SEARCH THE DATABASE

Restrict
search to:
Film
TV Drama
Documentary
Music
Animation
Comedy
Sport
 144 results:
61 All Aboard! The Canal Trip (2015) #911 DOCUMENTARY Main
2 hours. BBC. A two-hour, real-time canal boat journey down one of Britain's most historic waterways, the Kennet and Avon Canal, from Top Lock in Bath to the Dundas Aqueduct. Using an uninterrupted single shot, the film is a rich and absorbing antidote to the frenetic pace and white noise of modern life.

Taking in the images and sounds of the British countryside, underpinned by the natural soundscape of water lapping, surrounding birdsong and the noise of the chugging engine, this is a chance to spot wildlife and glimpse life on the towpath while being lulled by the comforting rhythm of a bygone era.

Along the journey, graphics and archive stills embedded into the passing landscape deliver salient facts about the canal and its social history.
62 Je t'aime: The Story of French Song with Petula Clark (2015) #921 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. "I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words." - Edith Piaf

This unique film explores the story of the lyric-driven French chanson and looks at some of the greatest artists and examples of the form. Award-winning singer and musician Petula Clark, who shot to stardom in France in the late 1950s for her nuanced singing and lyrical exploration, is our guide.

We meet singers and artists who propelled chanson into the limelight, including Charles Aznavour (a protégé of Edith Piaf), Juliette Greco (whom Jean-Paul Sartre described as having 'a million poems in her voice'), Anna Karina (muse of Jean-Luc Godard and darling of the French Cinema's New Wave), actress and singer Jane Birkin, who had a global hit (along with Serge Gainsbourg) with the controversial Je t'aime (Moi non plus), and Marc Almond, who has received great acclaim with his recordings of Jacques Brel songs.

In exploring the famous chanson tradition and the prodigious singers who made the songs their own, we continue the story into contemporary French composition, looking at new lyrical forms exemplified by current artists such as Stromae, Zaz, Têtes Raides and Etienne Daho, who also give exclusive interviews.

The film shines a spotlight onto a musical form about which the British are largely unfamiliar, illuminating a history that is tender, funny, revealing and absorbing.
63 Nina Conti Clowning Around (2015) #928 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Award-winning ventriloquist Nina Conti and her much-loved puppet Monkey are a huge hit in comedy clubs around the world and stars of Live at the Apollo. But now she wants to put her skills to a more meaningful end on a much more difficult stage - entertaining children in hospitals.

This film follows Nina as she trains as a giggle doctor with Theodora Children's Charity, beginning with her trying to find her clown persona, who might be Scottish... or might not. Devastated by the discovery that Monkey can only perform in hospitals if he can be boil-washed, Nina tries to go it alone with only a red nose, a few misshapen balloon animals and some slightly disappointing magic tricks. Not to mention her professional snobbery rearing up as she finds herself turning into a baby-voiced children's entertainer. Then there are the difficulties she encounters when faced with clown phobia.

Following her directorial debut with Her Master's Voice which won a Grierson Award and a BAFTA nomination, Nina Conti brings us another frank and intimate documentary about her eventful two-year stint as a hospital clown. Join her to discover whether Nina raised a laugh amongst sick children or whether she cried the tears of a clown.
64 Dancing Cheek to Cheek: An Intimate History of Dance (2015) #935 DOCUMENTARY Main
3x1 hour episodes. BBC. Len Goodman and Lucy Worsley uncover the British love affair with dancing, exploring the nation's favourite dances from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

1/3 The Devil's Work?. How dancing came to be celebrated as an essential social skill in the 18th century.
2/3 Revolution on the Dance Floor. How our dance floors were revolutionised in the 19th century by faster, freer dances.
3/3 The Shock of the New. How the early 20th century saw the most revolutionary change in British dance history.
65 Inside the Commons (2015) #941 DOCUMENTARY Main
4x1 hour episodes. BBC. Michael Cockerell presents a four-part series filmed over the course of a year with unparalleled access to the House of Commons.

1/4 Lifting the Lid. A look at the heart of British democracy in the run up to the 2015 general election.
2/4 Upstairs, Downstairs. Michael Cockerell examines what goes on backstage at the state opening of parliament.
3/4 Party Games. Is the traditional three-party system falling apart at the seams?
4/4 Reinventing the House. In the final episode, battles break out over the future of the House.
66 Is Britain Racist? (2015) #990 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Racism has never been more socially unacceptable in Britain - three quarters of Britons claim they have no racial prejudice whatsoever. Journalist Mona Chalabi investigates whether these statistics provide an accurate picture.

To find out what is happening on Britain's streets, three reporters are sent undercover to test the public's prejudice. The results are surprising.

The programme looks into people's subconscious behaviour, discovering what British people really think about their neighbours of different races and religions. And Mona puts her own beliefs under the microscope, discovering some uncomfortable truths. Finally, she asks a hugely significant question - can people be trained to lose their prejudice?
67 The BBC at War (2015) #997 DOCUMENTARY Main
2x1 hour episodes. BBC. An enthralling series exploring how the BBC fought not only Hitler but also the British government to become the institution it is today.
1/2 The War of Words. Jonathan Dimbleby reveals how the BBC prepared for the first broadcast war.
2/2 Into Battle. The story of how the BBC prepared to report from the front line during World War II.
68 Scotland's Einstein: James Clerk Maxwell - The Man Who Changed the World (2015) #1019 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Professor Iain Stewart reveals the story behind the Scottish physicist who was Einstein's hero - James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell's discoveries not only inspired Einstein, but they helped shape our modern world - allowing the development of radio, TV, mobile phones and much more.

Despite this, he is largely unknown in his native land of Scotland. Scientist Iain Stewart sets out to change that, and to celebrate the life, work and legacy of the man dubbed 'Scotland's forgotten Einstein'.
69 British Gardens in Time (2014) #595 DOCUMENTARY Special
4x1 hour. 4 disk set. Great Dixter, Stowe, Biddulph Grange, Nymans. BBC.

Series which explores four iconic British gardens, from Christopher Lloyd's Arts and Craft Great Dixter to Georgian Stowe and from Victorian Biddulph Grange to the quintessentially English Nyman's.
70 37 Days (2014) #835 TV DRAMA Main
3x1 hour. BBC. Revealing the complex behind-closed-doors story of the final weeks before the outbreak of World War I.

1/3 One Month in Summer. The British Foreign Office receives news of an assassination in the Balkans.
2/3 One Week in July. The German military command conspires to force the kaiser's hand.
3/3 One Long Weekend. Events in Britain reach a crescendo as Germany issues its ultimatum to Belgium.
71 Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau (2014) #837 DOCUMENTARY Main
3x1 hour. BBC, Series which looks at how the Art Nouveau movement flourished in the burgeoning cities of Europe at the end of the 19th century.

1/3 Paris. Cultural correspondent Stephen Smith explores the objects of Parisian Art Nouveau.
2/3 British Cities. Stephen Smith unearths the bright, controversial but brief career of Aubrey Beardsley.
3/3 Vienna. How Vienna's artists brought their own highly sexed version of art nouveau to the city.
72 Castles in the Sky (2014) #846 TV DRAMA Main
Directed by Gillies MacKinnon. With Eddie Izzard, Laura Fraser, Arran Tulloch, Lesley Harcourt. It is the mid-1930s and the storm clouds of WWII are forming in Germany. This film charts the work of Robert Watson Watt, the pioneer of Radar, and his hand-picked team of eccentric yet brilliant meteorologists as they struggle to turn the concept of Radar into a workable reality. Hamstrung by a tiny budget, seemingly insurmountable technical problems and even a spy in the camp.
90 mins. BBC. This is the remarkable human drama behind the invention that was to prove pivotal in the Battle of Britain. It is also the thrilling story of the tenacity and courage of a most unlikely group of British heroes.
73 I Never Tell Anybody Anything: The Life and Art of Edward Burra (2014) #851 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. Edward Burra (1905-76) was one of the most elusive British artists of the 20th century. Long underrated, his reputation has been suddenly rehabilitated, with the first major retrospective of his work for 25 years taking place in 2011 and record-breaking prices being paid for his work at auction.

In this film, the first serious documentary about Edward Burra made for television, leading art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the remarkable story of his life.

Crippled by a rare form of arthritis from an early age, Burra placed art at the centre of his life from his teenage years onwards. Although his illness meant that he would predominantly only be able to work in the physically undemanding medium of watercolour, he created unexpectedly monumental images peopled by the men and women who fascinated him.

The follows Burra from his native town of Rye to the jazz clubs of prohibition-era New York, to the war-torn landscapes of the Spanish Civil War and back to England during the Blitz. It shows how Burra's increasingly disturbing and surreal work deepened and matured as he experienced at first hand some of the most tragic events of the century. Through letters and interviews with those who knew him, it paints an entertaining portrait of a true English eccentric.
74 British Art at War: Paul Nash: The Ghosts of War (2014) #853 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. In the years preceding 1914, David Bomberg, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash set out to paint a new world, but, as the century unfolded, found themselves working in the rubble.

On 25th May 1917, war artist Paul Nash climbed out of his trench to sketch the battlefields of Flanders near Ypres. So focused was he on his work he tripped and fell back into the trench, breaking his ribs. Stretchered back to England, Nash missed his regiment going over the top at the Battle of Passchendaele. His regiment was wiped out.

Nash was scarred by the war and the ghosts of those experiences haunted his work throughout his life. A lover of nature, Nash became one of Britain's most original landscape artists, embracing modern Surrealism and ancient British history, though always tainted by his experiences during two world wars. A private yet charismatic man, he brought British landscape painting into the 20th century with his mixture of the personal and visionary, the beautiful and the shocking. An artist who saw the landscape as not just a world to paint, but a way into his heart and mind.
75 British Art at War: Walter Sickert and the Theatre of War (2014) #854 DOCUMENTARY Main
1 hour. BBC. In the years preceding 1914, David Bomberg, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash set out to paint a new world, but, as the century unfolded, found themselves working in the rubble.

Walter Sickert's early career as an actor is long forgotten and he's now remembered for his art. But he never left the stage behind. Always shape-shifting between roles, Sickert's appearance never stayed still. And his art, too, was in perpetual transformation. Dazzlingly original, deeply unsettling, poised on the brink of violence. For most, proof that Sickert is the godfather of modern British art, but for a few at the fringes, evidence he's Jack the Ripper.

But Sickert was no perpetrator, just an unflinching witness, notably, to the cataclysm of World War One. Too old to fight in Flanders, Sickert painted edgy, compelling, subtle pictures of those who'd been left behind. He painted people trying to get on with lives that were being shattered by the conflict. Almost alone of his generation, Sickert truly understood that the theatre of war was not confined to the trenches.
76 British Art at War: David Bomberg: Prophet in No Man's Land (2014) #855 DOCUMENTARY Main
In the years preceding 1914, David Bomberg, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash set out to paint a new world, but, as the century unfolded, found themselves working in the rubble.

David Bomberg is now recognised as the most startlingly original British painter of his generation, but died in obscurity more than half a century ago.

A Jewish immigrant from London's east end, his early modernist works pushed art to its limits. Fighting at the Somme, David Bomberg watched the world splinter and fall apart just like the works of art he had created. Bomberg spent the rest of his life searching for order in an increasingly disordered world, and his wanderings took him as far as Palestine, before he settled at the end of his life in Ronda, Spain.

When he died in 1957, embattled and in poverty, he seemed to be no more than a footnote in the history of British art. However, the works that survive David Bomberg tell their own story. Combative and iconoclastic, he remains the most elusively original British painter of the 20th century.
77 Rule Britannia! Music, Mischief and Morals in the 18th Century (2014) #868 DOCUMENTARY Main
3x1 hour episodes.

Series in which broadcaster and writer Suzy Klein tells the story of the composers and musicians that helped shape the musical map of Britain in the 18th century.

1/3 Suzy Klein studies music as a weapon in the fight for British identity.
2/3 As money poured in from Britain's trade empire, music became a tool for social mobility.
3/3 Music acquired a higher moral purpose. Romanticism blossomed in the search for the sublime.
78 The Brits who Built the Modern World (2014) #874 DOCUMENTARY Main
3x 1 hour episodes.

Series telling the story of how an exceptional generation of British architects, led by Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, conquered the globe with their high-tech vision.

1/3 The Freedom of the Future. The radical 1960s and 70s experiments of an exceptional generation of British architects.
2/3 The Power of the Past. In the 1980s, modern architecture was unpopular and under attack from Prince Charles.
3/3 The Politics of Power. From the late 90s onwards, iconic landmarks were created across Britain and the world.
79 Britain's Great War (2014) #875 DOCUMENTARY Main
2x1 hour episodes. BBC, In a landmark history series, Jeremy Paxman describes how the First World War transformed the lives of the British people, and helped shape modern Britain.

1/4 War Comes to Britain. Jeremy Paxman traces the story of the dramatic early stages of the war.
ritain and the world.
2/4 The War Machine. The whole population is enlisted to turn an unprepared Britain into a war machine.
80 Britain's Great War (2014) #876 DOCUMENTARY Main
2x1 hour episodes. BBC, In a landmark history series, Jeremy Paxman describes how the First World War transformed the lives of the British people, and helped shape modern Britain.

3/4 The Darkest Hour. How Germany's attempts to starve Britain into submission edged the nation close to defeat.
4/4 At the Eleventh Hour. Jeremy Paxman describes how the country came to the very brink of defeat.

PAGE  1   2   3   4   5      8
 Recent...