Black comedian Lenny Henry investigates his favourite music, and finds that it’s also a language, a style, and a type of behaviour. At the artist formerly known as Prince’s recording studios in Minneapolis, Lenny meets an unparalleled array of funk artists, including the father of funk, James Brown, and members of his band. There is an orgy of performance clips featuring funk’s main men – Brown, George Clinton, Prince, MC Hammer – and the beat just goes on…
Seamus Heaney
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, confirming his stature as one of the greatest poets writing in the English language today. This film looks back over his career and presents a rare opportunity to hear him discussing his work. It focuses on his volume Seeing Things, in which he returns to the rural childhood territory of his early work. Readings of Heaney’s poems are intercut with a central interview, which is also illustrated with footage of the Irish landscapes that have inspired him.
August Wilson
One of the most important US playwrights to emerge since Arthur Miller, Wilson explores the same territory – the American Dream – but, as a black writer, his perspective is different. To show the background to his work, this film was made with Wilson in his home territory, The Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto shattered by unemployment and drug dealing. It centres on specially-staged extracts from his plays and a major interview.
Five Blind Boys
Gospel influences many musical styles, including blues, funk and rock. In this programme, great gospel veterans The Five Blind Boys of Alabama are seen in performance and talk about their music.
Hans Werner Henze
Leading German composer Hans Werner Henze’s early experiences of Nazism and wartime conscription left him with a passionate belief in music as a means of political resistance and as a healing force. Filmed while on a rare visit to his home town in Westphalia, Henze talks candidly about his youth, the development of his revolutionary aesthetic and his nomadic musical life. He is seen at work on the score for his opera, The Treacherous Sea.
John Ogdon
In 1962, the British pianist John Ogdon won the Tchaikovsky Competition along with Ashkenazy and embarked on a successful international career. Ten years later he was struck by a crippling mental illness from which he took many years to recover. This programme was made with Ogdon shortly before his tragic death in 1989, as his musical genius was beginning to reassert itself. It focuses on his overriding love for music and concludes with him improvising a new work at the piano.
Derek Walcott
West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott has an unrivalled reputation among his peers and has been described by many, Salman Rushdie and the late Joseph Brodsky among them, as the greatest living English language poet. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. He now teaches at Boston University but returns to his native St. Lucia every summer to write. This programme was shot on location there and shows how Walcott sets out to capture the beauty of this Caribbean island in words.
Nicaragua
Nicaragua’s terrorist troubles are well-known, but not so its other political phenomenon. When this programme was made in 1988, during turbulent peace negotiations, the
country was controlled almost entirely by prominent creative writers – from the President and his ministers, to key figures in the Opposition. The remarkable developments instigated by this literary government are shown in this film.
The Smiths
From the formation of The Smiths in 1982 to the group’s break-up in the summer of 1987, singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr crafted witty, passionate and intelligent songs of love and life. This programme, made shortly before they went their separate ways, examines their musical influences and the identity they created for The Smiths, as well as including many of the band’s hits, such as Shoplifters of the World Unite and Death of a Disco Dancer.
John Mortimer
For many years, John Mortimer ran two careers in parallel: one as a distinguished barrister, and one as a novelist and writer for stage, cinema, radio and television. This profile examines the way in which Mortimer incorporates his experience into his writing. It focuses on his popular television series, Rumpole of the Bailey, his autobiographical play, Voyage Round My Father, and his novel, Paradise Postponed, which was also made into a television series.