This programme looks at the Pet Shop Boys phenomenon, with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe revealing the inspiration behind their distinctive brand of pop music. Video clips and film of their spectacular stage shows capture the Pet Shop Boys in action, singing hits such as It’s a Sin, Domino Dancing and Where the Streets Have No Name. Liza Minnelli, with whom they have worked, is a contributor.
R. S. Thomas
Born in 1913, the poet R. S. Thomas was for many years a parish priest in his native Wales. Known for his passionate Welsh nationalism, his more recent work has become increasingly inward, exploring the paradoxes and self-doubts of faith in writing of great simplicity and resonance. In this film, Thomas talks in interview and reads from his poetry, which is illustrated with stunning footage of the Welsh landscapes from which he draws inspiration.
Julian Barnes
This film profile of one of today’s most critically and commercially successful British novelists includes dramatised scenes from his book Talking It Over, which deals with his perennial themes of love and jealousy. Barnes talks about his work in interview and admits to being obsessed with obsessions.
Terence Davies
This film explores the work of Terence Davies, one of Britain’s most distinctive and personal film-makers. In interview and through sequences he has written himself, Davies looks at his past and the themes, ideas and images which haunt him. He uses poems, music and extracts from his films to reflect upon working-class life in Liverpool, the joys of accountancy and Catholicism, and British and American cinema from Diana Dors to Doris Day.
Terry Gilliam
This profile charts the career of Terry Gilliam, the ex-Monty Python animator turned film-maker, whose highly inventive features include the hugely successful Fisher King. Viewers are given a glimpse into his private world as he is seen at home in London – making a family video, showing off the unique collection of models and memorabilia he has salvaged from his film sets, watching clips from his movies, and discussing Hollywood and the cinema with his fellow Python and friend, Michael Palin.
Heinrich Schiff
Heinrich Schiff is one of today’s top ranking cellists. In an interview recorded at his home in Austria, he talks about his musicianship, his celebrated career as a performer, to his move towards conducting in becoming the director of England’s Northern Sinfonia, with whom he is seen rehearsing Beethoven and Bartók. Performance extracts include Schiff playing Bach sonatas and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in G Op. 126.
John Osborne
Dramatist John Osborne (1929-94) was catapulted to fame in 1956 with his play Look Back in Anger. He created an icon for a generation of ‘angry young men’ in the character of Jimmy Porter, whose hatred of the Establishment voiced the frustrated hopes of post-war Britain. In this programme Osborne talks about the decade of success that followed – a period of public triumph but private turmoil. The interview is illustrated with extracts from his plays.
Alan Parker
Despite altercations with the British film industry and critics, Parker, whose credits include Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame, and Mississippi Burning, remains one of the country’s most accomplished film-makers and one the few to transplant successfully to Hollywood. In a programme which follows him back to his roots in London, to the Cannes Film Festival, and to Dublin to work on his film The Commitments, Parker talks revealingly about his career, which is amply illustrated with clips.
The Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips’s passion for the unaccompanied sacred choral music of the Renaissance period informed his mission to transform a talented amateur singing group into the polished, professional Tallis Scholars. This film shows off their accomplishments in performances of works by Cornyshe, Taverner, Tallis, Byrd, Desprès and Obrecht, among others. It charts Phillips’s personal odyssey and travels with him to Bruges, centre of the richly-coloured music of the fifteenth-century Low Countries.
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.