Production
What are the secrets of our favourite TV shows? Famous names from both sides of the camera reflect on making some of the most popular and influential programs of all time.
Decision-makers from Israel, the Arab states, Russia, and the U.S. tell the inside story of the Arab-Israel conflict. Charts the evolution of tensions, violence, and peace efforts from 1948 to 1998.
Filmed on location in 1997 at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the show was a six-part BBC documentary, which followed the day-to-day running of the park. It was mainly focused on the rides and the park managers, Jim Rowland and Keith Allen. The film crews also spoke to Geoffrey Thompson and Amanda Thompson, the director and producer of Stageworks Worldwide Productions (which directs, produces and choreographs the shows within the park.)
A behind-the-scenes look at the Royal Opera House.
METRO-LAND is a colourful eulogy by Sir John Betjeman to the people and places served by London's Metropolitan Line. Sir John Betjeman takes you on a journey into Metro-Land in his own eccentric and much loved style. Betjeman explores and contrasts the earlier and later ways of life while following the Neasden Nature Trail, calling in to the Pinner Village Hall and enjoying a round of golf on the great Moor Park course near Rickmansworth. Join Sir John with this quintessential guide on an unmissable journey along the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street to Quainton Road (now forgotten).
A journey by Intercity into the world of the supernatural.
A series of four documentaries filmed behind the scenes at London Zoo as it fights for its future.
The story of a protest, told by Jancis Robinson. Fulbeck is a small, picturesque village, in the heart of some of the best farming land in Britain. It has a squire, a pub, champion bell ringers, a successful cricket team. In February of this year the Government proposed the World War II airfield at Fulbeck as a possible site for a nuclear waste dump. The news came like a thunderbolt. Over the next months the lives of the villagers were transformed.
How three people's lives were permanently affected by the TWA plane hi-jack.
Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe looks at that most English of things - the folly.
At the age of 8 Michael Cooper (known as Mini) began setting things on fire. Eventually he tried to burn down his own house, with his father inside. Ten years ago an award-winning BBC film told the story of this astonishingly attractive and intelligent child arsonist (Mini wasn't allowed to see it at the time). Since then, for more than half his life, Mini has been locked up in high-security psychiatric care. Mini is now 21. He has recently been released on conditional discharge. Hoping to become a magician, he has taken the stage-name 'Johnny Oddball '. Tonight's film, juxtaposing scenes from past and present, follows Mini's first steps in the outside world, and his struggle to build a career on the fringes of show business. He and his parents battle to understand why they failed in the past and what hope there is for the future. And Mini comes face to face, for the first time, with his actions and their horrifying consequences.
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Riding the Iron Horse - a roaring, full-throated Harley Davidson - across the open prairie is an American dream. Fifty thousand leather-clad bikers make romance come true as they converge, from all over the States and beyond, on Sturgis, a sleepy farming town in South Dakota. The 48th annual Black Hills Motorcycle Rally brings together weekenders on little Japanese bikes and hard-core, all-American Wild Ones. It's a raucous summer week of racing, drinking, partying and generally raising hell. 'The Sons of Silence' is one of the many bikers' chapters here. The Sons believe in America, freedom, white power, and loyalty to each other. They've got their own chaplain; women are not members, but 'property'. Rebels against convention, they live by their own strict code - 'We are the Sons of Silence until death'.
AJP Taylor, the renowned English historian, discusses the origins of modern wars.
Documentary on David Triggs, who works for Thames Water, and is also a frequent visitor to India, as a consultant on the Indian Government's ÂŁ200 million scheme to clean up the holy River Ganges.
Groundbreaking BBC series that follows transgender activist Julia Grant from her first year living as a woman to her experience of gender reassignment surgery and beyond.
Intimate portrait of Sir John Betjeman, one of the most popular English poets of the 20th century. Featuring contributions from the Prince of Wales and Lord Snowdon.
'I'm British', says the young lady with strawberry blonde hair and a Midlands accent, 'but I don't have a drop of British blood in me.' Carmen Laanemagi is from Leicester - and Estonia. Pauline Riemers is a nurse in Epsom; her parents are Latvian. Algis Kuliukas, a British Airways computer programmer, lives in Hounslow; he's part- Lithuanian. Last July they embarked on the Baltic Star in Stockholm. It was the beginning of an emotional and exciting voyage. The aim was to sail as close as they could get to the coasts of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - now part of the Soviet Union.Forty years ago their parents had fled as refugees when the three Baltic states lost their short-lived independence. Now the lost children were returning - hoping for a distant glimpse of home.
AJP Taylor, the renowned historian, appraises the performance of World War Two leaders. In this series he delivers his lectures to camera and without an autocue.
Follows the No. 31 London bus from Camden Town to World's End, Chelsea, meeting characters who live and work along the route. The soundtrack features the Carl Davis composition Variations on a Bus Route, commissioned to celebrate London Transport's 50th birthday in 1984.
