Christopher Hampton is one of Britain’s most regularly successful playwrights and screen-writers, with plays such as Tales from Hollywood and Les Liaisons Dangereuses winning both popular and critical acclaim. This programme traces his development as a playwright and includes specially-staged extracts from his work. It also considers his film adaptation of Les Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich.
William Golding
Whether about boys marooned on a desert island (Lord of the Flies), the birth of prehistoric man (The Inheritors), or the building of Salisbury cathedral’s spire (The Spire),
Golding’s novels combine gripping story-telling with a profound examination of the nature of man and the mysterious forces that work upon him. The Nobel Prize-winning author gave this rare television interview in 1989, four years before his death at the age of eighty-one. He focuses on the trilogy of novels spawned by his Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage, and extensive dramatised extracts from the final part, Fire Down Below, are included.
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.
Kipling
Following a startling success with readings from St. Mark’s Gospel, the actor Alec McCowen played an extended one-man show at London’s Mermaid Theatre, portraying the writer Rudyard Kipling. Brian Clark, author of Whose life is it Anyway?, has interwoven Kipling’s fiction and poetry with his own writing to develop his portrait of this very private man. This film looks at a fascinating piece of theatre and at the complex and intriguing character of a great literary man.
Steven Berkoff
The maverick playwright, director and actor talks about his life and work in the typically graphic language which characterises his radical and controversial plays – theatre which, in his words, “opens the skull and puts on the stage a writhing can of worms”. The programme includes extracts from Berkoff’s Salome, Greek, East, Metamorphosis and Decadence, and features contributions from Roman Polanski, Mikhail Baryshnikov and the late Joe Papp.
David Bailey
Photographer David Bailey made his name in the early 1960s when his pictures, his image and his lifestyle epitomised ‘Swinging London’. More recently he has turned to film-making. In this programme, he talks in interview and is seen behind the camera as well as in front of it. The full range of his work is explored and there are contributions from some of his famous subjects, including Jean Shrimpton, Marie Helvin and Terence Stamp.
Ben Elton
Ben Elton is one of Britain’s most prolific purveyors of TV comedy both as a performer and as a writer, with series such as Blackadder and The Young Ones to his credit. In interview, Elton talks about his career, examining the influences and motivations which drive his writing. The programme includes clips from his comedy shows and his to-camera routines, as well as dramatised extracts from his first novel, Stark.
Toulouse-Lautrec
A major exhibition of the lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) at London’s Royal Academy is the starting point for a programme on one of the most colourful figures in late nineteenth-century art, famous for his pictures of Parisian dance halls and cabarets. Artists, scholars and admirers are invited to comment on their choice of work from the exhibition.
The Sundance Institute
Sundance is a unique film development unit founded and run by Redford at his ski resort in the Utah mountains, an area he is striving to conserve. Each year, young film-makers are invited to work with professionals in an environment which encourages experiment and is free of the commercial pressures of Hollywood. This programme follows two film-makers during their time at Sundance and shows prime-mover Redford taking part in proceedings as ‘Ordinary Bob’.
Peter Dickinson
A series of major concertos written in the 1980s – one for organ, one for piano and
one for violin – established British composer Peter Dickinson as an important and individual
musical voice. This programme looks at his career and influences, particularly American music,
from Cage to Joplin. The second half of the programme consists of a complete performance of his
composition London Rags, performed by London Brass, for whom it was composed.