SEARCH THE DATABASE

Restrict search to: Film TV Drama Documentary Music Animation Comedy Sport

 902 results:

161	King Charles III (2017) #998 TV DRAMA Main 90mins. BBC. King Charles III, adapted by Mike Bartlett from his Tony-nominated stage play, is part political thriller, part family drama, and a timely examination of contemporary Britain. Prince Charles has waited his entire life to ascend to the British throne. But after the Queen's death, he immediately finds himself wrestling his conscience over a bill to sign into law. His hesitation detonates a constitutional and political crisis, and his family start to worry, with William and Kate becoming aware his actions may threaten their future. Meanwhile, an unhappy and frustrated Prince Harry starts a relationship with a 'commoner', just at the moment that the press is looking for a way to attack. With the future of the monarchy under threat, protests on the streets and his family in disarray, Charles must grapple with his own identity and purpose to decide whether, in the 21st century, the British crown still has any real power. This adaptation retains the daring verse of the original text while fully realising on screen the ambitious scale and spectacle suggested by the play - from Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace to the restless streets of London. Tim Pigott-Smith (Downton Abbey, The Hour) reprises the role of Charles from the acclaimed West End and Broadway production, while Charlotte Riley (Close to the Enemy, Peaky Blinders) stars as Kate Middleton. Olivier award-winner Rupert Goold (The Hollow Crown, True Story) directs. It is produced by Drama Republic, the company behind Golden Globe, Bafta and RTS Award-winning dramas The Honourable Woman, Doctor Foster and An Inspector Calls.
162	Buddy Holly: Rave On (2017) #999 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. He was lanky, he wore glasses and he sang as if permanently battling hiccups. Aesthetically, Buddy Holly might have been the most unlikely looking rock 'n' roll star of the 1950s. But he was, after Elvis Presley, unquestionably the most influential. It was an all-too-brief career that lasted barely 18 months from That'll Be The Day topping the Billboard charts to the plane crash in February 1959 in Iowa that took Holly's life. That day was immortalised in Don McLean's 1971 song American Pie, and has become known as 'the day the music died'. This film tells the story of Buddy Holly's tragically short life and career through interviews with those who knew him and worked with him. This combined with contributions from music fans paints a picture of an artist who changed music. Rock 'n' roll started with Elvis, but pop music started with Buddy Holly and The Crickets. In an age of solo stars, Holly also led the first recognisable 'pop' group, The Crickets, who in name alone inspired The Beatles. As a songwriter, he revolutionised rock 'n' roll by introducing dynamic new rhythms and unpredictable melodies beyond its traditional blues roots. In his songs, written and recorded in the late 50s, we can already hear the beat group sound of the 1960s and beyond. Buddy Holly's story remains one of the most dramatic tales in rock 'n' roll, one which nearly 60 years after his breakthrough hit That'll Be The Day, deserves to be told again for a new generation. His life was tragically short. His legacy is triumphantly infinite.
163	Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall (2017) #1004 DOCUMENTARY-MUSIC Main 1 hour. BBC. Fifty years ago this week, on 1 June, 1967, an album was released that changed music history - The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In this film, composer Howard Goodall explores just why this album is still seen as so innovative, so revolutionary and so influential. With the help of outtakes and studio conversations between the band, never heard before outside of Abbey Road, Howard gets under the bonnet of Sgt Pepper. He takes the music apart and reassembles it, to show us how it works - and makes surprising connections with the music of the last 1,000 years to do so. Sgt Pepper came about as a result of a watershed in The Beatles' career. In August 1966, sick of the screaming mayhem of live shows, they'd taken what was then seen as the career-ending decision to stop touring altogether. Instead, beginning that December, they immersed themselves in Abbey Road with their creative partner, producer George Martin, for an unprecedented five months. What they produced didn't need to be recreated live on stage. The Beatles took full advantage of this freedom, turning the studio from a place where a band went to capture its live sound, as quickly as possible, into an audio laboratory, a creative launch-pad. As Howard shows, they and George Martin and his team constructed the album sound by sound, layer by layer - a formula that became the norm for just about every rock act who followed. In June 1967, after what amounted to a press blackout about what they'd been up to, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. It was a sensation, immediately becoming the soundtrack to the Summer of Love - and one of the best-selling, most critically lauded albums of all time. It confirmed that a 'pop music' album could be an art form, not just a collection of three-minute singles. It's regularly been voted one of the most important and influential records ever released. In this film, Howard Goodall shows that it is the sheer ambition of Sgt Pepper - in its conception, composition, arrangements and innovative recording techniques - that sets it apart. Made with unprecedented access to The Beatles' pictorial archive, this is an in-depth exploration, in sound and vision, of one of the most important and far-reaching moments in recent music history.
164	ELECTION 2017 (b) (2017) #1008 DOCUMENTARY Main More from election night.
165	Broken (2017) #1012 TV DRAMA Special 6x1 hour episodes. BBC. Series 1 1/6 Father Michael helps a vulnerable parishioner while also caring for his dying mother. 2/6 A desperate parishioner and a mentally ill youth both present dilemmas for Father Michael. 3/6 Father Michael helps a police officer. 4/6 Father Michael risks breaking the seal of confession as he tries to help Roz Demichelis. 5/6 Father Michael mediates when Helen's homophobic brother clashes with her gay neighbour. 6/6 Father Michael makes a confession and Chloe wreaks a devastating revenge.
166	Horizon: Dippy and the Whale (2017) #1013 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. Over the last two years, the BBC's science strand Horizon has been behind the scenes at London's Natural History Museum, following the dramatic replacement of the iconic Dippy the Dinosaur skeleton cast with the real skeleton of a blue whale - the world's biggest animal. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, this special film follows the teams involved in what has to be one of the world's most unique engineering challenges. Replacing Dippy is brave and bold - it is the first thing visitors see when they enter the grand Hintze Hall, but the Natural History Museum is changing, and the installation of the colossal blue whale skeleton is the start of a new chapter. The largest animal ever to have lived, blue whales were driven to the brink of extinction by hunting and were the first species humans decided to save, telling an inspiring story of hope for the natural world.
167	Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America (2017) #1022 DOCUMENTARY Main Frank Lloyd Wright is America's greatest ever architect. But few people know about the Welsh roots that shaped his life and world-famous buildings. Now, leading Welsh architect Jonathan Adams sets off across America to explore Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces for himself. Along the way, he uncovers the tempestuous life story of the man behind them, and the secrets of his radical Welsh background. In a career spanning seven decades, Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings, and changed the face of modern architecture. Fallingwater, the house over the waterfall, has been called the greatest house of the 20th century. The spiralling Guggenheim Museum in New York reinvented the art museum. Wright's Welsh mother was born and raised near Llandysul in west Wales, and emigrated to America with her family in 1844. Her son Frank was raised in a Unitarian community in Wisconsin. The values he absorbed there were based on a love of nature, the importance of hard work, and the need to question convention and defy it where necessary. Wright's architecture was shaped by these beliefs. He built his lifelong home in the valley he was raised in, and he named it after an ancient Welsh bard - Taliesin. It was the scene of many adventures, and of a horrific crime. In 1914, a servant at Taliesin ran amok and killed seven people. They included Wright's partner, Mamah Cheney, and her two young children. 150 years after his birth, Adams argues that Frank Lloyd Wright is now a vitally important figure who can teach us how to build for a better world. Wright's belief in what he called organic architecture - buildings that grace the landscape and respond to people's individual needs - is more relevant than ever, in Wales and around the world.
168	Goodbye Cassini - Hello Saturn (2017) #1031 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. Horizon. A billion miles from home, running low on fuel, and almost out of time. After 13 years traversing the Saturn system, the spacecraft Cassini is plunging to a fiery death, becoming part of the very planet it has been exploring. As it embarks on its final assignment - a one-way trip into the heart of Saturn - Horizon celebrates the incredible achievements and discoveries of a mission that has changed the way we see the solar system. Strange new worlds with gigantic ice geysers, hidden underground oceans that could harbour life and a brand new moon coalescing in Saturn's magnificent rings. As the world says goodbye to the great explorer Cassini, Horizon will be there for with a ringside seat for its final moments.
169	Who Do You Think You Are? Ruby Wax (2017) #1036 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. Ruby Wax's Jewish parents fled Vienna and the Nazis for America in 1938. 'They took the war with them and brought it to our kitchen,' says the comedian and mental-health campaigner at the start of this remarkable episode. They raised their only daughter in a dramatically dysfunctional household - Ruby's father was volatile and her mother 'hysterical... screaming in the street.' Ruby wonders if her own mental illness had its origins in her upbringing and the trauma her parents went through, or whether it is in her family's genes. Ruby journeys to central Europe, where she learns about her parents' flight and the distressing fate of family who remained in Vienna during the war, and she makes a startling discovery about her great-aunt and great-grandmother, which is both harrowing and surprisingly affirming.
170	Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution (2017) #1039 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. The Russian Revolution of 1917 is one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. Three men - Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin - emerged from obscurity to forge an entirely new political system. In the space of six months, they turned the largest country on earth into the first Communist state. Was this a triumph of people power or a political coup d'etat that led to blood-soaked totalitarianism? A hundred years later, the Revolution still sparks ferocious debate. This film dramatizes the 245 days that brought these men to supreme power. As the history unfolds, a stellar cast of writers and historians, including Martin Amis, Orlando Figes, Helen Rappaport, Simon Sebag-Montefiore and China Mieville, battle over the meaning of the Russian Revolution and explore how it shaped the world we live in today.
171	Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (2017) #1040 DOCUMENTARY Main 3x1 hour. BBC. Suzy Klein explores music's crucial role in the most turbulent years of the 20th century. 1/3 Revolution. Suzy Klein explores the politics of music following the Russian Revolution and WW1. 2/3 Dictatorship. Suzy Klein investigates how Hitler and Stalin used and abused music for ideological ends. 3/3 World War. Suzy Klein explores the fascinating use, abuse and manipulation of music in World War II.
172	Lucy Worsley: Elizabeth I's Battle for God's Music (2017) #1041 DOCUMENTARY Main 1 hour. BBC. Lucy Worsley investigates the story of the most remarkable creation from the tumultuous and violent era known as the Reformation - choral evensong. Henry VIII loved religious music, but he loved power more - when he instigated his English Reformation he dramatically split from the ancient Catholic church that controlled much of his country. But in doing so set into motion changes that would fundamentally transform the religious music he loved. Following Elizabeth I's personal story, Lucy recounts how she and her two siblings were shaped by the changes their father instigated. Elizabeth witnessed both her radically puritan brother Edward bring church music to the very brink of destruction and the terrifying reversals made by her sister Mary - which saw her thrown in the Tower of London forced to beg for her life. When Elizabeth finally took power she was determined to find a religious compromise - she resurrected the Protestant religion of her brother, but kept the music of her beloved father - music that she too adored. And it was in the evocative service of choral evensong that her ideas about religious music found their ultimate expression.
173	The Vietnam War (2017) #1043 DOCUMENTARY Special BBC plus. 10x1 hour. 1/10 Deja Vu (1858-1961). Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end French colonial occupation. 2/10 Riding the Tiger (1961-1963). President Kennedy and his advisors wrestle with how far to get involved in South Vietnam. 3/10 Hell Come to Earth (January 1964-December 1965). With South Vietnam in chaos, Hanoi hardliners seize the initiative and send combat troops. 4/10 Doubt (January 1966-June 1967). Defying American airpower, North Vietnamese troops stream down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 5/10 This Is What We Do (July 1967-December 1967). American casualties and enemy body counts mount as marines face North Vietnamese ambushes. 6/10 Things Fall Apart (January 1968-June 1968). North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and bases. 7/10 Chasing Ghosts (June 1968-May 1969). Public support for the war declines. American men of draft age face difficult decisions. 8/10 A Sea of Fire (April 1969-May 1970). With morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. 9/10 Fratricide (May 1970-March 1973). South Vietnamese forces fighting on their own in Laos suffer a terrible defeat. 10/10 The Weight of Memory (March 1973-Onward). While Watergate forces Nixon to resign, the Vietnamese savage one another in a civil war.
174	W1A (2017) #1044 COMEDY Special 6x30min epsiodes. Series 3. 1/6 It is the year of charter renewal and a critical time for the BBC. 2/6 Cross-dressing ex-footballer Ryan Chelford's appearance on MOTD did not go well. 3/6 The Renewal Team propose that the cutting of the BBC Big Swing Band might be an option. 4/6 The damage limitation team under Ian Fletcher is under huge pressure to limit damage. 5/6 The renewal group has to respond to rumours that Claudia Winkleman is leaving the BBC. 6/6 The official launch of BBC Me is nearing the final furlong.
175	Revolution: New Art for a New World (2017) #1047 DOCUMENTARY Main 80mins. BBC. Directed by acclaimed film-maker Margy Kinmonth, this bold and exciting feature documentary encapsulates a momentous period in the history of Russia and the Russian avant-garde. Drawing on the collections of major Russian institutions, contributions from contemporary artists, curators and performers, and personal testimony from the descendants of those involved, the film brings the artists of the Russian avant-garde to life. It tells the stories of artists like Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich and others - pioneers who flourished in response to the utopian challenge of building a new art for a new world, only to be broken by implacable authority after 15 short years. Stalin's rise to power marked the close of this momentous period, consigning the avant-garde to obscurity. Yet the Russian avant-garde continues to exert a lasting influence over art movements up to the present day. The film confirms this, exploring the fascination that these colourful paintings, inventive sculptures and propaganda posters retain over the modern consciousness 100 years on. It was filmed entirely on location in Moscow, St Petersburg and London, with access to the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the State Hermitage Museum and in co-operation with the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The film features paintings previously banned and unseen for decades, and masterpieces which rarely leave Russia. Contributors include museum directors Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky and Zelfira Tregulova, and film director Andrei Konchalovsky. The film also features the voices of Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Hollander, James Fleet, Eleanor Tomlinson and Daisy Bevan.
176	Stunning Soloists at the BBC (2017) #1050 MUSIC Main 1 hour. BBC. Solo show-stoppers from the world's greatest musicians in a journey through fifty years of BBC Music. From guitarist John Williams and cellist Jacqueline du Pre to trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and violinist Nigel Kennedy, this is a treasure trove of musical treats and dazzling virtuosity. Whether it's James Galway's Flight of the Bumblebee performed at superhuman speed, Ravi Shankar's mesmerising Raag Bihag or Dudley Moore's brilliant Colonel Bogey March, every performance has its own star quality and unique appeal. Parkinson, Later with Jools Holland, The Les Dawson Show, Music at Night and Wogan are among the programmes featuring instruments ranging from marimba and kora to harp and flamenco guitar. Sit back and enjoy.
177	Van Morrison: Live at Eden (2017) #1052 MUSIC Main 1 hour. BBC. Van Morrison and his band at Cornwall's Eden Project July 2017, performing fourteen songs including well-known hits Here Comes the Night, Moondance and Brown Eyed Girl. The Belfast-born all-time music legend Sir Van Morrison played against the world-famous Eden biomes to a sold-out arena. Van's performance was a highlight of the sixteenth year of the Eden Sessions. Sir Van Morrison was knighted in 2016 for services to music and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has won six Grammys, a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution and the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement.
178	The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey (2017) #1056 DOCUMENTARY Main 90mins. BBC. Twelve billion miles away a tiny spaceship is leaving our solar system and entering the void of deep space. It is the first human-made object ever to do so. Slowly dying within its heart is a plutonium generator that will beat for perhaps another decade before the lights on Voyager finally go out. But this little craft will travel on for millions of years, carrying a Golden Record bearing recordings and images of life on Earth. The story of Voyager is an epic of human achievement, personal drama and almost miraculous success. Launched 16 days apart in 1977, the twin Voyager space probes have defied all the odds, survived countless near misses and almost 40 years later continue to beam revolutionary information across unimaginable distances. With less computing power than a modern hearing aid, they have unlocked the stunning secrets of our solar system. This film tells the story of these magnificent machines, the men and women who built them and the vision that propelled them farther than anyone could ever have hoped.
179	Blue Planet II (2017) #1058 DOCUMENTARY Special 7x1 hour. BBC. Wildlife documentary series, presented and narrated by David Attenborough, exploring the planet's oceans. 1/7 One Ocean: New worlds and animal behaviours are uncovered on a journey from the equator to the poles. 2/7 The Deep: A groundbreaking journey to the deepest parts of the oceans. 3/7 Coral Reefs: The ingenious ways life exists in the undersea cities of tropical reefs. 4/7 Big Blue: This vast ocean desert where sperm whales must dive 1,000 metres just to feed. 5/7 Green Seas: From enchanted forests to undersea prairies, the planet's green seas teem with life. 6/7 Coasts: Coasts are the most changeable of the ocean worlds, but they offer great riches. 7/7 David Attenborough explores the issues behind the series' most spectacular stories.
180	Attenborough And The Giant Elephant (2017) #1058 DOCUMENTARY Special Sir David Attenborough investigates the remarkable life and death of Jumbo the elephant - a celebrity animal superstar whose story is said to have inspired the movie Dumbo.

PAGE  6   7   8   9   10    46
 Recent...