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Brexit Behind Closed Doors (2019) #1195
DOCUMENTARY
Main
2x1 hour. BBC. The gripping untold story of the Brexit negotiations... from the other side. For two years, Belgian film-maker, Lode Desmet, has had exclusive access to the Brexit co ordinator of the European parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, and his close knit team. This revelatory fly-on-the-wall film captures the off-the-record conversations and arguments of the European negotiators as they devise their strategy for dealing with the British. Episode one watches as the Europeans’ respect for a formidable negotiating opponent turns into frustration and incredulity as the British fail to present a united front. At moments funny and tragic, it ends with the debacle in December 2017 when Theresa May flies in to Brussels to finalise details of a deal and is publically humiliated by her coalition partner, Arlene Foster of the DUP, who refuses to support the deal. Episode two follows the rollercoaster events from December 2017 to the present day. Europe watches on incredulously as divisions in the British parliament and cabinet become more bitter and leave the talks paralysed. Eighteen months after the referendum, Britain still does not know what it wants and spends more time discussing internally than negotiating with Europe. Respect for Britain turns to irritation and finally ridicule. |
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The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files (2019) #1200
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making. The film features Sarah O’Connor, Anthony Bryan and Judy Griffith. Settled here legally since childhood, they were re-classified as illegal immigrants by new ‘hostile environment’ regulations. Unable to show proof of their nationality status, they lost jobs, savings and their health, facing deportation back to countries they could barely remember. David reveals how today’s scandal is rooted in the secrets of the past. The first Windrush generation were Commonwealth citizens - many of them ex-servicemen - coming to rebuild war-torn Britain. Yet even before arriving, they were seen by the Government with hostility. Civil servants and MPs warned of dire consequences if what they called a ‘coloured element’ was introduced into the UK. PM Clement Attlee even suggested diverting the Windrush passengers to east Africa - to pick peanuts. The same government was actively recruiting tens of thousands of white volunteer workers from Europe - some of them former members of Waffen-SS regiments which stood accused of war crimes on the Eastern Front - for ‘permanent settlement here with a view to their inter-marrying and complete absorption into our own working population’. The files expose how successive British governments spent the next decade trying to devise a way to prevent further Caribbean arrivals without appearing to discriminate against them. PM Winston Churchill, dissatisfied with ministers’ response to what he saw as a serious problem, kept the issue on the cabinet agenda and a special Working Party was set up to gather information to make the political case for immigration controls. Two weeks after the Queen’s coronation as head of the UK and Commonwealth, a secret race survey was undertaken and completed, looking for proof that Commonwealth immigrants were a burden on the Welfare State. Chief constables in major cities were asked if ‘the coloured community as a whole, or particular sections of it, are generally idle or poor workmen’, and if they were ‘addicted to drug-trafficking or other types of crime’. The Working Party found no evidence for the view that the ‘coloured community’ was less law-abiding or hard working than other Brits. When Harold Macmillan’s government introduced the 1962 Immigration Act, its control mechanism was the employment prospects of would-be immigrants. The files show how home secretary ‘Rab’ Butler, described the ‘great merit’ of the scheme was that it ‘can be presented as making no distinction on grounds of race or colour’, but would, in practice, ‘operate on coloured people almost exclusively’. By that time, Caribbean immigration had shrunk to a fraction of earlier levels. But, fearing further restrictions, the Windrush generation now arranged for their children to come. The ‘children of the Windrush' had full legal rights to join their parents in the UK, and many arrived with little paperwork or official record keeping. Successive governments passed new immigration and nationality legislation, often in response to perceived ‘problems’ or ‘crises’. Harold Wilson rushed through the 1968 Immigration Act, in just three days to stop arrivals of thousands of passport-holding British-Indians living in Kenya, whose businesses and livelihoods were threatened by its government. Edward Heath’s 1971 Act tried to restrict the legal definition of ‘Britishness’. It also placed the burden of proof on the claimant should their Britishness be challenged—a fateful clause for the ‘children of the Windrush’. Throughout the multiple changes to immigration and nationality law enacted up to 2014, the nationality status of the ‘children of Windrush’ remained unchanged and unchallenged. As British citizens with full legal rights to live here, they put down roots, pursued careers, raised children and grandchildren and contributed in ways great and small to the creation of modern Britain. But with the introduction of the so-called ‘hostile environment’ legislation of 2014 and 2016, their situation changed. Though they were never the intended targets of the new laws, the hostile environment machine that evolved over the decade wasn’t designed to make allowances. Suddenly required to prove their status (due to the 1971 Act), Sarah, Anthony and Judy found themselves unable to show the levels of proof demanded by the new ‘hostile environment’ regulations. All three lost their jobs for up to two years and ran up debt trying to make ends meet. Anthony was arrested twice by Immigration Officers and held for weeks in detention centres. Then a ticket was bought to deport him to Jamaica, a country hadn’t seen since he left, aged eight, in 1965. ‘They broke me in there’, Anthony says. ‘It was hard’. Judy Griffith, still struggling to repay her debts, says: ‘It makes you question the whole, what is British? What is Britishness?’ |
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Ad - Hovis (2019) #1201
COMEDY
Main
The famous Hovis ad returns - C4 June 2019 |
84 |
Years and Years (2019) #1202
TV DRAMA
Special
6x1 hour episodes. BBC. One night in 2019, politician Vivienne Rook causes a scandal on live TV. At the same time, the Lyons family comes together as Rosie gives birth to a son. Brothers Stephen and Daniel gather at her bedside with grandmother Muriel, all wondering what life will be like for little Lincoln. Five years in the future, in the London of 2024, Stephen and Celeste worry about their daughter, Bethany, who declares herself a transhuman. Back in Manchester, Daniel is now married to Ralph but is falling for a Ukrainian refugee, Viktor. When the Lyons gather for Muriel’s birthday, they’re interrupted by a call from their missing sister, Edith. She brings extraordinary news, and life for the Lyons is about to change forever. |
85 |
Charles I: Downfall of a King (2019) #1204
DOCUMENTARY
Special
3x1 hour episodes. BBC. Historian Lisa Hilton discovers how, in just fifty tempestuous days, Charles I’s rule collapsed, laying the foundations for civil war, the loss of royal power and, ultimately, the king’s head. 1/3 Two Worlds Collide. While Charles I is in Edinburgh, Parliament passes a vote of no confidence in his rule. 2/3 A Nation Divided. Rumours of the Queen's involvement in the Irish rebellion worsen Charles's position. 3/3 The Final Showdown. The stakes are raised as Charles marches on Westminster. |
86 |
Chasing the Moon (2019) #1205
DOCUMENTARY
Special
6x50 min. BBC. The story of the race to the Moon, from the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 to Apollo 11, and the first man to set foot on the Moon, in 1969. 1/6 A Place Beyond the Sky (Part One). America's race to the moon begins with Soviet Russia's launch of Sputnik 1. 2/6 A Place Beyond the Sky (Part Two). How America's space exploration technology caught up with the Soviet Union's. 3/6 Earthrise (Part One). A training exercise ends in tragedy risking the future of America's entire space programme. 4/6 Earthrise (Part Two). Within two years of the Apollo 1 tragedy, America sent a manned light to the moon. 5/6 Magnificent Desolation (Part One). The space race takes a new twist as US astronauts compete to be the first man on the moon. 6/6 Magnificent Desolation (Part Two). The world gathers around its television sets to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. |
87 |
Catch-22 (2019) #1206
TV DRAMA
Special
Limited series adaptation of the classic Joseph Heller novel. Follows Captain John Yossarian and airmen in World War II. 6x50min episodes. C4. 1/6 Young American flyers arrive in war and discover that the bureaucracy is more deadly than the enemy. 2/6 Yossarian pursues desperate measures to get home; Milo sees war as a growth industry. 3/6 Yossarian needlessly expends energy to avoid a feared mission, but disaster catches up with him, when he least expects it. 4/6 On a surreal trip, Yossarian begins to realize the magnitude and influence of Milo's business empire. 5/6 Reeling from one violent tragedy, Yossarian encounters incomprehensible darkness in Rome, and is faced with an impossible choice. 6/6 Alive and intact, Yossarian is thwarted by an old adversary and when confronted by a devastating loss, he undergoes a transformation. |
88 |
Rise of the Nazis (2019) #1210
DOCUMENTARY
Main
3 part documentary series. Parts 1 and 2 1/3 Politics. A political mastermind uses the sudden popularity of the Nazis for his own ends. 2/3 The First Six Months in Power. At the start of 1933, Hitler sets his sights on dismantling the German state. See #1211 3/3 Night of the Long Knives. Hitler and Himmler conspire to depose Röhm and make the SS the main Nazi paramilitary. |
89 |
1944: Should we Bomb Auschwitz? (2019) #1211
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. Rise of the Nazis - Episode 3. 1 hour. BBC. In April 1944, two Jewish prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. When they recounted what they had left behind, their harrowing testimony revealed the true horror of the Holocaust to the outside world for the first time. They described in forensic detail the gas chambers and the full extent of the extermination programme. The news they brought presented the Allies with one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century: Should we bomb Auschwitz? While the Allies deliberated in London and Washington, the killing machine ground on in southern Poland. One month after the men’s escape, almost 800,000 Hungarian Jews had been rounded up awaiting transport to Auschwitz. By early July 1944, the majority had been transported. Most of them were murdered on arrival. As the killing at Auschwitz reached its frenzied climax, the outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance. Millions of troops were fighting on both fronts and battling for supremacy in the air. Should the Allies use their resources to push on and win the war or to stop the industrial slaughter at Auschwitz? The request to bomb the camp, with 30,000 captive prisoners, was remarkable and came from a place of utter desperation. But it was a direct response to the destruction of an entire people. There were operational challenges - was it possible to reach the camp to bomb it? How many heavy bombers would it take? What would the Nazi propaganda machine say about such an attack? - as well as complex moral ones. How many prisoners would likely die in such a raid? Can you kill friendly civilians in order to save the lives of those being transported towards the death camp? These were the hard questions faced by Churchill, Allied Air Command and the Jewish Agency. For the first time on television, we tell the whole of this incredible story. |
90 |
Monty Python at 50 (2019) #1216
DOCUMENTARY-COMEDY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Documentary marking 50 years (at 5/10/2019) since the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus was broadcast. |
91 |
Ian Hislop's Fake News: A True History (2019) #1218
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Fake news is never out of today's headlines. But in his latest documentary taking the long view of a hot-button issue, Ian Hislop discovers fake news raking in cash or wreaking havoc long before our own confused, uncertain times. Ian mines history to identify what motivates fake news - from profit, power and politics to prejudice, paranoia and propaganda – as well as to try to figure out what to do about it. In America and back home, Ian meets, amongst others, someone whose fake news stories have reached millions and a victim of fakery alleged to be a mastermind of the spurious paedophile ring ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy. Viewers also get to see Ian doing something that has never been captured on film before – as he gets a taste of what it is like to be 'deepfaked'. In 1835, New Yorkers were fooled by one of the most entertaining and successful fake news scoops of all time - a tale of flying man-bats spied on the moon through the world’s most powerful telescope. The moon hoax story ran in a cheap, new tabloid - The Sun. Within decades, a circulation war waged between two pioneering press barons - Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst - was seen by many as causing a real war, between America and Spain. Meanwhile, another American conflict, the Civil War of the 1860s, had proved that photography, which initially promised new standards of accuracy, also brought new ways of lying. Ian looks at the battlefield images of pioneering photojournalist Alexander Gardner, who achieved ends by means that would be judged unethical today. He also encounters the spooky 'spirit photography' of William Mumler. Ian digs into one of the most pernicious conspiracy theories of all time - the protocols of the Elders of Zion. He is disturbed to find this virulently anti-Semitic tract available with one click and rave reviews on Amazon, despite comprehensive factual debunking a century ago. Ian also ponders the consequences of official British fake news-mongering. During WWI, lurid stories were spread about German factories manufacturing soap from corpses. But a consequence of such black propaganda was to undermine the currency of trust in government - rather like, Ian notes, the absence of WMDs in Iraq has more recently. To understand more about the current crisis, Ian meets James Alefantis, owner of the Washington DC pizzeria who fell victim to the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy. He also quizzes ex-construction worker Christopher Blair, a controversial figure sometimes dubbed 'the godfather of fake news'. He discusses how frightened we should be about fake news, and what can be done about it, with Damian Collins MP who chaired the parliamentary inquiry into fake news. Collins argues that today's tech giants – Facebook in particular - should be taking even more active steps to take down disinformation. But that path also has its perils, as Ian finds out when he resurrects the extraordinary story of Victoria Woodhull, a woman who sued the British Museum for libel in the 1890s. This pioneering American feminist - the first woman who ran to be president - was an early victim of what today would be termed 'slut-shaming'. But does combatting lies give anyone the right to censor the historical record and limit free speech? |
92 |
Life after WWI in Colour (2019) #1220
DOCUMENTARY
Main
2x50mins. More 4. Historical documentary featuring colourised archive footage charting the First World War's aftermath in Europe and beyond once celebrations marking the end of hostilities had ceased. Ch1. Vengeance Traumatised by combat, demobilised soldiers return home to the four corners of a war-shattered world. At the Palace of Versailles, the victors draw the borders of new nations, created through strife. Ch2. Return to Hell Nations try to rebuild, but the USA withdraws into isolation, the threat of communism frightens European democracies and populist movements spring up, determined to impose their totalitarian ideology. |
93 |
World on Fire (2019) #1223
TV DRAMA
Special
With Jonah Hauer-King, Julia Brown, Helen Hunt, Sean Bean. WWII drama centered on the lives of ordinary people affected by the war. BBC. Series 1. 7x1 hour episodes. 1 When war breaks, translator Harry Chase vows to help his Polish lover Kasia flee Warsaw, but how will he explain this to his sweetheart Lois, waiting for him at home in Manchester is the story. 2 A month after the outbreak of war, Warsaw is unrecognizable, while Manchester, on the surface, appears very much the same. Will there be a warm welcome home for Harry? 3 Harry crosses paths with Lois again when she arrives to perform at the BEF base camp in France, while Tom finds himself in the middle of a naval battle in the South Atlantic. 4 Harry and his unit fight for their lives in the city of Leuven in Belgium, where the Allied forces are outnumbered by the Germans. 5 Harry and what's left of his unit try to get to Dunkirk. Where things are getting desperate. 6 Webster begins a campaign of resistance at the American hospital after Paris falls to the Nazis. Mr and Mrs Rossler are arrested in Berlin, and Lois grows closer to Vernon. 7 On a Polish mission as part of the SOE, Harry grasps a second chance at saving Kasia from the horrors of Warsaw, while Lois looks set for happiness with new love, Vernon. |
94 |
Greg Davies: Looking for Kes (2019) #1224
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Comedian, actor and ex-English teacher Greg Davies is a lifelong fan of Barry Hines's classic novel A Kestrel for a Knave, the story of Billy Casper training a kestrel as an escape from his troubled home and school life. In this documentary, Greg goes in search of the book's enduring appeal, travelling to Barnsley, where the book was set and where Ken Loach's famous adaptation, Kes, was filmed. See the film: #1400 In a series of encounters with Barry Hines's friends and family, collaborators and admirers, Greg offers a warm, funny and poignant tribute to a book that gave a unique voice to the working-class experience and, in Billy Casper, created a young rebel whose story continues to connect with readers more than 50 years after it was first published in 1968. In the fish and chip shop young Billy visits in Kes, now renamed Caspers, Greg meets Dai Bradley who played Billy Casper. Together they wonder what might have become of him. 'I think he would have kept that fighting spirit,' says Dai. 'There’s a lot of kids like him out there and the message of the book is that we need to find ways to harness that energy.' Greg also meets members of the local community in the working men's club, where Barry was a regular, and discovers how many characters in the book were inspired by the people he met there, including the notorious PE teacher. Ken Loach explains why the book provided such perfect source material for the film. 'The truth of the book shone through: the comedy, the use of language and dialect and, of course, the central image of a boy who is trapped, training a bird that flies free.' Greg visits the site where Barry Hines's brother, Richard, found his own kestrel, the encounter that inspired the character of Billy and the location used in the film. For the first time in 50 years, Richard flies a kestrel again. In the Sheffield University archives, Greg is thrilled to discover the original handwritten manuscript of A Kestrel for a Knave. There he meets Jarvis Cocker, another fan of the book, who discusses why the book meant so much to him 'That symbolism of escape was powerful for me growing up,' says Jarvis. 'The desire for escape has been a massive engine for creativity for people from working-class backgrounds. You want to make, write or sing something to help you escape.' |
95 |
Yorkshire Walks (2019) #1226
DOCUMENTARY
Main
4x30mins. BBC. Shanaz Gulzar seeks inspiration whilst walking through Yorkshire. 1/4 Leyburn to Bolton Castle. Shanaz Gulzar takes time out to indulge in Wensleydale and its wonderful vistas. 2/4 Heptonstall to Stoodley Pike. Shanaz Gulzar steps back in time walking through the historic village of Heptonstall. 3/4 Runswick Bay to Whitby. This historic coastal walk takes Shanaz along a stretch of the 109-mile Cleveland Way. 4/4 Bolton Abbey to Simon's Seat. The Bolton Abbey Estate provides the picturesque location for this Yorkshire Walk. |
96 |
The Trial of Christine Keeler (2019) #1238
TV DRAMA
Special
With Sophie Cookson, James Norton, Ellie Bamber, Emilia Fox. Story of Christine Keeler, who found herself at the heart of a political sex scandal that rocked British government in the 1960s. 6x1 hour episodes. BBC. 1/6 In 1960s London, model Christine Keeler deals with an explosive love triangle. 2/6 Christine Keeler tells her story to the press, and a chill wind blows for John Profumo. 3/6 Christine flees to Spain as Profumo publicly denies their affair. 4/6 Christine’s star rises, Profumo faces the music, and Stephen Ward is in the firing line. 5/6 Stephen Ward's trial begins at the Old Bailey. Has Christine forsaken him? 6/6 Stephen's life hangs in the balance as his sentence is decided. |
97 |
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. |
98 |
Tolkien (2019) #1276
FILM
Main
Directed by Dome Karukoski. With Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi. The formative years of the orphaned author J.R.R. Tolkien as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school. |
99 |
This Week (18/7/2019) (2019) #1295
DOCUMENTARY
Main
65mins. BBC. The final episode. In February 2019, following Neil's decision to step down as host, the BBC announced that This Week would end in July 2019. The final episode aired on 18 July 2019, a live broadcast from Westminster Central Hall with an invited audience of political dignitaries and celebrities. For the final time after 16 years, Andrew Neil reviews the political week with Michael Portillo, Alan Johnson, Miranda Green and Piers Morgan. Some of the team will also appear in a series of Grease-inspired films, alongside Liam Halligan, Liz Kendall and Kevin Maguire. There will be guest appearances from Jan Ravens and Diane Abbott in the extended programme. |
100 |
Einstein's Quantum Riddle (2019) #1321
DOCUMENTARY
Special
1 hour. BBC. Einstein’s Quantum Riddle tells the remarkable story of perhaps the strangest phenomenon in science – quantum entanglement. It’s a story of mind-bending concepts and brilliant experiments, which lead us to a profound new understanding of reality. At the start of the 20th century Albert Einstein helped usher in quantum mechanics - a revolutionary description of the behaviour of tiny particles. But he soon became uncomfortable with the counterintuitive ideas at the heart of the theory. He hunted for flaws in the equations and eventually discovered that they predicted a seemingly impossible situation. Quantum theory suggested you could have two particles, which had interacted in the past, and even if you separated them by millions of miles they would somehow act in unison. If you measured one, forcing it to take on one of many properties, the other would instantly take on a corresponding property. Like rolling two dice, millions of miles apart, and as you look at one to see what number it landed on, the other instantly shows the same number. This bizarre prediction of magically connected particles became known as quantum entanglement. Einstein felt it couldn’t possibly be real – it seemed to break the rules of space and time. In 1935, with two of his colleagues, he published a paper that argued that this bizarre phenomenon implied the equations of quantum theory must be incomplete. No-one could think of a way to test whether Einstein was right, until in 1964, John Bell, a physicist form Northern Ireland, published an astonishing paper. He’d found a key difference between Einstein’s ideas and those of quantum theory. It all boiled down to entanglement. As Professor David Kaiser puts it: ‘We now know this was one of the most significant articles in the history of physics. Not just the history of 20th-century physics; in the history of the field as a whole.’ In 1972 John Clauser and Stuart Freedman built an experiment based on John Bell’s work and found the first experimental evidence to suggest that quantum entanglement really is a part of the natural world. Today, a technological revolution is under way, with labs around the world harnessing entanglement to create powerful new technologies such as quantum computers. At Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, researcher Marissa Giustina describes their latest quantum-processing chip. And in Shanghai, at the University of Science and Technology, Professor Jian-Wei Pan explains that his team is working to send entangled particles from a satellite to a ground station to create totally secure communication links – a major step towards the creation of an unhackable ‘quantum internet’ of the future based on quantum entanglement. Yet despite this progress, questions still remain about our experimental proof of entanglement. There are possible loopholes that could mean that entanglement may be an illusion and that Einstein was right all along. At the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands, Professor Anton Zeilinger’s team is attempting a remarkable experiment to rule out the most challenging loophole. Their experiment uses two of Europe’s largest telescopes to collect light from two quasars, billions of light years away, to control intricate measurements of tiny quantum particles and put quantum entanglement to the ultimate test. |