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21 Oslo (2021) #1436 FILM Main
Recounts the true-life, previously secret, back-channel negotiations in the development of the pivotal 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
22 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.
23 The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words (2020) #1240 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. The story of the pioneering project to rehabilitate child survivors of the Holocaust on the shores of Lake Windermere. In the year that marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, this powerful documentary, which accompanies the BBC Two drama, The Windermere Children, reveals a little-known story of 300 young orphaned Jewish refugees, who began new lives in England’s Lake District in the summer of 1945.

With compelling testimony from some of the last living Holocaust survivors, the film explores an extraordinary success story that emerged from the darkest of times, all beginning with the arrival of ten Stirling bombers carrying the 300 children from Prague to Carlisle on 14 August 1945. The survivor interviews include extraordinary first-hand accounts of both their wartime experiences, separation from their families and the horrors they experienced, but also their wonder at arriving in Britain and their lives thereafter.

The children hailed from very different backgrounds, including rural Poland, metropolitan Warsaw Czechoslovakia and Berlin. Some had grown up in poverty, others in middle-class comfort. Their rehabilitation in England was organised by one charity, the Central British Fund (CBF). Leonard Montefiore, a prominent Jewish philanthropist, used his pre-war experience of the Kindertransport and successfully lobbied the British government to agree to allow up to 1,000 young Jewish concentration camp survivors into Britain. It was decided that the first 300 children would be brought from the liberated camp of Theresienstadt to Britain. And serendipitously, empty accommodation was found on the shores of Lake Windermere in a defunct factory. During the war, it had built seaplanes, but after D-Day the factory was closed, and the workers’ accommodation stood empty. With space to house them and in a truly beautiful setting, it was to prove the perfect location for these traumatised children.

The CBF, however, was in uncharted territory. A project to mass-rehabilitate a group of traumatised children had never been attempted before. But in the idyllic setting of Windermere and with just the right team assembled, the children were given the chance to unlearn the survival techniques they’d picked up in the camps. With the freedom to ride bikes, play football, learn English, socialise with local teenagers and swim in the lake, they began to come to terms with the horrors they had experienced and the fact that their mothers, fathers and siblings had perished.

Despite the fact that the UK government initially only offered two-year temporary visas, with strict immigration policies enforced in other countries and without families to return to, it soon became clear that there was nowhere else for most of the children to go. Many of the 300 stayed in the UK for their entire lives, becoming British citizens and raising children of their own.

Now, 75 years later, the close friendships that were forged in Windermere remain and many consider each other as family. Reflecting on the survivors’ lives after Windermere, the film includes touching home movie footage and remarkable success stories, like Sir Ben Helfgott’s incredible weightlifting career, representing Britain at the 1956 Olympics, only eleven years after arriving in the UK. The documentary also tells the story of the charity they formed, the 45Aid society. With footage of their annual reunions, the documentary gives a sense of the generations of families who all trace their British beginnings to Windermere.
24 Being Beethoven (2020) #1296 DOCUMENTARY Special
3x1 hour. BBC. Documentary series that tells the life story of Beethoven in the context of the composer's own time and place, revealing a life following a very different trajectory to his art.
25 The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama (2020) #1319 DOCUMENTARY Special
3x1 hour. BBC. From popular revolt to the obsession with the self, even to modern nationalism, Simon Schama explores the enduring and powerful legacy the romantics have left on our modern world.

1/3 Passions of the People. Simon Schama explores the artists who created the secular icons of our democratic world.
2/3 The Chambers of the Mind. Simon Schama explores how the romantics became the first explorers of the unconscious.
3/3 Tribes. Simon Schama explores how the romantics created our idea of national belonging.
26 The Secret History of Writing (2020) #1321 DOCUMENTARY Special
3x1 hour. BBC. How the invention of writing gave humanity a history. From hieroglyphs to emojis, an exploration of the way in which the technology of writing has shaped the world we live in.

1/3 From Pictures to Words. Revealing the link between ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the letters we use every day.
2/3 Words on a Page. How the changing technology of writing has shaped the course of world history.
3/3 Changing the Script. As technology and politics force changes to the way we write, what happens to who we are?
27 An Evening with Peter Alliss (2020) #1360 FILM Main
1 hour. BBC. A celebration of the inimitable 'voice of golf' Peter Alliss, revealing the man behind the microphone. Renowned for his charismatic and unique style of commentary, Peter was also one of the top golfers of his era and has quietly raised millions for his wheelchair charity. There are anecdotes from the world of golf, celebrities and family members which give an insight into this charming, witty man. Contributors include Peter's wife Jackie, Tom Watson, Gary Lineker, Sir Terry Wogan, Chris Evans, Sir Bruce Forsyth, Darren Clarke, Jimmy Tarbuck, Gary Player, Hazel Irvine and Steve Rider. The programme is narrated by Sue Johnston.

There is also a chance to relive top moments from Peter's popular programmes such as Pro-Celebrity Golf, A Round with Alliss and A Golfer's Travels.

Alliss was a familiar figure on the BBC before setting the tone for golf commentary worldwide. His voice was iconic in the world of sports commentary, but then so was this golfer, broadcaster and gentleman.
28 American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley (2019) #1170 DOCUMENTARY Main
3x1 hour. BBC. Series 1.

Lucy Worsley reveals the myths and manipulations behind American history.
29 Expenses: The Scandal That Changed Britain (2019) #1179 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Ten years on from the Parliamentary expenses scandal which rocked Westminster to the core, Newsnight's Emily Maitlis explores the profound impact it had on public trust in the political class. Taking us through every twist and turn in that dramatic period, with new revelations from the key players, this documentary also explores how the public anger surfaced by the expenses scandal anticipated the Brexit referendum and beyond.
30 The Brexit Storm: Laura Kuenssberg’s Inside Story (2019) #1180 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Over nine tumultuous months, the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg takes us inside every twist and turn of the most extraordinary political story of our time – Brexit.

Cameras go behind the scenes to follow the political players and Laura as she reports on exceptional events. The film covers Theresa May's efforts to secure backing for her Chequers plan, cabinet resignations and backbench plots. We also see leadership challenges and historic parliamentary defeats, as well as a national campaign for a second referendum which causes splits within parties.

With Westminster in crisis and Theresa May grappling to get her deal through, this film reveals the country's most influential parliamentarians as they battle to secure the future they want for Britain – in or out of the EU.

This one-hour special takes the viewer into the centre of the Brexit storm in a highly charged and emotional battle for political victory.
31 Janet Baker - In Her Own Words (2019) #1187 DOCUMENTARY-MUSIC Main
90 mins. BBC. In her first documentary for more than 35 years, the great British classical singer Dame Janet Baker talks more openly and emotionally than ever before about her career and her life today. With excerpts of her greatest stage roles (as Dido, Mary Stuart, Julius Caesar and Orpheus), as well as of her appearances in the concert hall and recording studio (works by Handel, Berlioz, Schubert, Elgar, Britten and Mahler), she looks back at the excitements and pitfalls of public performance.

She tells the film-maker John Bridcut about the traumatic loss of her elder brother when she was only ten years old, and how that experience coloured her voice and her artistry. She explains why she felt the need to retire early some thirty years ago and discusses the challenges she and her husband have to face in old age. She also gives tantalizing clues to the question her many fans often ask: does she still sing today at the age of 85?

Among the other contributors to the film are conductors Raymond Leppard, Jane Glover and André Previn (in one of his last interviews before his death in March), the singers Joyce DiDonato and Dame Felicity Lott, the opera producer John Copley, the pianist Imogen Cooper, and the actress Dame Patricia Routledge. This feature-length film is a Crux production for the BBC, following the award-winning ‘Colin Davis - in His Own Words’ in 2013. John Bridcut has also made film profiles of Herbert von Karajan, Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Nureyev and Jonas Kaufmann, as well as ‘Prince, Son and Heir: Charles at 70’ for BBC One in November 2018.
32 Climate Change - The Facts (2019) #1188 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Thursday 18th April 2019.

After one of the hottest years on record, Sir David Attenborough looks at the science of climate change and potential solutions to this global threat. Interviews with some of the world’s leading climate scientists explore recent extreme weather conditions such as unprecedented storms and catastrophic wildfires. They also reveal what dangerous levels of climate change could mean for both human populations and the natural world in the future.
33 Earth from Space (2019) #1194 DOCUMENTARY Special
4x1hour. BBC. Cameras in space tell stories of life on our planet from a brand new perspective, revealing new discoveries, incredible colours and patterns, and just how fast it is changing.

1/4 Cameras in space tell stories of life on our planet from a brand new perspective.
2/4 Cameras in space reveal the stories behind Earth’s most remarkable patterns and shapes.
3/4 Cameras in space reveal remarkable stories behind Earth’s most intriguing colours.
4/4 Cameras in space show Earth changing rapidly. These images can inspire us to help.
34 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.
35 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?’
36 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.
37 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.
38 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?
39 Eugenics: Science's Greatest Scandal (2019) #1222 DOCUMENTARY Main
2x1hour. BBC. Science journalist Angela Saini and disability rights activist Adam Pearson, reveal that eugenics - the controversial idea that was a driving force behind the Nazi death camps - originated in the upper echelons of the British scientific community.

The presenters uncover how shocking eugenic beliefs permeated the British establishment and intelligentsia; supporters included figures such as Winston Churchill and Marie Stopes. They see how eugenics influenced the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913, which resulted in thousands of disabled people being locked up for decades. Eugenics shaped immigration law, education policy and even town planning. The documentary uncovers disturbing links between British universities and German race scientists in the first half of the 20th century, and investigates how eugenics fed into the racist ideologies of Nazi Germany.
40 Toy Story 4 (2019) #1251 ANIMATION Main
Directed by Josh Cooley. With Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, Tony Hale. When a new toy called "Forky" joins Woody and the gang, a road trip alongside old and new friends reveals how big the world can be for a toy.

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