Programme Information

The Victorians Ep 1/4

Sunday 15 February

9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE

Jeremy Paxman delves into the lives of The Victorians

Jeremy Paxman takes his love of Victorian painting as the starting point for an extraordinary journey into Victorian Britain, in this new, landmark series for BBC One.

"Victorian paintings are certainly not fashionable today," says Paxman. "But to me they are a gold mine. Like nothing else they show us what it was like to live in those extraordinary times. And they tell amazing stories."

In the Victorian era every picture told a story – dramatic, overstated and captivating: it was the cinema of its day. Viewed in the context of today, Victorian paintings offer a uniquely vivid, almost documentary account of the dramatic upheavals of the age, from the social melting pot of railway travel to the melodrama of family conflict and the raw vitality of the Victorian city.

The most dramatic transformation of Victorian Britain was the explosion of great cities, and Victorian painters were there to record this urban revolution.

In the first episode, Painting The Town, Paxman travels by canal boat to Manchester – the "shock city" of the age; visits a still-functioning cotton mill; eats gruel in a workhouse; and tells the story of James Sharples, the ironworker painter who first depicted the energy of the industrial revolution.

Ford Madox Brown's painting Work is a hymn to the new kind of Britain the Victorians were building. In an heroic spate of civic activity, the Victorians were building town halls like palaces and sewers like mighty labyrinths. And in the wet, lamp-lit cityscapes of Atkinson Grimshaw they found their true poet.

Jeremy goes to Glasgow to visit a great monument to the Victorian belief that art could improve the people: the colossal Kelvingrove Art Gallery.

But it took a Frenchman to venture into the depths of London's East End and uncover the horror of the capital's "heart of darkness": Jeremy follows in the footsteps of Gustave Dore, who penetrated the opium dens, night shelters and vermin-filled streets to create a vision of London, the first city of Empire, as a 19th-century "hell".

Pressure to escape the choking city centre led to perhaps the Victorians' greatest invention, the suburb. Jeremy takes a horse-drawn omnibus to a model Victorian suburb to see their civilised answer to the problems of noise and overcrowding.

JF

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Mistresses Ep 1/6

Tuesday 17 February

9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE

• www.bbc.co.uk/mistresses
• Press pack

A lot has changed in a year for Trudi (Sharon Small), Siobhan (Orla Brady, front), Katie (Sarah Parish) and Jessica (Shelley Conn)

A year has passed since the troubled love lives of Katie, Trudi, Jessica and Siobhan left them heartbroken, as the BBC One drama starring Sarah Parish, Sharon Small, Shelley Conn and Orla Brady returns. However, while their friendships are still as strong as ever, their lives have changed a lot...

Having moved on from her first love with lesbian Alex, Jessica has been swept off her feet by playboy Mark, and the ultimate commitment-phobe is getting married. However, her friends discover things are not as straightforward as they thought when Jessica starts kissing a handsome stranger on her hen night.

Meanwhile, Katie's suspension from practicing medicine has come to an end and she is ready for her first day on the oncology ward, where her new boss is Jack, an old flame from medical school. Katie has sworn off men, but it doesn't take long before she attracts the attention of Dan, a surgeon at the hospital. Reluctantly, Katie gives in to Dan's charms and invites him on a strictly platonic date to Jessica's wedding.

Trudi and Richard's relationship is still going strong, but money is tight and life is chaotic. Trudi decides to take matters into her own hands and tries to earn some extra cash by making cakes. But Trudi starts to feel there's something lacking in her relationship, and when Richard suggests they should live together to make their hectic lives easier, her romantic sensibilities are offended.

To those on the outside, Siobhan seems to be living the perfect life with house-husband Hari and daughter Elsa. Even Elsa's biological dad, Dominic, is settling into a regular family routine. However, Siobhan and Hari's relationship is far from perfect and Siobhan is hiding a very dark secret...

Katie is played by Sarah Parish, Trudi by Sharon Small, Jessica by Shelley Conn, Siobhan by Orla Brady, Mark by Oliver Milburn, Jack by Steven Brand, Dan by Mark Umbers, Richard by Patrick Baladi, Hari by Raza Jaffrey and Dominic by Adam Rayner. PPR

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Damages Ep 1/13

Sunday 15 February

10.20-11.20pm BBC ONE

• Feature

Glenn Close returns as Patty Hewes, the revered and reviled high-stakes litigator

The highly anticipated second season of the award-winning legal thriller starring Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons) and Rose Byrne (Marie Antoinette) comes to BBC One.

Oscar winners William Hurt (Children Of A Lesser God) and Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock, Mystic River) join the cast for the new 13-part series following the turbulent lives of the revered and reviled high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes (Close) and her ambitious protégé, Ellen Parsons (Byrne) – now working with the FBI to bring Patty down.

As Ellen struggles to deal with her fiancé's murder, an old acquaintance reappears to seek Patty's help in protecting him from an employer's deadly revenge.

In the wake of the successful, but deadly, lawsuit against billionaire Arthur Frobisher, Ellen is in therapy to deal with her fiancé's murder and is co-operating with a federal investigation of Patty. Opting to take a break from her legal practice, Patty has turned her attention to a mammoth charitable foundation she is starting with billionaire businessman Samuel Arsenault.

After learning that Frobisher was shot but not killed, Ellen sends a private investigator to find him. As Frobisher looks to conceal his whereabouts, Patty receives a box of papers for safekeeping from a former expert witness, Daniel Purcell.

Later, Patty invites Ellen for a drink to discuss something she never revealed about the Frobisher case. As Ellen poses as Frobisher's ex-wife in an aborted effort to kill him, Purcell is contacted by a shady operative to discuss the information he has that could incriminate a big corporate client. And as Patty agrees to take on a class action suit in an infant morality case, Purcell pleads for her to help him, too. Finally, as Patty tells Ellen that she had a daughter who died in childbirth, the murder of Purcell's wife prompts Patty to step in and help him.

Damages is written by Todd Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman.

Glenn Close stars as Patty Hewes, Zachary Booth Dorff as Michael Hewes, Rose Byrne as Ellen Parsons, Tom Aldredge as Uncle Pete, Tate Donovan as Tom Shayes, Brett Cullen as The Middleman, William Hurt as Daniel Purcell, Alexandra Daddario as Lily Arsenault, Timothy Olyphant as Wes Krulik, James Naughton as Samuel Arsenault, Ted Danson as Arthur Frobisher and Mario Van Peebles as Agent Randall Harris.

CI2