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Unforgotten: The Bradford City Fire (2025) #1595
DOCUMENTARY
Main
90 mins. BBC. When Bradford City FC met Lincoln City on 11 May 1985 for the final game of the season, what everyone hoped to remember was the carnival atmosphere in the stadium. But what happened at the end of a goalless first half was instead the stuff of nightmares. A fire, believed to have been started by a discarded cigarette or match, engulfed one of the old wooden stands. 56 lives were lost, and the event made headlines around the world as the city and the nation struggled to confront the enormity of the loss to Bradford. The prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to the scene of the disaster as the media looked to someone to blame, and a senior judge was appointed to launch an inquiry. The findings would have a long-lasting impact on safety at football matches in Britain and around the world. With access to survivors, family members of those lost and emergency service first responders, this film aims to relive a largely forgotten tragedy. |
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The Bradford Aunties (2024) #1538
DOCUMENTARY
Main
50 mins. BBC One. Tahera, Rubina and Ghazala are charming, opinionated and determined ladies from Yorkshire, with one major thing in common – they‘re all Asian aunties, women who use their lifetimes of experience to impart wisdom, pass judgement and glue their communities together. This engaging and insightful documentary follows this trio of Bradford women as they embark on their latest mission – to ensure their language, food, music and values are handed to the next generation. Aunties Tahera, Rubina and Ghazala believe passionately in the preservation of their culture for their communities' young people. However, in the wake of today’s digital world, they fear this is in danger of being eroded as the next generation of Asian youth adopt more western ways. Rolling up their sleeves, the aunties embark on the biggest challenge of their lives – a unique and bespoke community project looking to bring the young and old of Bradford together. And to cap it all, they’re planning to take everyone on a big coach trip to Blackpool at the end of the project. The aunties’ master plan is to run a series of workshops to teach young people a host of skills and provide a chance for the generations to get to know each other better. From music to poetry, cooking and the importance of family, the aunties look to connect the youth with the old ways and ideals. But along the way, will they discover they have just as much to learn from the young cohort? This isn’t a boot camp for the faint-hearted. And helping them at every step will be their army of trusted, elderly aunties. With their reputation preceding them, our aunties hit the streets of Bradford to recruit young people to their cause – but will they be able to engage a tough crowd? Or is the gap between the generations just too wide to be filled? As the countdown to the coach trip to Blackpool gets under way, the aunties have a lot to organise, with their reputations and culture on the line. Can they connect with today’s youth, or will it be a bumpy ride, with the old ways driving a wedge between them? Exploring community, tradition, love and friendship, this warm, compelling and ultimately moving documentary – with unprecedented access to the UK’s south Asian community – follows aunties Rubina, Ghazala and Tahera attempting to pull out all the stops as they head towards an all-singing, all-dancing coach trip. All in the name of preserving their Asian culture for the next generation. |
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Keeler, Profumo, Ward and Me (2020) #1238
DOCUMENTARY
Special
1 hour. BBC. In 1962, Tom Mangold was newly arrived at the Daily Express – and his first big assignment was the John Profumo/Christine Keeler scandal. It would culminate in the evening of 30 July 1963, when Tom visited Stephen Ward, the man at the centre of the affair. The next day, Ward was scheduled to hear whether he was guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies. Ward handed Mangold a suicide letter, which Tom has retained for more than 55 years. He will reveal its full contents for the first time on television. Tom Mangold is one of the only surviving reporters who covered the Profumo story at such close quarters. He had under exclusive contract not only Stephen Ward but also a prostitute known as 'Miss Whiplash', who was a key witness in the trial. Ronna Ricardo confided to Tom that because she had been threatened by the police, she had lied in court to help convict Ward. She followed Tom’s advice and retook the stand to withdraw her evidence. This film reveals the inside story of the Profumo-Keeler-Ward story by the legendary BBC Panorama reporter who was there and had unique access to key players. The story has continued to fascinate Tom Mangold. He met and interviewed Mandy Rice-Davies shortly before she died in 2013, he has obtained exclusive diaries and manuscripts, and has now received more than 20 hours of audiotape recordings of research interviews with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, which have never been broadcast. Christine talks about the famous Cliveden weekend, her affair with Profumo, her brief relationship with Soviet naval attaché Eugene Ivanov, and how police pressured her into manufacturing a case against Stephen Ward. Through Tom's experience of working with Stephen Ward throughout the hectic summer of 1963, he believes that Ward was no saint, but no criminal either. He was not living off Keeler or Rice-Davies, as charged and found guilty. On the contrary, Ward subsidised both women. The programme also features an exclusive audiotape interview with Stephen Ward, recorded two weeks before his suicide, and an extract from what would have been his autobiography - all revealed for the first time. Finally, Tom casts his critical eye over the inquiry ordered by the prime minister, Harold MacMillan. Carried out by the master of the rolls, Lord Denning, Tom has obtained the diaries of the most senior civil servant on the inquiry, which point to another political sex scandal of the time that was hushed up. |
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall with John Simpson (2019) #1268
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. It’s said that journalists write the first draft of history. To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor and longest-serving correspondent, goes back to his reports on what he believes is the most important story he ever covered – the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Back in 1989, John thought this event would change the world for the better, forever. But history has not turned out quite the way he expected. Russia is yet again an enemy of the West, and the Cold War battle that built the Berlin Wall has been replaced with other destabilising global power struggles - even more dangerous and much harder to understand. Three decades on, John wonders if he was wrong to have been so optimistic. Using the anniversary as an opportunity to re-examine how he told the story, John watches the BBC’s extensive archive and talks with historians and other experts to try and understand just how accurate his reporting was. At the heart of the documentary is an intense and personal interview with John. He begins by describing how he grew up in the shadow of the Cold War battle between the capitalist West and the communist East, and how he - like everyone else - believed that this global stand-off would continue for many more decades, ending sooner or later in nuclear war. On 9 November 1989, John, like the rest of the world, in shock at reports that the Berlin Wall’s checkpoints had been opened up, rushed to Berlin to cover the incredible story. With great emotion, John recalls his happiness as he reported from in front of the Wall as Berlin’s people tore it down, until his broadcast was cut off midway by technical failure – giving him by far the most humiliating moment of his long career. After the technical meltdown, John describes how he walked into the crowd feeling utterly depressed. But, surrounded by the thousands of people who had streamed through the checkpoints from East Berlin, untouched by the once trigger-happy border guards and greeted with delight by West Berliners, he could barely believe his own eyes and found himself overwhelmed with joy. So, why has the legacy of the Wall not turned out the way John hoped and expected? He examines why he did not predict that the pace of change across Europe would lead to the terrible war in Yugoslavia, nor that Russia, with Vladimir Putin – a former KGB agent – as its president, would find a new guise in which to become a bitter enemy of the West. John also reflects on the terrifying uncertainty of global politics today, which has left him with a certain nostalgia for the decades of the Cold War – a period that was certainly frightening, but arguably less so than the uncertainty and complexity of global politics that we live with today. |
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Bodyguard (2018) #1135
TV DRAMA
Special
5x1hour + 1x75mins. BBC. Series 1 A contemporary thriller featuring the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service. 1 Drama about a bodyguard who's had a history in Afghanistan who, after rescuing a train from a suicide terrorist bomber, is assigned to protect the home secretary. 2 With the UK terror threat level raised to severe, Home Secretary Montague holds secret meetings with the Director General of the Security Service, side-stepping her own Minister for Counter Terrorism and the Police. Specialist Protection Officer Budd is on high alert as Secretary Montague's hard-line stance on national security propels her further into the public eye. With his home life becoming more difficult, it appears as if Budd's natural animosity towards the Home Secretary is beginning to fade. 3 As the capital shudders in the wake of the recent attacks, Specialist Protection Officer PS David Budd is under more pressure than ever to keep the Home Secretary Julia Montague safe. 4 The events of the night before play out for the Home Secretary Julia Montague and her Specialist Protection Officer David Budd. 5 David's theories about a conspiracy at the heart of government look increasingly plausible. But concerns about David's psychological health are raised, and allegations about his and Julia's professional conduct come to light. 6 Principal Protection Officer David Budd (Richard Madden) has made a major breakthrough in the investigation into the attack on the Home Secretary, but his enquiries have put him in mortal danger. With the clock ticking and no-one left who believes him, David attempts to prove his innocence. But the evidence against him begins to stack up. |
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The Replacement (2017) #991
TV DRAMA
Special
3x1 hour. BBC. Three-part psychological thriller about a woman who goes on maternity leave only to become increasingly paranoid about the motives of the person covering for her. 1/3 Ellen hires Paula as her maternity cover and soon fears she has made a terrible mistake. 2/3 Ellen goes back to work in order to prove Paula has committed a crime. 3/3 Ellen believes she finally has proof that Paula is disturbed. |
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State of Mind (2017) #1352
FILM
Main
Directed by Jon Avnet. With Richard Gere, Peter Dinklage, Bradley Whitford, Walton Goggins. Three Christs follows Dr. Alan Stone who is treating three paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believed they were Jesus Christ. What transpires is both comic and deeply moving. |
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The Joy of Data (2016) #1181
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. A witty and mind-expanding exploration of data, with mathematician Dr Hannah Fry. This high-tech romp reveals what data is and how it is captured, stored, shared and made sense of. Fry tells the story of the engineers of the data age, people most of us have never heard of despite the fact they brought about a technological and philosophical revolution. For Hannah, the joy of data is all about spotting patterns. Hannah sees data as the essential bridge between two universes - the tangible, messy world that we see and the clean, ordered world of maths, where everything can be captured beautifully with equations. The film reveals the connection between Scrabble scores and online movie streaming, explains why a herd of dairy cows are wearing pedometers, and uncovers the network map of Wikipedia. What's the mystery link between marmalade and One Direction? The film hails the contribution of Claude Shannon, the mathematician and electrical engineer who, in an attempt to solve the problem of noisy telephone lines, devised a way to digitise all information. Shannon singlehandedly launched the 'information age'. Meanwhile, Britain's National Physical Laboratory hosts a race between its young apprentices in order to demonstrate how and why data moves quickly around modern data networks. It's all thanks to the brilliant technique first invented there in the 1960s by Welshman Donald Davies - packet switching. But what of the future? Should we be worried by the pace of change and what our own data could be used for? Ultimately, Fry concludes, data has empowered all of us. We must have machines at our side if we're to find patterns in the modern-day data deluge. But, Fry believes, regardless of AI and machine learning, it will always take us to find the meaning in them. |
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Woman in Gold (2015) #472
FILM
Main
Directed by Simon Curtis. With Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes. Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family. |
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Joan of Arc: God's Warrior (2015) #919
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Writer and historian Dr Helen Castor explores the life - and death - of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure - a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn't fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith, and today more than ever we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone - the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where in all of this is the real Joan - the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan's own words at her trial, and as Helen unpicks Joan's story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges. |
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Horizon: Inside the Dark Web (2014) #849
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. . Twenty-five years after the world wide web was created, it is now caught in the greatest controversy of its existence - surveillance. With many concerned that governments and corporations can monitor our every move, Horizon meets the hackers and scientists whose technology is fighting back. It is a controversial technology, and some law enforcement officers believe it is leading to risk-free crime on the dark web - a place where almost anything can be bought, from guns and drugs to credit card details. Featuring interviews with the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and the co-founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Horizon delves inside the dark web. |
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Believe (2013) #261
FILM
Main
Directed by David Scheinmann. With Jack Smith, Brian Cox, Natascha McElhone, Anne Reid. A young, gifted football player who gets into trouble for a petty crime is brought to the attention of former Manchester United coach Matt Busby, who comes out of retirement to help the boy and his teammates. |
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Dancing on the Edge (2013) #1357
TV DRAMA
Special
6 episodes. BBC. Set in the 1930s, a black Jazz band rises in fame and popularity while becoming entangled in an intricate web of intrigue, mystery & suspense with the elite of London society. E1 90 mins. Music journalist Stanley Mitchell befriends The Louis Lester Band and helps its rise to fame from playing in a basement jazz club to the illustrious Imperial Hotel. At first, the band is treated with hostility by the hotel's elderly audience, most of whom have never heard jazz music nor seen black musicians before. However, one table of young aristocrats love their new music and invite them to play at a garden party. E2 60 mins. The Louis Lester Band has yet to reach the fame it so desires, and is stuck playing children's birthday parties at the Imperial Ballroom. Louis is frustrated. However, the band is introduced to wealthy recluse Lady Cremone and she may be able to change its fortunes. E3 60 mins. The band and their friends are devastated by Jessie's (Angel Coulby) hospitalisation, and take turns to visit her. Louis is interviewed by police about events on the night of Jessie's attack, and he tells them that he saw Julian when he should have been on a train to Paris. The band have to be persuaded to play without Jessie for the Imperial Hotel's Christmas lunch and they are unsettled when a table of racist Germans walks out during the performance. But the mood is lifted when news arrives that Jessie has woken from her coma. For New Year's Eve, Lady Cremone holds a party on her estate. Everybody is surprised when Julian turns up, announcing he has been in France exploring a new business idea. The group goes into the village to hear the New Year announced on a loudspeaker, and there is a joyous and romantic mood. In the middle of the party, Louis confides to Sarah that he saw Julian at the hotel the night of Jessie's attack. Stanley exacts revenge on the racists by smuggling in Louis to play at a German Embassy party. The prank goes brilliantly, but the friends' joy soon turns to tears when tragedy strikes. E4 60mins. The Band plays for the Freemasons dinner and Louis notices the close ties between Julian, who he believes is the killer, and a powerful elite. Everyone is shocked by events in the United States where an attempt has been made on the President's life. Masterson reveals his plan to build a news empire around the New Music Express Magazine. Stanley warns Louis that the police believe him to be the killer; he tries to see a lawyer, but others seem to be conspiring to hand him over to the police. E5 75 mins. Louis can no longer hide out at the Music Express Office so Stanley takes him to a suburban flat to escape the manhunt. He is to wait until nightfall, whilst Stanley goes to find his passport as they plan his escape out of the country. Stanley returns to the Imperial Hotel, to find that its reputation has been badly affected by the murder there. Masterson takes over the new Music Express magazine, and surprises Stanley by announcing he has offered a large reward for the capture of Louis Lester. E6 60 mins. Presented as a series of interviews undertaken by Stanley for his Music Express magazine and taking place at the peak of fame for the Louis Lester band, Louis, Jessie and Carla give an insight into their thoughts about fame as well as their personal stories. Louis and Stanley remember the First World War, in which Louis's father fought. Louis talks about what it is like to be a black musician in London, and they discuss the band's exotic attraction to the aristocracy. Stanley talks to Carla and Jessie, who open up about their upbringings and their feelings on becoming famous. And Louis describes a chilling story about a female fan, when what started as a prank phone call became something much more sinister. |
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The Lucky One (2012) #414
FILM
Main
Directed by Scott Hicks. With Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner, Riley Thomas Stewart. A Marine travels to North Carolina after serving three tours in Iraq and searches for the unknown woman he believes was his good luck charm during the war. |
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) #104
FILM
Main
Directed by John Madden. With Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson. British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than advertised, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways. |
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Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter (2011) #643
DOCUMENTARY
Main
Directed by Tony Palmer. With Tony Palmer, Gustav Holst, Imogen Holst, Michael Tippett. 2 hours 20mins. BBC. The first ever full-length film about Gustav Holst, composer and revolutionary - a man who taught himself Sanskrit; lived in a street of brothels in Algiers; cycled into the Sahara Desert; allied himself during the First World War with a 'red priest' who pinned on the door of his church 'prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial Aggression'; hated the words used to his most famous tune, I Vow to Thee My Country, because it was the opposite of what he believed; and distributed a newspaper called the Socialist Worker. Holst's music - especially the Planets - owed little or nothing to anyone, least of all the English folk song tradition, but he was a great composer who died of cancer, broken and disillusioned, before he was 60. |
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Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? (2011) #806
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. What makes us good or evil? It's a simple but deeply unsettling question. One that scientists are now starting to answer. Horizon meets the researchers who have studied some of the most terrifying people behind bars - psychopathic killers. But there was a shock in store for one of these scientists, Professor Jim Fallon, when he discovered that he had the profile of a psychopath. And the reason he didn't turn out to be a killer holds important lessons for all of us. We meet the scientist who believes he has found the moral molecule and the man who is using this new understanding to rewrite our ideas of crime and punishment. |
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Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang? (2010) #688
DOCUMENTARY
Main
They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer - a big bang some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation. Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang. |
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Fake or Fortune?: Monet (2010) #818
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Series 1 Episode 1. Journalist Fiona Bruce teams up with art expert Philip Mould to investigate mysteries behind paintings. It is a world of subterfuge and intrigue as they grapple with complex battles often unseen beneath the apparently genteel art establishment. Their sleuthing takes them from New York to Cairo and Cape Town as they unpick clues behind stolen and contested works of art, and unmask the work of a master forger along the way. In the opening episode, Fiona and Philip discover what they believe is an unrecognised and valuable painting by Monet. But can they convince the powers that be? |
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My Bloody Valentine (2009) #208
FILM
Main
Directed by Patrick Lussier. With Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Betsy Rue. Tom returns to his hometown on the tenth anniversary of the Valentine's night massacre that claimed the lives of 22 people. Instead of a homecoming, Tom finds himself suspected of committing the murders, and it seems like his old flame is the only one that believes he's innocent. |