Synopsis
A weekly arts-based documentary series covering a diverse variety of subjects, everything from Roman orgies and the Elgin Marbles through The Yardbirds and Ike Turner to Aleister Crowley and Mother Teresa.
Episodes
1E1Episode 12E2For Love or Money 13E3Doing the DishesA celebration of the satellite dish, looking at their history and considering the prospects for designer dishes.4E4Sexual Intercourse Began in 1963Trial of the book and the acquittal of Penguin Books ushered in the freedom of the Sixties. With dramatic reconstructions this programme recreates the atmosphere of the time and tells the story of Lawrence's lifelong battle with the censors.5E5The Thing Is... PrisonsPaul Morley looks at prisons, historic and new, and at the "interior design" practiced by prisoners within their cells.6E6Episode 67E7Tunnel Visions: 1The mutual mistrust between the French and the English goes back centuries. A British television team looks at the way the French are adjusting to a world in which many of their ideals - revolution, patriotism and national culture - seem to be increasingly irrelevant.8E8Tunnel Visions: 2A French television team looks behind the stereotypes and asks what the public role of British intellectuals is at a time when the channel tunnel is forcing the two societies together.9E9Tracks of My TearsInspired by the footballer, Paul Gascoigne, this documentary with music from Smokey Robinson and Sydney Devine, looks at men in tears - in art, pop, music, sport, the cinema and politics.10E10J'accuse: The Rolling StonesRock critic Sean O'Hagan argues that the Rolling Stones are a burnt-out collection of middle-aged men who have failed to mature or find a late style. He also suggests that they have become the opposite of much of what they once stood for.11E11Episode 1112E12The Thing Is... Christmas DecorationsPaul Morley looks at Christmas decorations. Why do we want them? What do they mean to us and what do they say about us? How do the stores entice us to buy them? Do they offer a taste of a traditional Christmas or plastic nostalgia for a non-existent Golden Age?13E13Sleeping Beauty RediscoveredLooking at the Royal Ballet's film started in the 1960s and left unfinished.14E14J'accuse: Wolfgang Amadeus MozartLooks at the hype behind the Mozart bicentennial celebrations.15E15Black AthenaExamines the ideas of Martin Bernal set out in book Black Athena (1987) in which he argues that the Wests view of Greek civilization has been distorted to promote the Aryan model to the detriment of black African and Semitic cultures.16E16Lost Lawrence17E17Salvage of a Soho Photographer
Reviews & discussion
Sign in to see reviews and recommendations for this title, write your own, and send it to somebody.
Sign in
