documentary
Children of the RevolutionFriday, 26 August 2011
As well as recounting the stories of two of the women who would become figureheads for the revolutionary movements that grew out of the social unrest of 1968 - Germany’s Ulrike Meinhof and Japan’s Fusako Shigenobu - Shane O’Sullivan’s documentary... Read more... |
Too Much, Too Young: Children of the Middle Ages, BBC FourThursday, 25 August 2011
Although billed as “a fresh look at the Middle Ages through the eyes of children”, presenter Dr Stephen Baxter had to admit the bulk of historic evidence for how medieval children lived their lives was written by adults. Unfiltered accounts from a... Read more... |
Horizon: The Nine Months That Made You, BBC TwoTuesday, 23 August 2011
This was the sort of science programme that an interested non-science person like me finds immensely irritating. It began with a series of statements which were, in fact, meaningless overstatements. Not only this, but these overblown statements... Read more... |
The Pendle Witch Child, BBC FourWednesday, 17 August 2011
A nine-year-old girl testifies in court. She’s clear, precise and damning. The case revolves around her testimony alone. All the accused – 10 of them, her family and neighbours - are declared guilty and executed. The girl is the only one of the... Read more... |
Graffiti Wars, Channel 4Sunday, 14 August 2011
Before Banksy's work became the object of desire for champagne-sipping, canapé-snaffling hedge fund managers at auction houses' private views, there was something of the curled lip about street art. Indeed, for years it wasn't known as street art... Read more... |
Chilean Miners: 17 Days Buried Alive, BBC TwoSaturday, 13 August 2011
On 5 August last year, a cave-in at Chile's 121-year-old San José copper mine left 33 workers trapped more than 2,000ft underground. Their subterranean ordeal would last 69 days, but this documentary concerned itself with the first 17 of those, the... Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? - June Brown, BBC OneWednesday, 10 August 2011
Your typical consumer of Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC One would almost certainly have been disappointed by last night's first instalment of the eighth series. There were no tears from June Brown, EastEnders' Dot Cotton, for a start. That is as... Read more... |
Violence in the Streets: On making The InterruptersWednesday, 10 August 2011
Twenty-four years ago, I found myself hanging out virtually every day in the Henry Horner Homes, a Chicago housing project on the city's hardscrabble West Side. I had begun to immerse myself in the lives of two young brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoah... Read more... |
Horizon: Do You See What I See? BBC TwoTuesday, 09 August 2011
Life is full of aphorisms ascribing properties to particular colours. The scarlet woman. Red light spells danger. Yet, according to the first in the new series of Horizon, colour is “one of nature’s great illusions”. Even so, wearing red reduces... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Locarno: Swiss rules, Swiss rainSunday, 07 August 2011
Think what you will about Switzerland and the Swiss – calm, ordered country, treasured environment, cautious, democratically precise people – but look behind the scenes and things can seem quite scary. Vol spécial (Special Flight), by Swiss-French-... Read more... |
The RefereesThursday, 04 August 2011
Elbowings, buttings, anklings, maimings, studdings, anarcho-thespian handbaggings – the figure formerly known as the man in black is the thin line between the beautiful game and the collapse of civilised society as we know it. And what is his reward... Read more... |
My Resignation, BBC FourThursday, 04 August 2011
I Resign. It’s not a phrase you hear that often these days. Unlike, obviously, You’re Fired. There was a time, largely synonymous with the era when Tory toffs and grandees had sufficient private income to walk away from employment, that a chap could... Read more... |
