. I'm fed up with putting things on hold and having this vision that one day I'm going to be something different to who I am now'.

Actress Kara Tointon dreams about reading a novel cover to cover. Standing in her way is her dyslexia. Kara is now wondering whether this neurological condition is affecting her work as an actress and even her day-to-day life.

In this intimate documentary, Kara is tested and undergoes specialist help. She also meets other young dyslexics, many of whom share Kara's experience of feeling 'stupid'.

As Kara faces some difficult truths about herself, will she be able to take control of her condition and transform her life?

BBC3 11th November 2010 60 minutes

Gods and Monsters: Homer's Odyssey

Virginia Woolf said Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan Horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.

BBC4 8th November 2010 60 minutes

Wait Til Your Teacher Gets Home

When teenagers are out of control at school what can the teachers do? We see teachers getting extraordinary powers to take over young pupils' lives and stop them throwing away their considerable potential.

Expect tears and tantrums as badly-behaved schoolgirl Loretta Cook gets the shock of her life. Her mum hands control of the family over to her teacher, for one week, in a last-ditch attempt to sort out the teenager's bad behaviour. Spending a week with her teacher is Loretta's worst nightmare - and when Miss Dudley discovers that the parents are a big part of the problem, mum and dad are in the firing line too.

It's an unexpected battle of wills between the young teacher, who has never been in a student's home before and has no kids of her own, and Loretta's recently divorced parents, who can barely speak to each other. With the family fighting against the rules and structure Miss Dudley introduces, the teacher struggles to take command. With the whole project at risk, can she turn it around and convince the family that teacher knows best?

With 6,000 thousand children getting expelled every year and 2,000 being sent home every day, can radical interventions like this help to stop the bad behaviour before it reaches breaking point?

BBC3 28th October 2010 60 minutes

How to Get a Head in Sculpture

From the heads of Roman Emperors to the 'blood head' of contemporary British artist Marc Quinn, the greatest figures in world sculpture have continually turned to the head to re-evaluate what it means to be human and to reformulate how closely sculpture can capture it.

Witty, eclectic and insightful, this film is a journey through the most enduring subject for world sculpture, one that carves a path through politics and religion, the ancient and the modern.

Actor David Thewlis has his head sculpted by three different sculptors, while the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, artist Maggi Hambling and art critic Rachel Johnston discuss art's most enduring preoccupation - ourselves.

BBC4. 28th October 2010. 60 minutes

David Attenborough's First Life

In fifty years of broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough has travelled the globe to document the living world in all its wonder. Now, in the landmark series, David Attenborough's First Life, he completes his journey by going back in time to the roots of the tree of life, in search of the very first animals.

Attenborough's journey begins in a forest near his childhood home in Leicester, where a fossil discovery transformed our understanding of the evolution of complex life. Travelling to the fog bound coastline of Newfoundland and the Australian outback, Attenborough unearths the earliest forms of animal life to exist on Earth.

These bizarre and wonderful creatures are brought to life with the help of cutting edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first animal forms that moved to the first mouths that ate, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.

Attenborough's journey continues in Canada's Rocky Mountains, where fossils document an explosion in animal diversity never seen before or since. Travelling from there to North Africa, the rainforests of Australia and the east coast of Scotland, Attenborough discovers how animals evolved to conquer not only the oceans but also the land and air.

These remote and fascinating creatures are brought to life as never before with the help of cutting-edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first large predators to the first legs on land, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.

BBC2. 5-12 November 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Dispatches: Britain's Street Kids

Every day hundreds of kids are forced to leave home. According to charities like Railway Children, the number of homeless children is bound to rise as a result of the recent government budget cuts.

This crisis in Britain's families has created an itinerant population of young people without support or a roof over their heads. The state has to provide, at an immense cost, while voluntary organisations try to plug the gaps in the face of drastic cutbacks and closures.

Dispatches follows four teenagers over six months who are struggling to fend for themselves on the streets. They're simultaneously at risk and a risk to society, and for all four of them drugs become a way of life, a means of dealing with the stresses and challenges of life away from family and home comforts.

All talk candidly and eloquently about why they take flight: family breakdowns, addiction, violence, neglect and abuse. The unspoken truth behind their stories points to both inadequate parenting and severe lack of consistent and effective care once they have left home.

Dispatches explores the hidden world of runaway and evicted teenagers, giving them a voice for the first time, and celebrating their extraordinary ability to fend for themselves.

Channel Four. 1st November 2010. 60 minutes

What the Green Movement Got Wrong

A group of environmentalists across the world believe that, in order to save the planet, humanity must embrace the very science and technology they once so stridently opposed.

In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy. They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.

As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, 'Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs. It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn't share with anyone.'

Also on the disk is the Live Debate which followed the programme:

Krishnan Guru-Murthy chairs a studio debate to discuss the issues raised in the documentary, What the Green Movement Got Wrong.

The film's leading protagonists, former anti-GM activist and author Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand, a pioneer of the original green lobby, face critics from today's green movement in front of an informed studio audience.

Leading policy makers, commentators, scientists, entrepreneurs and economists debate the impact the green movement has had on global climate change and whether embracing the very science and technology the greens once so stridently opposed, such as GM crops and nuclear energy, would be more successful in reducing the risks to the planet from global warming.

Channel Four. 4th November 2010. 75 and 60 minutes

Renaissance Revolution

The new series on Renaissance painting, written and presented by Matthew Collings, begins with an artistic investigation into one of the most radiant and beautiful images in all of art history, The Madonna of the Meadow, painted in 1505 by Raphael.

Renaissance art has become part of the 21st-century heritage industry but when Raphael was alive, it was a startling new form of visual expression, and Raphael's vibrant 'realism' was striking and fresh. It became the model for western art for the next 400 years, right up until the birth of Modernism.

As much as it was a cultural 'rebirth', the Renaissance was also a revolution in ideas about reality. Matthew Collings sets out to remind us of how radical Renaissance paintings were when they were made, as well as opening our eyes to what is still truly great about them. In this programme he deconstructs The Madonna of the Meadow with the help of the very latest high-resolution digital technology, which allows him to explore the inner secrets of Raphael's painterly effects with a clarity and at a level of detail never before seen on television.

As Matthew says, it is a journey 'to the other side of an illusion', revealing how Raphael created the alluring images that were so appealing to his wealthy Renaissance clients - including the Pope - and which entranced artists for centuries after his death. Matthew explains the secret to Raphael's vibrant colour harmonies, which the artist grasped intuitively, long before the advent of colour 'theory'; and Raphael also knew how to exploit colour effects to create the impression of extraordinary depth in his paintings.
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In the second programme of his new series on Renaissance painting, artist and writer Matthew Collings steps into the mysterious invented world of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, painted c.1505.

This imposing work, full of strange and fantastical details, contains one of the most famous images in all of art: a man with a tree for a body, who gazes out at us from the section of the painting representing hell. The tree-man's face is generally thought to be the artist's self-portrait but, like almost everything else about Hieronymus Bosch - including the meaning of this, his most famous painting - no one knows for sure.

Using the latest high-resolution digital technology, Matthew Collings is able to explore this extraordinary painting in minute detail and unravel some of the arcane messages that Bosch has woven into it through his use of symbols and unsettling inversions of scale - giant birds drop fruit into the mouths of nude humans, slithering creatures invade paradise, a devil-bird devours a man whole.

Just as the images in Bosch's painting were unusual for the Renaissance, his technique was also unconventional for the time. Bosch worked quickly with gloopy blobs of thick paint to conjure up the fine details of a fish's eye or the spines on the back of a porcupine from a few brushstrokes. The liveliness of Bosch's technique is one of the qualities that makes his painting seem strangely modern.

The Garden of Earthly Delights reflects the new way of thinking about the world that the Renaissance ushered in - ideas about free will and morality that challenged the old religious order and which posed a question: perhaps heaven and hell are not places your soul might end up in, but states of being that are always inside you?
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Matthew Collings concludes the series by looking at the invention of Renaissance painting.

The Baptism of Christ by Italian master Piero Della Francesca showed the household names of the High Renaissance how to use the big new trick of Renaissance painting - illusionism and perspective. Without him their achievements would have been impossible, but change came so rapidly in the Renaissance that the qualities that made Piero famous in his own time quickly went out of fashion.

The Baptism was bought for the National Gallery in 1861 and later Cezanne and Picasso saw him as the real deal: the authentic, honest Renaissance, a model for modern painting. Now he is so in tune with secular modern taste that a tourist trail links his work in the beautiful hills of Umbria, Tuscany, and a few galleries around the world who own a precious panel by him.

Collings follows his trail and hunts down the forensic detail in the highest-resolution images of paintings yet seen on television.

BBC2. 16-30 October 2010. 3 x 60 minutes on one disk.

Warsaw Ghetto: The Unfinished Film

The Warsaw Ghetto housed 440,000 Polish Jews and Roma during World War II. Typhus, starvation and random murders killed over 100,000 of the ghetto's residents even before the Nazis began the massive deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Yet the Nazis created a mysterious propaganda film that juxtaposed meticulously staged scenes of Jews enjoying a life of luxury in the ghetto with other, chilling images that required no staging at all.

After the war, filmmakers and museums - unaware of the deception - used images from the film as objective illustrations of life in the ghetto, which subsequently became engraved as historical truth.

With contributions from ghetto survivors and one of the German cameramen, Warsaw Ghetto: The Unfinished Film reveals how the Nazis used the ghetto as a film set, the inhabitants as actors and the decaying bodies as exhibits, and examines how far we can trust historic images.

More4. 30th October 2010. 120 minutes.

Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits

Art critic Laura Cumming takes a journey through more than five centuries of self-portraits and finds out how the greatest names in western art transformed themselves into their own masterpieces.

The film argues that self-portraits are a unique form of art - one that always reveals the truth of how artists saw themselves and how they wanted to be known to the world. Examining the works of key self-portraitists including Durer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Warhol, Laura traces the development of the genre, uncovering the strange and various ways artists have managed to get their inner and outer selves to match up.

Laura investigates the stories behind key self-portraits, interviews artists as they attempt a self-portrait, and shows how the history of the self-portrait is about more than how art and artists have changed - it also charts the evolution of the way we see ourselves and what it means to be human.

She also discusses Courbet with Julian Barnes, Rembrandt's theatricality with Simon Callow, and meets the contemporary artists Mark Wallinger and Patrick Hughes, observing the latter making his first ever self-portrait.

BBC4. 4th November 2010. 90 minutes

Dispatches: Ready for a Riot

The death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in April 2009 and the images of police batons raining down on protestors have put the spotlight on the tactics police deploy during public demonstrations.

Dispatches has been given exclusive access to the Metropolitan Police to find out what training officers are given.

The programme looks at how the police are taught to judge the level of force required to suppress disorder, and examines controversial crowd control tactics like 'containment', which brings protestors face-to-face with heavily-protected and armed police officers.

Dispatches asks why, if the vast majority of protests pass off peacefully, police training still focuses on the worst-case scenario of riots and petrol bombs, and hears from critics of the current training who argue it is out of step with 21st century protest.

The programme examines the evolution of this training and asks whether the requirements of health and safety legislation have had an adverse effect on policing public order: whether the rules designed to protect the police from harm actually put them at greater risk.

And when Climate Camp returned to the capital in summer 2009, Dispatches was there to find out if lessons had been learnt from the events of G20.

Channel 4. 19th October 2009. 60 minutes

A Garden in Snowdonia

Bodnant Rising
The story of a year in the life of Bodnant Garden in North Wales. With visitor numbers in decline, those who live and work at the National Trust property are on a mission to transform this spectacular garden. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith and his manager Michael McLaren are spending two million pounds on a revamp, with the aim of creating one of the top ten gardens in the world.

Bodnant Blooming
Head Gardener Troy Scott Smith and his team give Bodnant a facelift. Supervisor Adam Salvin brings a beautiful Italianate terrace back to its former glory, Dave Larter shares his passion for giant lilies and the world famous Laburnum Arch is in full bloom.

Bodnant at Risk
Head gardener Troy Scott Smith struggles to preserve one of the largest collection of rhododendrons in the country. With many rare and ageing plants, and a growing threat from 'sudden oak disease', Bodnant faces some tough challenges.

Bodnant on Show
Ann Smith, the Visitors Services Manager, implements an ambitious programme of summer events to attract more visitors. Troy Scott Smith is concerned that his beautiful grounds could be ruined by crowds.

Bodnant Under Snow
The garden is under a carpet of snow and closed to the public. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith plans a winter garden to attract more visitors. A three-hundred-year-old oak tree is dying. A plague of moles wreaks havoc as the team prepares to open for the new season.

BBC2. 24 August-7 September 2009. 5 x 30 minutes on 2 disks.

Louis Theroux and The City Addicted to Crystal Meth

Central Valley, California, is home to some of the most impoverished rural towns in America, where crystal meth addiction is prolific. In Fresno, Louis finds a community ravaged by this cheap and highly addictive drug.

As he infiltrates the town, he experiences the reality of meth abuse, as addicts who are high (or 'tweaking', as it is known) invite him into their homes to see them take hit after hit of their favourite drug. Louis becomes surrounded by the madness of daily addiction and the meth-addled confusion which is breaking this community apart.

He sees its impact through the eyes of the local police, and meets Diane and Karl, a couple who have sustained their marriage despite a 25-year meth addiction and losing custody of their five children. He witnesses arrests of sons doing meth with their mothers, and family after family broken apart from generations of meth abuse.

At the Westcare residential centre, Louis sees the work being done to combat the destruction caused by the drug. Run by ex-addicts, it offers a six-month rehab programme. He witnesses the extraordinary challenges they face dealing with meth-addicted families - babies born already hooked, with mothers caring for them while attempting to kick their own habit too.

Addiction is laid bare as Louis seeks out the stories and the people behind the drug.

BBC2. 9th August 2009. 60 minutes

Kids with Guns: Stacey Dooley Investigates

Stacey Dooley returns with a moving and insightful documentary exploring the issue of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 5.4 million people have died in the civil war.

An estimated 30,000 children have been used as soldiers during the 14-year conflict in the DRC and no one knows how many thousands are still in the forests, enslaved by armed militias. Stacey meets kids who have been soldiers. She goes to a rescue centre where boys and girls arrive daily, rescued from guerrilla militia units as well as the Congolese National Army. She befriends one boy, 16-year-old Patrick, who was kidnapped when he was just 12. He tells her how he was forced to kill people and was even made to drink their blood to give him magic powers.

Stacey meets other boy soldiers and hears their terrifying experiences first hand. Accompanying a local charity, she travels to a frontline Congolese National Army camp where she helps rescues two teenage boy soldiers. On their way to the rescue centre, they reveal to her that they've been living as soldiers, deep in the forest, since they were nine and ten years old.

Stacey takes one boy home to be reunited with his family he hasn't seen for more than three years. He was taken away by the militias, forced to fight and kill and now neither Stacey nor the boy know how his family and the villagers will react to his return.

Stacey witnesses for herself the terrifying complexities of war where young kids have been manipulated to commit atrocities, but who still have to return to living a normal life again.

BBC3. 7th October 2010. 60 minutes

Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer?

Episode 1
King Henry VIII had a fascinating and enlightening relationship with art. He came to the throne as the renaissance swept across Europe, yet England's new King never lost sight of the medieval chivalry of his forefathers.

In the first of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks at the palaces, tapestries, music and paintings created in the King's name and questions whether the art he commissioned compensates for the religious treasures he would come to destroy.

Episode 2
In the 1530s, King Henry VIII was at a crossroads. In his desperation for a new wife and an heir, he had broken with Rome, divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn. Isolated and vulnerable, he needed a powerful new image as head of church and state.

In the second of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks for clues in the king's art to glimpse what was going on inside Henry's head as he faced his darkest days.

BBC4. 7-14 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

The Genius of British Art (Episodes 3-4)

Flesh
Writer Howard Jacobson celebrates the way British artists depict sex and desire, and argues that the most compelling expression is to be found where we might least expect it: in the art of the Victorians.

We like to caricature the Victorians as hypocrites for whom the body is nothing but an embarrassment. In fact, thanks to artists like William Etty, who introduced the nude into British art in the 1820s, the Victorian era became a golden age for painting a wild and desperate sexuality.

What distinguishes this art from what was happening in, for example, France, is its moral consciousness. These are not paintings of unthinking hedonism. They reflect an awareness of the moral and psychological consequences of sex, which is what makes them all the more erotic. 'This for me is the British genius,' says Howard. 'We don't just do the fires of love today. We think about the way we'll feel tomorrow.'

Howard first discovered that British art of the 19th century was far more adventurous than it's given credit for when he visited his local gallery in Manchester as a schoolboy. Even today it's in the great provincial art galleries in which some of our most provocative sexual art can be found, thanks to those Victorian men of trade and industry, like soap billionaire William Lever, whom we often deride as prudish and philistine.

William Etty is York's most distinguished artistic son and yet Howard finds that not a single one of his nudes is on show here. We may laugh at the Victorians for what we think of as their prudery and repression but it seems we are hedged in by more moral prohibitions than they were.

Visions of England
At a time when Britain's contemporary art world has been dominated by the 'Sensation' generation of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, it's easy to dismiss English landscape art as nothing more than tea towel culture. That would be a big mistake, argues Sir Roy Strong.

Far from being a succession of chocolate box cliches, the genius of English landscape art is that it affords a sometimes shocking and subversive insight into the country's deepest fears.

What we see at first glance can be deceptive. Take that great national icon: Constable's The Haywain. On the surface it's an image of an idyllic pastoral scene but in its time it was revolutionary. Visitors to the Royal Academy in 1821 were horrified that Constable should exhibit a piece of local landscape on a scale usually reserved for subjects from the Bible or national history.

It was painted during a period when England was engaged in bloody war against France, there was turbulence in the countryside and industrial revolution in the cities.

All the most significant developments in English landscape art have happened at times of great national crisis - the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars - when Britain was cut off from the continent and our artists were compelled to look inwards.

Sir Roy argues that, from Constable to Hockney, landscape artists have reflected visions of England on the cusp of change. It is nothing less than this country's greatest contribution to western art.

Channel 4. 17-24 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

The Genius of British Art (Episodes 1-2)

Power and Personality

Historian Dr David Starkey examines how royal portraiture from Henry VIII to Princess Diana has had an enduring influence on the iconic power of personality.

Henry was enamoured with the imperial power reflected by the art of Rome. His break with the Catholic Church prompted him to embrace the supreme artist of the Reformation, Hans Holbein, and form a partnership whose influence resonates to this day.

Starkey shows how first Henry and Holbein, and then Charles I and his court painter, Anthony van Dyck, set an enduring template for the depiction of power - a template that has been brilliantly adapted in our time by the renegade royal, Princess Diana. Thanks to her own 'Holbein', the photographer Mario Testino, Diana stripped away the pomp of monarchy to promote her own personality in the same way Henry VIII had pioneered 500 years earlier.

Far from being the also-rans in today's age of celebrity, the royals can truly be said to have invented it.

Art for the People

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford shows how our sense of identity was changed forever by the most distinctively British artist this country has ever produced: William Hogarth.

Until the 18th century, the only vision of Britishness that was available in our art was for and about the toffs. But in the 18th century a revolution occurred: a revolution in ink and paint rather than blood. For the very first time, it was possible to look at our art and see people who are identifiably 'us'. It's all thanks to Hogarth.

No other artist looked at Britain in the way that Hogarth did. There's no one in the art of Europe like him. Hogarth was born poor in London, to whose teeming streets he turned for inspiration throughout his life. Hogarth's London, by far the biggest city in Europe, was not only a great subject for the artist; it was the crucible in which British identity was forged.

Gus has a personal fascination with this story because in 1748, his ancestor, William Ansa, arrived in London from Africa. William had left the Gold Coast, where his father was a wealthy trader, for England to seek his fortune. But the ship's captain had tricked him into slavery and he had spent four years working on a sugar plantation in Barbados.

His case became a cause celebre. The good people of London petitioned for William's freedom and by the time he eventually got here, he was already famous. Gus has always wondered what William might have seen and felt in London. He finds the answers in the life and work of Hogarth.

Uniquely among artists at the time, there are black people everywhere in Hogarth. For Gus, it's an acknowledgement that the lives of people like William Ansa are part of British history too.

Hogarth's inclusive vision of British identity seemed horrifyingly vulgar to the ruling classes of his day. On the whole, the artistic elite shunned the rowdy life of the streets. They wanted a more elegant, chaste vision of British identity. Hogarth wanted art that depicted Britain in all its ugly, rude reality.

Channel 4. 3-10 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 5-6)

Henry VIII to The Industrial Revolution
The tale reaches the dramatic events of Henry VIII's Reformation and the battles of the English Civil War. We track Kibworth's 17th century dissenters, travel on the Grand Union Canal and meet an 18th century feminist writer from Kibworth who was a pioneer of children's books.

The story of a young highwayman transported to Australia comes alive as his living descendents come back to the village to uncover their roots. Lastly, the Industrial Revolution comes to the village with framework knitting factories, changing the village and its people forever.

Victoria to the Present Day
In this final episode, helped by today's villagers Michael uncovers the secret history of a Victorian village more colourful than even Dickens could have imagined. Recreating their penny concerts of the 1880s, visiting World War I battlefields with the school and recalling the Home Guard, local land girls and the bombing of the village in 1940, the series finally moves into the brave new world of 'homes for heroes' and the villagers come together to leave a reminder of their world for future generations.

BBC4. 20th-27th October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 3-4)

The Great Famine and The Black Death
Wood's fascinating tale reaches the catastrophic 14th century. Kibworth goes through the worst famine in European history, and then, as revealed in the astonishing village archive in Merton College Oxford, two thirds of the people die in the Black Death.

Helped by today's villagers - field walking and reading the historical texts - and by the local schoolchildren digging archaeological test pits, Wood follows stories of individual lives through these times, out of which the English idea of community and the English character begin to emerge.

The Peasants Revolt to The Tudors
Wood's gripping tale moves on to dramatic battles of conscience in the time of the Hundred Years' War. Amazing finds in the school archive help trace peasant education back to the 14th century and we see how the people themselves set up the first school for their children.
Some villagers join in a rebellion against King Henry V, while others rise to become middle class merchants in the textile town of Coventry. On the horizon is the Protestant Reformation, but the rise of capitalism and individualism sow the seeds of England's future greatness.

BBC4 7-13 October 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Michael Woods' Story of England (Episodes 1-2)

Romans to Normans
Groundbreaking series in which Michael Wood tells the story of one place throughout the whole of English history. The village is Kibworth in Leicestershire in the heart of England - a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two.
With the help of the local people and using archaeology, landscape, language and DNA, Michael uncovers the lost history of the first thousand years of the village, featuring a Roman villa, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings and graphic evidence of life on the eve of the Norman Conquest.

Domesday to Magna Carta
Wood's unique portrait moves on to 1066 when the Normans build a castle in Kibworth. He reveals how occupation affected the villagers from the gallows to the alehouse, and shows the medieval open fields in action in the only place where they still survive today.
With the help of the residents, he charts events in the village leading to the people's involvement in the Civil War of Simon de Montfort. Intertwining the local and national narratives, this is a moving and informative picture of one local community through time.

BBC4. 22-29 September 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Dragon's Eye

Felicity Evans takes a fresh look at politics through the Dragon's Eye. Whether it's a local council, the National Assembly, Westminster or Europe, the programme probes, scrutinises and sheds light on the democratic institutions.

BBC Parliament. 10-24 October 2010. 3 x 30 minutes

A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss

Three-part series in which actor and writer Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen, Doctor Who, Sherlock) celebrates the greatest achievements of horror cinema.

A lifelong fan of the genre, Mark begins by exploring the golden age of Hollywood horror. From the late 1920s until the 1940s, a succession of classic pictures and unforgettable actors defined the horror genre - including The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney, Dracula with Bela Lugosi, and Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff.

Mark explains just how daring and pioneering these films were, and why they still send a chill down the spine today. He also traces how horror pictures evolved during this period, becoming camp and subversive (The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein, both directed by Englishman James Whale), dark and perverse (films like Freaks, which used disabled performers), before a final flourish with the psychological horror of RKO Pictures' films (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie), which still influence directors today. However, by the early 1950s the monsters were facing their biggest threat - the rise of science fiction films in the post-war atomic era.

Along the way, Mark steps into some of the great sets from these classic films, hears first-hand accounts from Hollywood horror veterans, discovers Lon Chaney's head in a box and finds out why Bela Lugosi met his match in Golders Green.

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Mark uncovers stories behind the films of his favourite period - the 1950s and 60s - which fired his lifelong enthusiasm for horror. These mainly British pictures were dominated by the legendary Hammer Films, who rewrote the horror rulebook with a revolutionary infusion of sex and full-colour gore - all shot in the English Home Counties.

Mark meets key Hammer figures to find out why their Frankenstein and Dracula films conquered the world, making international stars of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. He looks at the new boom of horror that followed in Hammer's wake, including the ravishing Italian movie Black Sunday, and talks to the influential American producer Roger Corman about his disturbing and dreamlike Edgar Allan Poe films. He also explores the intriguing cycle of British 'folk horror' films, such as The Wicker Man and Mark's personal favourite, Blood on Satan's Claw.

Mark also speaks to leading horror ladies Barbara Steele and Barbara Shelley about their most famous roles, makes a pilgrimage to Whitstable, home of Peter Cushing, and finds out why Dracula's bedroom activities got the British censor steamed up.

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Mark explores the explosion of American films of the late 1960s and 70s which dragged horror kicking and screaming into the present day. With their contemporary settings and uncompromising content, films like Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remain controversial. But Mark argues that these films - often regarded as only being for hardcore fans with strong stomachs - have much to offer. Made by pioneering independent filmmakers, they reflected the social upheavals of American society and brought fresh energy and imagination to the genre.

Mark gets the inside story from a roster of leading horror directors, including George A Romero, whose Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead turned zombies into A-list monsters; Tobe Hooper, director of the notorious Texas Chain Saw Massacre; and John Carpenter, whose smash hit Halloween triggered the slasher movie boom.

Mark also celebrates the other great horror trend of the era - a string of satanically-themed Hollywood blockbusters, including Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen. Along the way Mark visits the Bates Motel, gets mobbed by zombies and finds out what happened to Omen star David Warner's decapitated head.

BBC4 12-26 October 2010 3 x 60 minutes

Murder in Mexico: Presumed Guilty

Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith's chilling film examines the reality behind Mexico's judicial system. The country, currently embroiled in what amounts to a war with the drugs cartels, has a conviction rate of 90% for all defendants no matter what they plead since its legal system has no presumption of innocence.

One of them is Antonio Zuniga, sent to prison for 20 years for murder despite pleading innocent. The only witness didn't mention his name until his third statement with which, he admits, he was `helped' by the police; others place him elsewhere at the time of the shooting and there is no forensic evidence between him and the murder weapon.

Hernandez, a law student as well as a filmmaker, joins with fellow law student Layda Negrete to unpick the case and with Antonio granted a rare re-trial, follow the unfolding events which may or may not see Antonio freed.

More4 12th October 2010 120 minutes

Tormented Lives

In a revealing and moving documentary, disability rights campaigner and confidante of the late Princess Diana, Rosa Monckton, exposes the reality of life for people with learning disabilities facing hate crime. With daily headline-grabbing accounts of attacks on disabled people that have even led to murder and suicide, Rosa admits she is deeply concerned about the future that awaits her own teenage daughter, Domenica, who has Down's syndrome. What will life be like for her once Rosa and her husband Dominic Lawson are no longer around to protect her? In this, Rosa's second documentary, we see people literally driven from their homes, individuals facing abuse and daily torment just because they have a disability. Rosa meets families under siege in their own homes, and shows how the authorities often fail to respond effectively to the abuse they face. And she tries to help one tormented man, Christopher, in his battle to live independently as a respected and useful member of society.

BBC1 19th October 2010 50 minutes

Young Voters Question Time Live

On the evening of the chancellor's spending review, an audience of young voters puts its questions and comments to a panel chaired by Richard Bacon, providing an immediate sample of opinions and reactions of young people to the most important government announcement on public spending in 40 years.

The government has pledged to cut public spending and October 20th 2010 is the day the chancellor of the exchequer details which areas of government expenditure will be affected. With millions of young people expected to feel the impact of expenditure cuts, the programme will provide an instant and exclusive response to the measures announced earlier in the day.
It will transmit live from the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, west London and feature five panellists and an audience of more than 150 young people.

BBC3 20th October 2010 60 minutes

Horizon: Is Seeing Believing

Horizon explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions - and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and why they fool us.

We show how easy it is to trick your sense of taste by changing the colours of food and drink, explain how what you see can change what you hear, and see just how unreliable our sense of colour can be.

But all this trickery has a serious purpose. It's helping scientists to create a new understanding of how our senses work - not as individual senses, but connected together.

It holds the intriguing possibility that one sense could be mapped into another. This is what happened to Daniel Kish, who lost his sight as a child. He is now able to create a vision of the world by clicking his tongue which allows him to echolocate like a bat.

And in a series of MRI scans, scientists are now looking to find out if Daniel's brain may have actually rewired itself enabling him to use sound to create a visual image of the world.

BBC2 18th October 2010. 60 minutes

All Our Working Lives: Coal

The story of the British coal mining industry, told with rare archive and interviews with the people who worked in it. The programme features the original 1980s documentary on the industry, followed by a new film which brings the story of our coal mines right up to date.

BBC4. 18th October 2010. 90 minutes

All Our Working Lives: Shipbuilding

The story of the British shipbuilding industry, told with rare archive and interviews with the people who worked in it. The programme features the original 1980s documentary on the industry, followed by a new film which brings the story of our shipyards right up to date.

BBC4. 10th October 2010. 90 minutes

War Walks: The Battle of Naseby

In 1645, Charles I lost his struggle against parliament during the decisive crash of the English Civil War. Professor Richard Holmes follows the campaign that led to the Battle of Naseby, starting at the king's headquarters in Oxford. On the battlefield itself he is able to touch the past, as metal detectors unearth musket balls buried for more than 350 years. Members of the Sealed Knot Civil War Reconstruction Society demonstrate the lethal power of the musket and the pike.

BBC4 6th October 2010 30 minutes

Kids in Care

Since the case of Baby P, there has been a 40% increase in the number of children taken into care by the state. There are now 70,000 children being 'looked after' in the system. What happens to them? Can the system offer them a better life?

Panorama follows children in the care of Coventry Social Services for six months to find out if the state can be a real parent - even though children in care are more at risk of failing school and committing crime than any other group.

Narrated by Samantha Morton, who herself grew up in care.

BBC1 5th October 2010 60 minutes

Horizon: Death of the Oceans

Sir David Attenborough reveals the findings of one of the most ambitious scientific studies of our time - an investigation into what is happening to our oceans. He looks at whether it is too late to save their remarkable biodiversity.

Horizon travels from the cold waters of the North Atlantic to the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef to meet the scientists who are transforming our understanding of this unique habitat. Attenborough explores some of the ways in which we are affecting marine life - from over-fishing to the acidification of sea water.

The film also uncovers the disturbing story of how shipping noise is deafening whales and dolphins, affecting their survival in the future.

BBC2 4th October 2010 60 minutes

Classroom Experiment

In this two-part series, theory and practice meet head on as education expert Professor Dylan Wiliam sets up an experimental school classroom. For one term, he takes over a Year 8 class at a secondary comprehensive to test simple ideas that he believes could improve the quality of our children's education.

His first radical technique is to ban hands up when the teacher asks a question and instead choose students at random. The idea is to get everyone in the class to engage, not just the handful of students who usually participate. The change though is met with resistance as both teachers and students have to break habits of a lifetime.

The challenge only increases when he asks the school to organise ten minutes of daily exercise for the pupils. It becomes apparent that trying to get 24 teenagers to turn up early for a burst of PE is going to be no mean feat.

Part 2

Some of the higher ability students are not responding well to the new rule of No Hands Up in class, and Wiliam is worried they are at risk of being left behind.

There is a classroom revolt when the teachers remove grades from work. The idea is to make the students actually read the comments on their work in order to help them improve, but they are left confused and angry after becoming so used to the traditional grading system.

By the end of term, however, even Wiliam is surprised by the impact the experiment has had on the students' academic achievement.

BBC 27-28 September 2010. 2 x 60 minutes

Unequal Opportunities with John Humphrys

John Humphrys examines the reasons behind the stark educational attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils, which has stubbornly refused to narrow, despite the pledge made by successive governments to put education at the top of the political agenda.

This attainment gap is a problem that starts very early on, with experts saying that even before turning two, poor children have already fallen significantly behind in development. And when they reach school age, they are on average a year behind; by 14 two years behind; and by 16 half as likely to get five good GCSEs.

John travels the country visiting schools and meeting parents, teachers, pupils, tutors and researchers. He hears from teachers committed to finding ways to improve things and head teachers who have managed to turn failing schools around.

But he also uncovers the battles that exist for the best available education and how an increasing number of parents are using private tutoring companies to top up their children's education. Lee Elliott-Major of The Sutton Trust tells how research still suggests that the overwhelming factor in who does well in school depends on who the parents are, and John hears how parental choice for schools and the option for private education often exaggerate the social divide between the rich and the poor.

In Unequal Opportunities, John reflects on his own background and explores the dilemmas faced by parents wanting the best education for their children.

BBC2. Monday 20th September 2010. 60 minutes

Big School Lottery

Series offering an insight into one of the most important and stressful decisions a family can make - which secondary school to send their child to.

With unprecedented and exclusive access, the series follows Birmingham Education Authority, which is the largest in Europe, as it allocates its school places. And it follows a group of children - and their parents - from across Birmingham as they go through the process and make the move from primary to secondary school.

This is an intimate and revealing account of modern Britain, which brings to the fore a better understanding of the complexity and difficulty of administering a system that has to balance all the choices and find school places for 16,000 children in this year alone.

BBC2 7-15 September. 3 x 60 minutes

The Tony Blair Interview with Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr tackles Tony Blair in an exclusive interview and the first major political interview with Tony Blair since 2007, the year he stood down as Prime Minister. Andrew Marr seeks to learn more about what Blair was trying to achieve in office and how he now regards his record in office, as Blair's memoirs are published.

BBC2. 1st September 2010. 60 minutes

Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict

As a bright schoolboy from a loving, middle-class family Ben Rogers was expected to make a success of his life. Raised in a quiet, picturesque village Ben was a Boy Scout, loved cricket, played in the school orchestra and looked forward to the annual family holiday. But despite his privileged start in life Ben found himself on the road to ruin, injecting heroin up to four times a day.

During his last months, Ben kept a video diary of his drug use and desperate attempts to come off heroin. Ravaged by the drug, Ben's body began to break down: he developed DVT and his veins were rendered so useless he had to inject into his groin. Despite his family's best efforts, Ben couldn't stop. He was haunted by, and hooked on, heroin.
Ben: Diary of A Heroin Addict charts his lies and manipulation as he mixes his next hit whilst telling his mother Anne he is clean and making a new start. It reveals Anne’s anger and tears as Ben loses his fight against the drugs and shows how father Mike’s unconditional love continues undiminished as they are forced to deal with their son’s addiction.

Director Olly Lambert comments: “It’s incredibly rare to come across such raw and unflinching footage of a man so close to an abyss. I was speechless when I first watched it.  I hope the film finishes what Ben had begun: to give people a visceral understanding of the nature of addiction.  It has been a privilege to try and unpick who Ben really was using the intimate legacy he’s left behind.”

“I hope to god you look at these videos and see what a mess I got myself into”. Ben Rogers.

Sky3. 2nd September 2010. 60 minutes

Enemies of Reason

Professor Richard Dawkins tackles irrational belief systems from astrology to New Age mysticism, clairvoyance to alternative health cures and looks at how health has become a battleground between reason and superstition.

More4. 1st September 2010. 120 minutes

I Am Slave

From the director of Death of a President and the writer of The Last King of Scotland, and inspired by real-life events, I Am Slave is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for freedom from modern-day slavery.
I Am Slave, starring incredible international talent Wunmi Mosaku, is a powerful story of imprisonment, cruelty and despair, but also one of hope and humanity.
The story begins when 12-year-old Malia, from the Nuba Mountains, is snatched from the arms of her father during a Muharaleen raid on their village. Sold into slavery, she spends the next six years of her life working for a Sudanese family. Then, aged 18 years old, she is sent to London where the brutality and inhumanity that she experiences continues, only under a different roof.
Hidden in plain sight, Malia's desperate situation goes unnoticed or uncared for by everyone she comes into contact with. Stripped of her passport and living in terror of what might happen to her family in the Sudan should she speak out, Malia is trapped in a ruthless, alien environment.
Despairing of the life to which she has been condemned, Malia calls on all her strength to make a dramatic escape back to Sudan to the father who never gave up hope that she was alive and who never stopped searching for her.

Channel Four. 30th August 2010. 90 minutes

Dispatches: Britain's Secret Slaves

Over 15,000 domestic workers leave their families to come to Britain every year. Charities claim that many are not only badly treated but that they are living as slaves.
This report investigates the plight of overseas domestic workers brought to the UK, and enslaved behind closed doors by rich and powerful employers in the upper levels of British society.
Dispatches goes undercover as some of the employers accused of modern-day slavery are confronted on camera about how they have treated their workers.
Many workers make the sacrifice to leave their country for the UK in order to better provide for their families back home. But lobby groups and charities communicate that a worrying proportion of domestic workers have their passports taken away from them, are kept locked up and subjected to sexual, physical and psychological abuse.
Many are paid less than £50 a week for 20 hour days and some wages are withheld completely.
Even children face similar horrendous conditions; the filmmakers meet young people who were trafficked over to the UK as children and endured years of violence and forced labour.
The programme also investigates claims that foreign diplomats are among the worst offenders in this flourishing form of modern slavery.

Channel Four. 30th August 2010. 50 minutes

Grayson Perry on Creativity and Imagination

Grayson Perry is an epitome of creativity: a Turner Prize winning ceramicist who's as famous for his alter-ego Claire as for his pottery.

But what does being creative really mean? He's on a mission to find out.

Talent shows dominate TV schedules and we are taught that everyone can take part, but genuine talent, originality and the idea of learning a traditional arts skill is persistently overlooked he argues.

With the help of some of the most talented people in the business, Grayson Perry will be exploring how the imagination works. Creativity has become the modern buzzword of bureaucrats trying to ensure wider access to the arts. And it has been subject to a lot of mythmaking. Grayson wants to nail down these myths and show how creativity isn't a mystery, but at the same time it isn't necessarily easily accessible.

Writers Terry Pratchett and Rose Tremain, fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and Ray Tallis, poet and neuroscientist all join Grayson on his quest.

BBC Radio Four. 18th July 2010. 30 minutes. Available on CD.

Our Drugs War

Documentary series examining the global story of drugs, from Afghanistan's poppy fields to the streets of New York and the estates of Edinburgh
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One in six British citizens have used class-A drugs. Focusing on Scotland - named by the UN as Europe's drug capital - the first episode shows the stark contrast between Edinburgh's rich city centre and its underprivileged estates, where up to 60-70% of the residents can be drug users.

Film-maker Angus Macqueen visits one such estate with two volunteers for drugs charity Crew. They show him how the drug trade operates on a day-to-day basis in front of - and often with the participation of - children, some as young as eight. While all social classes use drugs equally, 70% of addicts have left school by the age of 16 and 85% are unemployed.

The police fail to control supply - in Scotland seizing just one per cent of the heroin consumed - criminals make money, and demand only increases. With the advent of synthetic drugs like GBL, which itself was until recently quite legal and easily available online, banning and policing are becoming ever more random and ineffectual.

Angus meets parents whose children have died as a result of drug abuse. Suzanne Dyer's son Chris died from an addiction to GBL, a compound found in some industrial cleaners and widely used by clubbers. GBL became a popular 'dance' drug when GHB, another similar, and less potent, substance was banned.

John Arthur from Crew, which supported Suzanne Dyer and her son, sees the obsession with the banning and classification of drugs as increasingly irrelevant to what is happening on the streets. John's not alone. Angus speaks to former government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt, who was famously sacked when he began to say in public that present policy is not based on scientific evidence.
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The Queensbridge Estate in New York lies within sight of the Manhattan skyscrapers, but is seemingly a world away. The largest housing complex in Queens, it is regularly raided by police to break up massive drug operations.

Here, award-winning filmmaker Angus Macqueen looks at the social cost of America's war on drugs through the life of 28-year-old Thomas Winston: a small-time drug dealer struggling to stay out of prison and away from the lure of easy money that illegal drugs offer. As his probation officer says, here is a man who can earn $15,000 a week in the drugs world or $200 before taxes working in McDonald's.

Thomas is first seen campaigning against the 'Rockefeller' drugs laws in New York State, where sale or possession of small amounts of drugs are given a mandatory sentence equivalent to second degree murder, and have long been seen to be both discriminatory and draconian.

Human Rights Watch have published a series of reports making clear that Whites, Black and Hispanics sell and consume narcotics in equal numbers, yet over 80% of the prisoners in New York State are Black or Latino. Inside a prison, barely a white face can be seen.

The film tracks Thomas's moving story over a number of months, as he interacts with the legal system and as his probation officer and lawyer attempt to help him; but gradually he is drawn back to his old life. By the end of the film, Thomas has been stabbed to death.

Thomas's story illustrates the failure of America's zero tolerance drug laws, which don't stop supply or address addiction, but rather consign whole groups of society to a tragic cycle, undermining the very fabric of whole communities: be it here in Britain or in the US.
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The third and final part of Angus Macqueen's exploration of the failure of present drugs polices takes the viewer to the frontline. Birth of a Narco-State shows how the war on drugs is actually fuelling the long-term civil war in Afghanistan, possibly creating what he calls a 'Narco-Theocracy': a toxic mixture of drugs money and religious extremism.

Meanwhile, western demand for heroin generates huge profits that finances both sides in the civil war, corrupting the very government that British soldiers are fighting to protect.

This film gets under the skin of the drug trade in Afghanistan, from the deserts of the Afghanistan-Iran border to the smuggling centre of Herat and the courts in Kabul, engaging with those working to establish some sort of order in the face of overwhelming odds; all the time questioning whether it is our drug laws or our drug demand that is causing the problems in the first place.

Macqueen meets General Aminullah - former head of security at Kabul International Airport - who was sacked after exposing widespread corruption and then placed under investigation himself. We see shocking footage he took of a young, female Afghan burqa-clad drug smuggler demonstrating brazen disregard for the law, who then got off scot-free. Rarely has such an open example of what 'corruption' means been caught on camera.

Filming in the newly-opened - US and UK-financed - drugs courts, it becomes clear that many of the traffickers who are arrested are still 'small fish'. The big players always seem to get off; even the judges admit that they are too well-connected, often high up in the government, to the very people the British troops are fighting for and dying to protect. Afghanistan's president himself, Hamid Karzai, pardoned five convicted drug traffickers connected to his election campaign.

Allied policy to the drugs issue has been in confusion since the invasion of 2001: our troops have been told in some years to eradicate all poppies, and in others to leave them so as to win hearts and minds of the peasants. Sometimes different policies are carried out in different areas.

And all the time around 60 to 70% of the Taliban's funding comes from the heroin trade. The profits are staggering, with 10 kilos of opium - valued at around £400 in Afghanistan - making one kilo of heroin worth £40,000 by the time it reaches Europe.

Channel 4. 2-16 August 2010. 3 x 60 minutes

The Normans

In this major series, Professor Robert Bartlett examines the extraordinary expansion and unchecked ambition of the Normans, and shows how they transformed the history of Europe.
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In the first episode of an exciting three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores how the Normans developed from a band of marauding Vikings into the formidable warriors who conquered England in 1066. He tells how the Normans established their new province of Normandy -'land of the northmen' - in northern France. They went on to build some of the finest churches in Europe and turned into an unstoppable force of Christian knights and warriors, whose legacy is all around us to this day. Under the leadership of Duke William, the Normans expanded into the neighbouring provinces of northern France. But William's greatest achievement was the conquest of England in 1066. The Battle of Hastings marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and monarchy. The culture and politics of England would now be transformed by the Normans.
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In the second of this three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Norman conquest of Britain and Ireland. Bartlett shows how William the Conqueror imposed a new aristocracy, savagely cut down opposition and built scores of castles and cathedrals to intimidate and control. He also commissioned the Domesday Book, the greatest national survey of England that had ever been attempted.

England adapted to its new masters and both the language and culture were transformed as the Normans and the English intermarried. Bartlett shows how the political and cultural landscape of Scotland, Wales and Ireland were also forged by the Normans and argues that the Normans created the blueprint for colonialism in the modern world.
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Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Normans on southern Europe and the Middle East. The Normans spread south in the 11th century, winning control of southern Italy and the island of Sicily. There they created their most prosperous kingdom, where Christianity and Islam co-existed in relative harmony and mutual tolerance. It became a great centre of medieval culture and learning.

But events in the Middle East provoked the more aggressive side of the Norman character. In 1095, the Normans enthusiastically answered the Pope's call for holy war against Islam and joined the first crusade. They lay siege to Jerusalem and eventually helped win back the holy city from the muslims. This bloody conquest left a deep rift between Christianity and Islam which is still being felt to this day.

BBC2. 4-18 August 2010. 3 x 60 minutes

Inside Incredible Athletes

Broadcasting two years to the day before the Paralympic 2012 Games begin, Inside Incredible Athletes profiles some of the elite British athletes who excel in their field, from both a personal and a scientific perspective.

Examining their demanding training regimes and the particular skills required for high performance at each sport, this 90-minute programme features stunning sporting performance sequences, filmed against a backdrop of iconic locations around London and directed by Mike Christie (Jump London).

The in-depth profiles of the individual athletes literally get under their skin using scientific tests and state-of-the-art scanning technology to create 'biomechanical portraits'. The technique allows viewers to see inside these world-class athletes, revealing for the first time the inside story of these incredible humans and how they have achieved sporting excellence.

The athletes featured include blind football player David Clarke. He has over 100 caps for England/GB and has scored over 100 goals. Scientists at Cambridge University discover how he can 'see' with his ears.

Wheelchair rugby players Mandip Sehmi and Steve Brown have reached staggering levels of fitness despite being paralysed from the chest down. How have they trained their bodies to overcome such limitations and surpass scientific expectations?

Equestrian dressage rider Lee Pearson is chasing his twelfth gold meal at the 2012 Games. Born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, Lee has reduced joint mobility and despite 15 operations he still cannot move his ankles or knees, forcing him to control his horse from his hips.

Sprinter and long-jumper Stefanie Reid reveals how she can run the 100m in 14.34 seconds with her lower-leg prosthetic, while swimmer Liz Johnson, who has cerebral palsy affecting the whole of her right side, demonstrates how since the age of four she's been moving through water better than on land.

Channel 4. 29th August 2010. 90 minutes

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Series in which acclaimed filmmaker Richard Macer visits three different museums struggling to connect with a modern audience.

At the British Commercial Vehicle Museum in Lancashire, a mutiny is brewing over the appointment of a new leader. The museum is the last link to Leyland Trucks, one of the nation's great manufacturing giants, but just as Leyland fell victim to industrial action in the 70s and 80s now history is in danger of repeating itself at the Commercial Vehicle Museum too.

The first thing new leader Stephen Bullock wants to do is bring back the Leyland festival. For many years this was the town's way of celebrating its industrial might with a procession of lorries and buses, but after the factory closed the carnival was cancelled.

However, not everyone approves of these new changes at the museum. Some of the many longstanding volunteers are vehicle enthusiasts who think the museum should stay just the way it is. But will it survive if it doesn't change?

Macer spent six months filming amidst the gleaming lorries and double decker buses and observed as a bitter row erupted between the new leader and the head of the volunteers.

The Freud Museum in Hampstead, London is where the father of psychoanalysis lived his final year after escaping the Nazis in Austria. Sigmund Freud managed to smuggle out all his possessions, including the famous couch where his patients lay. This iconic piece of furniture is now a shrine to therapists and Freud fans from all over the world.

But despite its gravitas this small museum is struggling to stay relevant. In recent years Freud's thinking has fallen out of fashion and theories like Penis Envy and the Oedipus Complex have been discredited by many in the psychology world. Now the museum is appointing a new director with the mission to make Freud less elitist and more appealing to ordinary people.

One of the first things the museum does is to hold a dating evening. A number of games are created for the night, based on Freuds obsession with human sexuality. Another activity seizes on Freud's groundbreaking theory of dream interpretation, with scholar Ivan Ward getting partygoers together to discuss their dreams with one another.

But the process of making change is slow because no one can agree. Everyone has an opinion on how best to serve Freud, including the caretaker Alex who has lived at the museum since its beginning.

The National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port marks the birthplace of the industrial revolution when canals were built to transport goods to emerging cities like Liverpool and Manchester. A financial crisis has left the museum with a reputation for sunken boats, and unless the situation improves dramatically some of the country's oldest barges and narrowboats might have to be sold off or even destroyed.

The museum's many volunteers are angry and believe its dire predicament is the result of mismanagement, so a new director is being brought on board with the task of saving it. In just a short while Stuart Gillis makes a big impression and the staff and volunteers begin to see him as a saviour. But will Stuart be able to live up to such high expectations?

BBC4 1-15 August 2010 3x60 minutes (on one disk)

The God Delusion

Professor Richard Dawkins thinks it is time for science to stop sitting on the fence.

He meets leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions to find out how their beliefs fit with modern science's extraordinary knowledge of our world and the wider universe.

Dawkins accuses the religious establishment of preying on people's desire to believe in a greater being; abusing reason and humanity in the process.

Ultimately he asks how they can defend what religion has done, and is doing to us?

More4. Wednesday 25th August 2010. 120 minutes