BBC Four

The Sky at Night

Iconic series exploring space science and the incredible universe all around us.

Look up! Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Professor Chris Lintott present the iconic, inspirational look at cutting-edge space science and the incredible universe all around us.

The Sky at Night: Close Encounters

04/05/2009

Close Encounters

BBC Four - The Sky at Night, Close Encounters

Sir Patrick Moore discusses the Earth's chances of a close encounter with an asteroid.

Patrick Moore discusses the chances of an encounter with an asteroid, after telescopes recently got a unique view of an asteroid disintegrating in our atmosphere.

Every day, asteroids whizz past the Earth on their journey through space. Sir Patrick Moore discusses the chances of a close encounter with an asteroid, after telescopes recently got a unique view of an asteroid disintegrating in our atmosphere.

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

New. Patrick Moore discusses the chances of a close encounter with asteroids as they travel past Earth on their journey through space. 
Extended repeat from yesterday on BBC1

Timeshift

Documentary series which ranges widely over Britain's social and cultural history.

Documentary series which ranges widely over Britain's social and cultural history, its narrative-led storytelling offering a richly immersive and varied window onto the past.

Time Shift: Series 9

Timeshift: Series 9: Episode 1: Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science

Episode 1

Episode 1: Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science

Series 9

Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science

BBC Four - Timeshift, Series 9, Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science

Including an interview with the man who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors.

Documentary about the history of British food science meets a man who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors, and discovers how Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis.

Documentary which explores the history of British food science, taking a fascinating voyage through over a century of petri-dishes, vitamins and E-numbers. 

The connection between food manufacturers and the white coat brigade is nothing new. One hundred and fifty years before Heston Blumenthal, Birmingham chemist Alfred Bird was reinventing custard because his wife had an allergy to eggs. 

By the 1930s, George Orwell was already complaining about the chemical by-products that the British people were eating, but when war gave scientists a chance to remake the British diet the improvement in the nation's health was extraordinary.

Charting the growing role that food science has played in our daily lives, we meet Tony Blake, the food scientist who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors, and we learn about biochemist Jack Drummond, the tragic mastermind of British food in the Second World War, who died alongside his family as in a mysterious murder. 

We discover how vegetarian product Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis and how breakthroughs in flavour chemistry helped create the day-glo processed foods of the 1970s. We recall Margaret Thatcher's early career as a food scientist and find out why there was no such thing as a free lunch when it came to the promise of fat-free snacks.

Timeshift: Series 9

Documentary series which ranges widely over Britain's social and cultural history

Farm to Pharma: the Rise and Rise of Food Science

This Time Shift documentary looks at the history of British food science, examining how produce came to be enhanced. 
Shown last Thursday

A Poet's Guide to Britain

A Poet's Guide to Britain: Episode 1: William Wordsworth

Episode 1: William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

BBC Four - A Poet's Guide to Britain, William Wordsworth

Owen Sheers explores the story behind Wordsworth's Composed upon Westminster Bridge.

Owen Sheers explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. This episode features Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth.

Poet and author Owen Sheers presents a series in which he explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape. Each poem explores a sense of place and identity across Britain and opens the doors to captivating stories about the places and the lives of the poets themselves. This episode features Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth.

In 1802, Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet of nature and the man famous for writing about the Lake District, daffodils and clouds, penned a short but electrifying poem about the stinking, filthy, heaving city of London. In fact, the poem was a captivating, sublime portrait of the city at dawn which still has the power to catch one's breath.  

Sheers investigates what Wordsworth was doing when he wrote the poem on a summer morning in 1802, and uncovers a story that involves three different women. Wordsworth lived in Grasmere in the Lake District, sharing a small cottage in an unusual domestic arrangement with his sister Dorothy. In the spring of that year he decided to marry an old schoolfriend, Mary Hutchinson.  However, in order to do so he first needed to clear the air with his French ex-girlfriend and mother of his daughter Caroline, a nine-year-old girl he had yet to meet.  

In July 1802, William and Dorothy set out from Grasmere to Calais via London on the intriguing journey that would lead them across the bridge. Sheers follows their journey, discovers how the poem came into existence and examines exactly what Wordsworth wrote. He talks to Wordsworth fans including that epitome of Northern cool, poet Simon Armitage, the writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Adam O'Riordan, and some of the commuters who cross Westminster Bridge every morning on their way to work.

Owen Sheers explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape.

Poet and author Owen Sheers presents a series in which he explores six great works of poetry set in the British landscape.

Yew series. 1/6. William Wordsworth. Author Owen Sheers explores six works of poetry set in the British landscape, beginning with William Wordsworth 's Composed upon Westminster Bridge. See panel. 
Repeated on Thursday at 10pm

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood Live at Madison Square Garden

BBC Four - Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood Live at Madison Square Garden

The reunited rock legends perform hits including Blind Faith's Presence of the Lord.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood reunite for a concert at Madison Square Garden in 2008, performing hits including Blind Faith's Presence of the Lord and Can't Find My Way Home.

Reunion concert by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood at New York's Madison Square Garden in 2008. The rock legends took to the stage together for just three concerts in a highly anticipated collaboration, performing a string of hits that included Blind Faith's Presence of the Lord and Can't Find My Way Home, in addition to Clapton's classic After Midnight and Winwood's Dear Mr Fantasy.

Both Winwood and Clapton have long and prestigious musical careers, with countless honours and awards to their names. Their musical paths connected in 1969 with the formation of Blind Faith, a supergroup that pioneered the fusion of rock and blues to tremendous studio and stage success.

Despite critical and popular acclaim the band was short-lived, releasing only one album and embarking on a brief 1969 tour that debuted on July 12 at Madison Square Garden and ended on August 24 in Hawaii. Since that final show, Winwood and Clapton have remained friends but had only performed an occasional song together at charity events.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood

New. The Blues Britannia season continues with coverage of the duo's 2008 concert in Madison Square Garden, New York, featuring performances of Blind Faith hits Presence of the Lord and Can't Find My Way Home.
See panel.

Eric Clapton at the BBC: The Rock & Roll Years

Eric Clapton at the BBC: The Rock 'n' Roll Years

29/04/2005

BBC Four - Eric Clapton at the BBC: The Rock 'n' Roll Years

An archive journey through Eric Clapton's performing life at the BBC and elsewhere.

Archive journey through Eric Clapton's performing life at the BBC, including the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominoes.

A journey through Eric Clapton's performing life at the BBC and elsewhere, from his 60s blues days to his noughties blues days. Clapton has been described as the best guitarist in the world and has a life story and career that would make anyone's hair curl.

By way of extensive BBC archive footage, the programme charts his varied and ever-changing career - from the beginnings with The Yardbirds until he left to join the purist blues of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, to the dynamism and musical synchronisation with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, which produced the turbulent Cream, to Clapton's collaboration with Stevie Winwood that would spawn Blind Faith, to his brief sojourn in the Plastic Ono Band and his unforgettable contribution to Lennon's heroin hell tribute Cold Turkey, to his low-profile spell with rootsy US act Delaney and Bonnie, to the band he formed with Bobby Whitlock, Derek and the Dominoes, that produced one of the most famous unrequited love songs in Layla, and on to his successful solo career since then.

Along the way Clapton has successfully survived heroin and alcohol abuse, been accused of being a racist, stolen his best friend's wife, changed bands as often as his shirt, and lost a son in the most tragic of accidents. Through it all, he has produced some of the best music of the 20th century.

Eric Clapton At The BBC: The Rock & Roll Years

Eric Clapton: the Rock 'n' Roll Years

Profile of the guitarist and songwriter. who has survived both personal trauma and drug addiction to build a wide and varied musical career, from groups The Yardbirds and Cream to solo success.

Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?

01/05/2009

BBC Four - Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?

How blues music travelled from southern USA to the heart of British pop and rock culture.

Documentary, structured in three parts, telling the story of what happened to blues music on its journey from southern USA to the heart of British pop and rock culture.

Documentary telling the story of what happened to blues music on its journey from the southern states of America to the heart of British pop and rock culture, providing an in-depth look at what this music really meant to a generation of kids desperate for an antidote to their experiences of living in post-war suburban Britain. 

Narrated by Nigel Planer and structured in three parts, the first, Born Under a Bad Sign, focuses on the arrival of American blues in Britain in the late 50s and the first performances here by such legends as Muddy Waters, Sonnie Terry and Brownie McGhee. 

Part two, Sittin' on Top of the World, charts the birth of the first British blues boom in the early 60s, spearheaded by the Rolling Stones and groups such as the Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, the Animals and the Pretty Things. 

The final section, Crossroads, looks at the next, more hardcore British blues boom of the mid-to-late 60s, with guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green and the international dominance of their respective bands, Cream and Fleetwood Mac. 

Featuring archive performances and interviews with Keith Richards, Paul Jones, Chris Dreja, Bill Wyman, Phil May, John Mayall, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, Ian Anderson, Tony McPhee, Mike Vernon, Tom McGuinness, Mick Abrahams, Dick Taylor, Val Wilmer, Chris Barber, Pete Brown, Bob Brunning, Dave Kelly and Phil Ryan.

Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Play the Whites?

Charting the British love of the musical genre over a 20-year period starting in the 1950s. With contributions from Keith Richards , Bill Wyman and Mick Fleetwood. Shown last Friday

Flight of the Conchords

Sitcom about two Kiwi folk musicians as they to try to make it big in New York

Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians Bret and Jemaine as they to try to make it big in New York.

Flight of the Conchords: Series 1

Flight of the Conchords: Series 1: Episode 3: Mugged

Episode 3

Episode 3: Mugged

Series 1

Mugged

BBC Four - Flight of the Conchords, Series 1, Mugged

The boys are mugged down a backstreet, and Bret runs off without helping Jemaine.

Comedy series about two Kiwi folk musicians in New York. The boys are mugged down a backstreet, and after an incident with a knife Bret runs off without helping Jemaine.

Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians Bret and Jemaine as they to try to make it big in their adopted home of New York. The boys are mugged down a backstreet, and after an unpleasant incident with a knife Bret runs off without helping Jemaine. After Jemaine spends a night in the same cell as one of the muggers, he finds it hard to forgive. Features the songs Hiphopapotamus vs Rhymenoceros and Think About it, Think Think About it.

Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians trying to make it big in New York

Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians Bret and Jemaine as they to try to make it big in their adopted home of New York

Flight of the Conchords: Series 1: Episode 4: Yoko

Episode 4

Episode 4: Yoko

Yoko

BBC Four - Flight of the Conchords, Series 1, Yoko

Bret's relationship with fellow sign-holder Coco causes tension in the band.

Comedy series about two Kiwi folk musicians in New York. Bret's relationship with fellow sign-holder Coco causes tension. Jemaine has to go with Murray on his bandstand tours.

Comedy series about Kiwi folk musicians Bret and Jemaine as they to try to make it big in their adopted home of New York. 

Bret's relationship with fellow sign-holder Coco causes tension in the band. When Jemaine is asked to stop joining them on their dates, he has to go with Murray on his bandstand tours. Features the songs If You're Into It and Tape of Love.

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