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.
Peter Hall ended his distinguished fifteen-year reign as director of Britain’s Royal National Theatre by staging three of Shakespeare’s last plays – Cymbeline, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. This programme follows Hall and his actors from the first read-through up to the dress rehearsal, sharing the discoveries they made about Shakespeare’s plays along the way.
Doris Lessing is one of Britain’s greatest contemporary novelists. Her career spans some fifty years and her many books explore a multiplicity of themes; feminism, communism, religion, madness, civilisation and the future of Western society. She has ranged through realistic fiction, science fantasy, factual writing and mythic parable. In this programme, Lessing talks about her writing and her highly original view of the world.
The influential American drama critic talks to Melvyn Bragg about the different influences which are radically altering the cultural life of New York – from the preoccupation with real estate and the dominance of corporate money, to AIDS.
A compulsive traveller for much of his life, the American writer and composer Paul Bowles (1910-99) confirmed his position as an outsider, both in his life and in his writing, in choosing Morocco as his home some fifty years ago. This film journeys through North Africa to explore Bowles’s powerful novels and the inspiration he discovered there. Bowles gives a major television interview in the programme, which includes dramatisations from his work.
Richard Eyre combines a striking visualisation of Harrison’s poem V with film of a public reading given by the poet to create a unique piece of television entertainment. Described by Bernard Levin in The Times as “one of the most powerful, profound and haunting poems of modern times”, V opens with Harrison’s meditation on his parents’ vandalised tombstone and expands to a panoramic view of the divisions and aspirations within British society today.
This 7-part drama series is based on the life and works of the French writer Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, nicknamed The Owl, because it was his custom to walk the streets of Paris at night during the Revolution. He recorded events, but so embroidered with his imagination that they form only a background to his fantastic stories. Charles Brabant’s dramatisation of Restif’s writing brings to life the characters he encountered and the turbulent arena of the city’s shadowy backwaters. To this is added the drama of The Owl’s own nocturnal life. Michel Aumont as Restif heads a fine cast of French actors, and magnificent sets reconstruct, in faithful detail, quartiers of eighteenth-century Paris.
