Archive on 4 - Lives in a Landscape

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Archive on 4: Lives in a Landscape

Lives in a Landscape

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Lives in a Landscape

Alan Dein tells the story of ten years of Radio 4's observational documentary series.

4 Extra Debut. Alan Dein explores what's changed – and unchanging – in our nation using the Lives in a Landscape series archive. From 2015.

In 2005, Radio 4 broadcast the first in a series of observational documentaries about contemporary Britain. It was called Lives in a Landscape. It would focus on stories of individuals facing challenges, excitements and big changes in their lives, and those of their families and communities.

Using the programme's archive, Alan Dein looks at what's changed – and unchanging – about Britain's social and physical landscape, from the lonely, depopulating island of Canna in Scotland, to the Cornish village that was about to be sold, lock, stock and barrel.

The first ever Lives featured two very different sets of people: on one hand was Brian, ex-miner from Barnsley turned ratcatcher; on the other, a group of wealthy Londoners who'd met Brian on a Countryside Alliance march. They would go ratting together, they promised each other. And so they did; but what emerged were revelations that had nothing to do with long-tailed rodents.

From the wealthy suburb of Clapham, just a few months before the financial crash, to the Hackney riots of 2011, Lives in a Landscape has observed changes on the streets of the capital. It's tracked the controversial installation of wind turbines in a Welsh beauty spot, the passionate pigeon-racers of inner-city Edinburgh and the fortunes of a Zimbabwean refugee musician trying to rebuild his formerly starry career in downtown Belfast. Other enthusiastic performers include the teenage schoolboy band Socio from Grimsby who face an uncertain future as the close friends prepare for their grown-up lives, and the Bath pub-crooner whose livelihood is threatened by heart disease...

Alan Dein sets out to explore ten years of change as charted by one hundred editions of Lives in a Landscape.

Producer: Simon Elmes

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.

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