Sting first found fame with the band The Police and then went on to forge a highly successful solo career. He is one of today’s most thoughtful and literate songwriters, adopting an eclectic array of styles, while remaining a best-selling artist world-wide. Filmed at his magnificent English country manor, Sting is seen recording his hit album Mercury Falling. An elusive star who has preserved his essential privacy against all odds, he talks in interview about his life and his music.
Ariodante
Sung in English. When this production of Handel’s Ariodante – directed by David Alden and conducted by Ivor Bolton – had ist premiere, it met with unanimous critical and popular acclaim. Alden, as a theatrical modernist, transformed the opera seria into an eroticallycharged nightmare of lust, betrayal and violated innocence. With a superlative cast including Ann Murray, Joan Rodgers and Gwynne Howell this rich and strange Ariodante is a surprisingly modern drama of psychological and physical cruelty.
Ariodante is Handel’s 1735 setting of an episode from Ariosto, in which the King of Scotland’s daughter is treacherously accused of infidelity to her promised husband. The central situation of sexual jealousy and mistaken identity is set amidst a web of intense family
relationships. The range of feelings provoked as the characters develop is caught in music of quite extraordinary emotional power, even by Handel’s own exalted standards.
Dame Barbara Cartland
A glorious eccentric of the truly British variety, Dame Barbara Cartland (1901-2000) remains the world’s most famous romantic novelist. Her tales of square-jawed heroes and melting, virginal heroines sell in their millions world-wide. This film was made with her when she was in her late nineties, still writing an average of twenty-three novels a year and actively involved with her favourite good causes. Seen at her stately home in Hertfordshire, and on a trip to New York, Dame Barbara is indomitable.
Elaine Paige
Elaine Paige played Grizabella in the première staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats and shot to stardom overnight when she created the title role in his hugely successful Evita. This music special focuses on Paige’s portrayals of Eva Peron (Evita), Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard) and Edith Piaf (Piaf). The cameras follow her to Buenos Aires, Hollywood and Paris to investigate the lives of these charismatic, but very different, women, whose stories are juxtaposed with her own. A wealth of rehearsal and performance footage is included in the programme.
Dame Judi Dench
Gifted as both a comedienne and a tragic actress, Dame Judi Dench’s career spans over four decades and has encompassed stage, television and film roles. For this programme, the cameras were allowed generous access to film Dench as she rehearsed the lead role in the Sondheim musical A Little Night Music at the Royal National Theatre in London. In addition to this fascinating insight into her method of developing a role, there is an in-depth interview with this remarkable actress.
The French Chanson
Charles Aznavour, Juliette Gréco, Petula Clark and Mireille are among the singers who take part in an exploration of the French chanson, looking at its history, its distinctive character, its stars, its enduring popularity and its unique role in French culture. Material drawn from sound and film archives featuring many of the great chansonniers is included, and the final vital ingredient in the programme is Paris, home of the chanson, captured in a melancholy, wintry mood.
Tom Sharpe
Tom Sharpe is one of Britain’s finest comic novelists. Focusing on Grantchester Grind, this programme examines the blend of free-wheeling fantasy and acute comment that characterise his bawdy disaster epics, which build from small scrapes into avalanches of hilarious rudery. As well as discussing his writing and the subject of literature, Sharpe talks about his life and his experience of living in South Africa in the 1950s. Extracts from the television dramatisations of Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape are included.
Vermeer
The life and work of the great Dutch painter Vermeer (1632-75) are shrouded in mystery. He left no papers, no drawings, no clues as to the meaning or intention of his work, just thirty-five paintings, eight children and a mass of debts. Using the pictures themselves and the testimony of expert witnesses, award-winning director Michael Gill’s film profile is an investigation into the art, life and ambitions of this enigmatic artist. It draws on modern science to probe the means by which Vermeer made his simple subjects seem infinitely profound.
William Blake
As a biographer of William Blake, novelist Peter Ackroyd acts as guide to the visionary imagination of one of England’s most fascinating sons. Born in 1757, the poet, painter and engraver was a radical spirit, fired by genius. Ackroyd examines Blake’s artistic achievement and assesses his continuing appeal for revolutionaries of every kind. He also conjures up the dark, violent, depressing world of late-Georgian London. Actor Michael Loughnan portrays Blake.
African Art
Shot on location in Mali, this film sets looks past Western preconceptions to see the art of Africa through the eyes of Africans. It reappraises the enormous influence of African art on twentieth-century Modernism, on the work of artists such as Picasso, and includes contributions from some of the leading curators and academics who are now advocating the need to set African art against the background of the huge diversity of the cultures and traditions which have produced it.