BBC Documentaries Collection

BBC Arena Perpetual Motion The Routemaster Bus



Series: Arena
Episode: Perpetual Motion - The Routemaster Bus
Broadcast: 1992 (35 minutes)
Channel: BBC2

Warren Clarke narrates a look at London's world-famous red Routemaster buses which, although designed in the 1950s for a lifespan of just 17 years, was in use into the next century.
About Arena

Arena is BBC's multi award winning arts strand with an archive of more than 500 original films. Throughout its 35 year history Arena has produced profiles and in-depth documentaries on such diverse subjects as Bob Dylan, the Ford Cortina car, Francis Bacon, Phil Spector, Desert Island Discs, T.S.Eliot, The Beano and the song My Way. Voted one of the 50 most influential programmes of all time (Broadcast magazine 2005), Arena continues to produce gold standard documentaries for UK and world wide audiences.

"Arena is the oasis in the sea of insanity that is television" - Werner Herzog


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BBC Natural World Gabon Forests of the Future



In a region of Africa more often in the news for human suffering and civil war, the state of Gabon is a stable democracy that is devoting itself to protecting wildlife. Over 10% percent of the country's rainforest is protected in a series of national parks that are home to elephants, gorillas, chimps and giant troupes of mandrills


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BBC Great Natural Wonders (2005)



Superbly filmed David Attenborough nature special.
Great Natural Wonders of the World takes us on a journey across the seven continets in search of the most impressive and inspiring natural wonders and greatest wildlife shows of our planet.


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The 16 Year Old Killer Cyntoias Story (2012)


The 16-Year-Old Killer: Cyntoia's Story

Monday 14 May
9.00pm - 10.00pm
BBC 3

In 2004, Cyntoia Brown was arrested for the murder of a 43-year-old man. Cyntoia was a prostitute and he was her client.

Film-maker Daniel Birman was granted unique access to Cyntoia from the week of her arrest, throughout her trial and over a period of six years. His documentary explores the tragic events in her life that led up to the murder, and Cyntoia's biological mother meets he daughter for the first time since giving her up for adoption 14 years earlier.

The film explores the history of abuse, violence, drugs and prostitution back through three generations. As Cyntoia faces a lifetime in prison, the programme asks difficult questions about her treatment by the American justice system.


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BBC Panorama The Truth About Tax (2012)



BBC1 20.30-21.00 14th May 2012

Panorama - The Truth About Tax

With Chancellor George Osborne recently branding aggressive tax avoidance `morally repugnant', Darragh MacIntyre investigates how some of the UK's biggest companies have been using the tax haven of Luxembourg to avoid paying millions they would otherwise owe. The programme reveals that some global firms have been benefiting from big concessions on billion-pound transactions


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BBC Secrets of World War II



The war was going badly for the Nazis, The Allied armys were spreading across France. Hitler having survived an assassination attempt felt that he was invincible.The Allies were certain that Germany had nothing left to counter-attack with, so it came as a complete suprise when out of the Ardennes forrest the panzers spewed. But it was a massive gamble by Hitler, one that failed.


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BBC Natural World Titus The Gorilla King



Abandoned as a baby, removed from normal gorilla family life as a youngster - so profound were the misfortunes that Titus suffered in his early years that no gorilla scientist could have predicted his eventual rise to power. His moving life story is pieced together here for the first time, based on archive film and the memories of field workers who have studied the mountain gorillas since Dian Fossey's pioneering work more than 40 years ago. At 33 years of age, Titus is not just one of the most powerful silverbacks in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains, he is possibly the most remarkable gorilla ever known. His life story is as full of drama, intrigue and tragedy as any human soap opera. Against a stunning backdrop of misty volcanic peaks cloaked in bamboo and giant lobelia, Titus has successfully steered his family group through thick and thin. But now he is under pressure again. With his ally-turned-rival, Kuryama, jockeying for position, are we about to witness the final chapter in Titus's extraordinary reign? Unfortunately Titus passed away 2009, aged 35.


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BBC The Two Thousand Year Old Computer (2012)



The efforts of an international team of scientists to solve the mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism. The 2,000-year-old device was recovered from a Roman shipwreck off the southern coast of Greece in 1901, and is believed to be the world's oldest computer. The object appears to be designed to predict solar eclipses, and according to recent findings, calculate the timing of the ancient Olympics.


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BBC We are the Aliens



Clouds of alien life forms are sweeping through outer space and infecting planets with life ? it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

The idea that life on Earth came from another planet has been around as a modern scientific theory since the 1960s when it was proposed by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe. At the time they were ridiculed for their idea ? known as panspermia. But now, with growing evidence, it's back in vogue and even being studied by NASA.

We meet the scientists on a mission to get to the bottom of the beginnings of life on Earth - from the team in Texas who are lovingly building a robotic submarine called DEPTHX to explore a moon of Jupiter, to Southern India where they are investigating a mysterious red rain which fell for two months in 2001. According to local scientist Godfrey Louis, the rain contains biological cells unlike any he had seen before ? with no DNA and the ability to replicate at 300?C. Louis has come to the conclusion that the cells are extra-terrestrial in origin.


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BBC Arena The Dreams of William Golding (2012)



Arena - The Dreams of William Golding
Sat 17 Mar 2012 21:30 BBC Two

The Dreams of William Golding reveals the extraordinary life of one of the greatest
English writers of the twentieth century.

With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his
dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities.

His daughter Judy and son David, both speak frankly about their father's demons, and
the film follows Golding from the impoverished schoolmaster whose first novel, Lord
of the Flies, was published when he was forty-three years old, to his winning the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1983.

Other contributors include Golding's biographer John Carey, philosopher John Gray,
writer Nigel Williams, the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, The Very Revd June Osborne,
and best-selling author Stephen King.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred in the 2004 BBC adaptation of Golding's sea trilogy
To the Ends of the Earth, reads extracts from his books.


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BBC Our World The Interrogators (2012)



Our World - The Interrogators
Broadcast: BBC News Channel
Saturday 12 May 2012
05:30 - 06:00


Featuring news on issues around the world. As the men accused of responsibility for planning the 9/11 attacks face trial by a military commission, Peter Taylor examines the history of their capture and imprisonment.


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BBC Britains Biggest Hoarders (2012)


Britain's Biggest Hoarders

(BBC1, 9:00pm Tuesday 8th May, 2012. Duration 58Mins.)

Jasmine Harman presents a follow-up to last year's My Hoarder Mum and Me, in which she rallied her relatives to tackle her mother Vasoulla's compulsive habit. Despite her efforts, only a few rooms in the family home were tidied, leaving the presenter with little choice but to seek further advice. She meets a man whose garden is so heavily cluttered his council has threatened him with prosecution, and meets experts who help her understand what makes her mother's habit such a debilitating psychological disorder.


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BBC Secret Life of Birds



Travelling from wild coastlines to urban habitats, this fascinating natural history series from the BBC explores the behaviour of birds, revealing all aspects of their lives, from surviving harsh winters and avoiding predators to living alongside us in towns and cities. Host and wildlife expert Iolo Williams discovers how birds have adapted to changing landscapes, studying their ability to fly and how their unique design, colour and camouflage enables them to live in many habitats, as well as uncovering their courtship and nesting rituals and finding out how and why they communicate. Offering a visual treat of stunning landscapes and captivating wildlife behaviour, The Secret Life of Birds provides perfect family entertainment educating and enthralling in equal measure.
Part 1: Dawn Chorus
In this first episode, he investigates how and why birds communicate, looking at the reasons snipe use their tail feathers to make a very distinctive noise and what's happening when thousands of starlings participate in stunning aerial displays in Aberystwyth.

Part 2: Feathering the Nest
In this episode, Iolo investigates the courtship and nesting behaviour of birds, including the amazing courtship display of great crested grebes at a reservoir near Pontypool, the impressive sky dance of hen harriers in the dramatic Cambrian Mountains, how nuthatch use mud like cement to prepare their nest in a woodland near Harlech, and why long-tailed tits near Newtown are exceptional nest builders. On the Lleyn Peninsula near Trefor, he looks at why one colony of shags nest earlier than any others in Wales, and in Pembrokeshire he finds out where house martins nested before they used our buildings. Iolo also looks at the variety of places birds like to nest, from little ringed plovers on shingle banks along the River Tywi to puffins underground on Skomer.

Part 3: Living on the Edge
Today, Iolo discovers the difficulties birds face in order to stay alive, and the programme includes a dramatic scene in which a sparrow hawk seizes the moment to attack a woodpigeon nest.

Part 4: Living with Us
In this fourth episode, Iolo Williams explores how birds in Wales have adapted to living alongside us, making use of our buildings, parks and gardens and even the waste we throw away. One of the most notorious urban birds is the gull and Iolo explains why these very adaptable and intelligent birds are doing so well in Cardiff

Part 5: Designed for a Welsh Life
In this final episode, Iolo explores bird design - from their ability to fly to the way that their beak design, colour and camouflage enable them to live in the many habitats Wales has to offer. Using ultra-slow motion photography, Iolo looks at how garden birds have such control over take off and landing, and explains why fulmars are one of our most supreme fliers



Sample Screens

BBC The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima (1990)



Directed by: Michael McIntyre

55 Minutes

"BBC2 Arena documentary, which examines the controversial life and bizarre death of the Japanese author, playwright, actor and patriot, Yukio Mishima, who was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for literature, and who committed suicide by ritual disembowelment, on 25th November 1970 after attempting a military coup.

Using rare archive footage, including film of Mishima giving a final speech just moments before his death, as well as interviews with the author conducted in English, and reminiscences from his former friends and colleagues, including his English born biographer, Henry Scott Stokes, and translator Donald Keene, the film attempts to shed light on what drove him towards his unusual choice of fate."


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BBC Jimmys GM Food Fight



Like all the people Jimmy Doherty surveys about genetically modified crops, you may think they are A Bad Thing. Jimmy, who as we know is passionate about traditional farming methods, isn’t sure about them, either. But he realises his back-to-nature ideals won’t feed the world and he also knows that man has been tinkering with vegetables for centuries. Ironically, while well-fed Europeans demonstrate against GM, malnourished Africans, who are desperate to produce more food, try to steal GM crops rather than trash them. Presumably, the need to eat now is more important to them than worrying about what might, or might not, be the effect in the future


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