“If the work Adrian Dunbar is best known for – the police drama Line of Duty – left us with the tantalising riddle about the identity of the master criminal H, his new documentary tries to unmask an even more evasive man: Samuel Beckett. In Searching for Sam: Adrian Dunbar on Samuel Beckett (BBC Four), the actor we know and love as Superintendent Ted Hastings follows the reportedly too-small-shoe’d footsteps of his great hero.Read More »
From the Introduction
Across Germany, thousands record every aspect of their lives, convinced they are filming the dawn of a new age. Others record their thoughts in diaries. Taken together, ink and 8mm film provide an unprecedented insight into life in the Third Reich.
The footage and diary extracts come from civilians, but also from Nazi Party organisers, firemen, local officials and soldiers on the frontline. They all play a role capturing the New Reich.Read More »
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The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man is a BBC documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first transmitted in the United Kingdom from 8 March 1987.
It comprises four programmes, each of 55 minutes’ duration, which describe man’s relationship with the natural habitats of the Mediterranean, and is a glorious portrait of the landscape, wildlife and plants of the Mediterranean. From the earliest human settlements to the cities of today, from the forests of the North African shore and the Middle East to Southern Europe, this series tells the dramatic story of man and nature at work.Read More »
As passions rise over Brexit many of the UK’s female MPs have received death threats and rape threats online. I struggled to comprehend the source of this tide of rage which seemed out of all proportion to a mere difference of political opinion. Then I watched this documentary about the online “incel” community and it all started to make a little more sense. “Incel” is short for, “involuntary celibate”, in other words, a guy who isn’t getting any sex.Read More »
Synopsis
Dr. Bronowski’s magnificent BBC television series The Ascent of Man traces our rise both as a species and as moulders of our own environment and future. It covers the history of science, but of science in the broadest terms. Invention from the flint tool to geometry, from the arch to the theory of relativity, are shown to be expressions of man’s specific ability to understand nature, to control it, not to be controlled by it.Read More »
A mob’s punishment of a lone man proves cruel and unusual in this nightmarish short film.Read More »
An Ideal Husband (BBC1, 1969, dir. Rudolph Cartier)
Rudolph Cartier’s Play of the Month version of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1895) shares the same aesthetic of visual pleasure realised through detail as Cedric Messina’s Pygmalion (BBC1 16 December 1973), as well as many common features of setting and dressing; ballrooms, studies, morning rooms, elegant dresses and eveningwear. However, Cartier’s directorial technique demonstrates a greater awareness of the possibilities of studio technique to comment upon the action of a play, and is an exemplary production in its use of finely realised period detail to achieve dramatic effects, as an interpretation that works on deeper levels than surface aesthetic visual pleasure. Read More »
Channel BBC Two
Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (21 Sept 2019) When legendary writer and adventurer Bruce Chatwin was dying of Aids, his friend and collaborator Werner Herzog made a final visit to say farewell. As a parting gift, Chatwin gave Herzog the rucksack that had accompanied him around the world.
Thirty years later, carrying the rucksack, Herzog sets out on his own journey, inspired by Chatwin’s passion for the nomadic life. Along the way, Herzog uncovers stories of lost tribes, wanderers and dreamers.
He travels to South America, where Chatwin wrote In Patagonia, the book that turned him into a literary sensation, with its enigmatic tales of dinosaurs, myths and journeys to the ends of the world. Read More »
Algy and Jack discover that they have both been Bunberrying, that is, assuming different identities in order to enjoy themselves in a guilt-free manner. Jack’s pretending to be his foolish younger brother, Ernest in order to be a model of moral rectitude to his young ward, Cecily. Jack intends to propose to Gwendolyn–that is until he discovers that she loves him because his name is Ernest. He sets about being rechristened. And when Cecily intends to meet her bad cousin Ernest, and Algy seizes the opportunity, it will take the imperious Lady Bracknell, Miss Prism’s recollections about her handbag, and an army list to clear the matter up, and allow true love to run its course.Read More »