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Joanna
Lumley –
In The Land Of The Northern Lights
Sunday 7 September
9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE
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Joanna Lumley pursues a
lifelong dream to experience the
Northern Lights Joanna Lumley pursues a life-long dream to track down the elusive and beautiful Northern Lights in this amazing journey in Norway's Far North. Yet with no guarantees that this incredible natural phenomena will appear, it's in the balance as to whether her journey will be in vain or if she will finally fulfil her lifetime ambition and see the Northern Lights herself.
Joanna grew up in tropical Malaysia and, as a little girl, had never seen snow or felt cold. Inspired by the fairy tales and picture books of the North, full of trolls and snow queens, she always longed to make this journey. So compelling was the lure of the North that, aged seven, at a fancy dress party in Kuala Lumpur for the Queen's Coronation in 1953, she insisted on going as a Norwegian girl.
Now at last realising her childhood dream, she travels North across the Arctic Circle, up through Norway and finally to Svalbard, the most northerly permanently inhabited place on Earth, where she has to cope with temperatures approaching minus 30°C.
Box of pastels in hand, Joanna's journey takes her from train to boat and husky-sled to snowmobile as she is pulled ever northwards by what she calls "the strongest point of the compass". As the anticipation mounts so does Joanna's trepidation that her Arctic journey will be in vain and she won't get to see the Northern Lights.
She explores the romantic fjords of Lofoten. Learning to ride a snowmobile, Joanna speeds across endless expanses of Lapland tundra with a Sami herdsman in search of his reindeer. On nearing the Arctic Ocean, she rests for the night in a hotel made entirely of ice. The fascinating people she meets on her journey north remind Joanna of the reverence in which the mysterious and beautiful Northern Lights are held.
As she seeks this personal Holy Grail, viewers get to see new sides of Joanna, responding with humour and deep emotion to one of the world's most magnificent and extreme environments.
RN
Antiques
Roadshow Ep 1/26
Sunday 7 September
8.00-9.00pm BBC ONE
Feature
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Fiona Bruce sets off around
the UK with the Antiques
Roadshow The team welcomes a new presenter, Fiona Bruce, as she steps away from the news studio on a 10,000-mile journey, exploring some of the most beautiful parts of the country for this new series of Antiques Roadshow. She begins at the atmospheric ruins of Bolton Abbey, near Skipton in North Yorkshire, where thousands of visitors arrive for an appraisal of their treasures.
Among the objects uncovered by the experts is a lambing chair, first used 200 years ago by farmers to offer protection against poor weather while sitting up all night with their flocks. A bullet hung on a key ring reminds one owner how her father narrowly survived the First World War dodging enemy snipers in the trenches. The bullet had been removed from a direct hit in his bottom! And two lucky owners hear the magic word "Faberge" when showing jewellery expert Geoffrey Munn a small trinket that's languished unloved in a cupboard for many years.
Meanwhile, Fiona takes beginner's tips from Roadshow veteran Eric Knowles, who confesses to getting the collecting bug as a young boy when he badgered local greengrocers to give him highly decorated labels and wrappers from boxes of fruit. He warns Fiona that once you've got the bug there's no going back.
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Charley
Boorman –
Ireland To Sydney By Any Means Ep 1/6
Sunday 7 September
8.00-9.00pm BBC TWO
Feature
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Charley Boorman embarks on
his most daring journey to date Gritty adventurer Charley Boorman returns to BBC Two for his most daring journey so far – from Ireland To Sydney By Any Means. Charley gets off his bike and on to local available means of transport to negotiate his way through three continents, 25 countries and over 20,000 miles, avoiding commercial airlines wherever possible. Over land and sea, and on more than 100 different modes of transport including container ships, dugout canoes, solar cars and even a yak, this will be the trip – and challenge – of a lifetime.
In the first episode, the preparations get under way as Charley plans the three-month expedition. A few knock backs, several training courses and some minor route alterations later, the three team members – Charley, Russ Malkin the producer and Mungo the cameraman – are ready.
Kicking off from Charley's home of County Wicklow in Ireland, the trio rev the engines of three classic bikes and head northwards for the shores of Kilkeel. Hopping aboard a scallop trawler they set sail for the Isle of Man, where Charley rides with some of the legends of TT racing. A ferry, taxi and train journey later, Charley is astride his bike once more, heading south to London. He is joined by hundreds of fellow die-hard bikers.
After a pit stop at a well-known biker haunt, Charley gets behind the wheel of a double-decker bus and takes his passengers south to Shoreham-by-Sea to meet a renowned Royal National Lifeboat Institution team. Fully clad in waterproofs and safety gear, Charley boards the boat to continue his journey, heading to Brighton, where he carries on along the mainly coastal road in a four-wheel drive, ending the day in Dover.
They next day, the trio must sail across the Channel. An apprehensive Charley and Russ take their places in a small dingy. Once in open water, the winds pick up and Charley and Russ lose control as the dinghy starts to capsize...
RF
Raymond Blanc (centre) and
inspectors Sarah Willingham
and David Moore are searching
for a couple with both culinary
and business skills The Restaurant is back for a second season and, once again, legendary chef Raymond Blanc is on the hunt for a couple with the culinary and business skills to join him as business partners. Among the hundreds who applied from across Britain, nine couples have been selected to compete for this once-in-a-lifetime prize. The couples include newlyweds, old school chums, partners, mums and dads, a father and daughter and a mother and daughter.
They arrive thrilled but nervous with their dream to run their own restaurant now closer than ever. In this opening show, they meet Raymond for the first time, along with his experienced inspectors: businesswoman Sarah Willingham, who scrutinises and questions their business acumen; and David Moore – a fastidious restaurateur and front-of-house obsessive who watches their standards of service. Raymond makes clear from the outset that this will be no easy journey and that it requires passion, enthusiasm, skill, hard work and a love of food.
But he has a surprise – a challenging test the couples must go through before they get their own restaurant to open and run during the series. It is a chance for each couple to showcase their restaurant concept and their cookery skills: a face-to-face opportunity to prove to Raymond they really deserve this chance. It's a first taste of the high pressure they will be under in the coming weeks. And for Raymond it is something he loves – finding out what his aspiring restaurateurs really know about food, cookery and service.
KA
The couples discover what the keys they randomly selected in the first show of the series will unlock for them, as The Restaurant continues. The empty restaurants could not be more varied – from a thatched country eatery to a sleek glass London showcase, from high street bistro to village gastro-pub. Each couple must take what they find and make it their own.
There are decisions to be made, such as a name for the restaurant and what it should look like, how the tables should be organised, as well as cutlery, décor and ambience and, of course, the menus. The couples have all this to do and only a week until opening night.
Straight away, the strength of the couples' relationships and the compatibility of the restaurant skills they thought they had are tested. Each chef must prove they can plan and run a busy commercial kitchen. Front-of-house partners have to pull in the bookings and keep the customers happy, even if chaos breaks out in the kitchen. The couples have no idea whether they have what it takes until 7pm on opening night.
As always, Raymond's inspectors – Sarah Willingham and David Moore – are in the thick of it, watching and ready to report back. What happens on opening night could decide who stays in with a chance and who faces the return home.
KA
A
Number
Wednesday 10 September
9.00-10.00pm BBC TWO
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Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans star in this
film about about family relationships,
human identity and nature versus nurture Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans star in the screen adaptation of British playwright Caryl Churchill's stage play from 2002, A Number. It is a fascinating study of family relationships, human identity and nature versus nurture.
The potential of erasing the past and starting anew is an appealing one – but at what price?
Salter is confronted by his son, Bernard, demanding answers about his existence only to discover a disturbing secret. He is not his father's son but a clone, and he is not alone. He is one of "a number" – perhaps more than 20 people – who were copied from his father's first son, whom Salter claims was killed in a car crash.
The situation takes a turn for the worse when Salter's first son, the original Bernard, returns to torment his father and his unfortunate clone. With the responsibilities of parenthood bearing down on Salter, and his past coming back to haunt him, a whole manner of unpalatable truths come out. Salter knows he has to face up to this disaster of his own making...
Tom Wilkinson plays Salter and Rhys Ifans plays Bernard 1, Bernard 2 and Michael Black.
LH2
Earth – The Climate Wars Ep 1/3
Sunday 7 September
9.00-10.00pm BBC TWO (Title change 27 August) |
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Dr Iain Stewart presents a
definitive guide to the history of
climate change Global warming, and how to combat it, is arguably the greatest challenge faced today. It has provoked intense debate, changed the way people see the planet and created headlines around the world.
People now know how important the issues are. But when and how did scientists first discover global warming? Why has it led to such a furious debate? And who should be believed?
Presented by Dr Iain Stewart (Earth – The Power Of The Planet), BBC Two's new three-part series, Earth – The Climate Wars, is a thorough and definitive guide to the history of climate change.
In the Seventies, the world seemed to be falling apart; from acid rain to overpopulation and resource depletion, ecological concerns were big news. And it was at this time that climate-change first became a hot political issue. But it wasn't global warming that frightened scientists, it was the complete opposite: a new ice age.
Iain traces the history of climate change from the beginning and examines just how the scientific community managed to get it so wrong back in the Seventies.
Dave Keeling is one of the great unsung heroes of climate-change science. His painstaking measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – from as early as 1958 – gave the world the first hard evidence that levels were increasing.
It wasn't long before concern started to grow that global warming was a reality that could affect the human race in catastrophic ways. In the first episode, Iain looks at the early development of scientific research into the phenomena and uncovers the climate-change science pioneers, including a shadowy, secret organisation of American scientists known as "Jason", who wrote the first official report on global warming as far back as 1979.
However, almost as soon as global warming became an issue of official concern, along came the first sceptics. Iain investigates the origins of the sceptic movement in the Reagan administration in the USA. He shows how most of the arguments that are still being used by the sceptics today originated in a little-known report written in 1981.
By the late Eighties, global warming had become a serious political issue. Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to argue for action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It looked as if the world was uniting to take action. But it turned out to be a false dawn because, in the Nineties, global warming would be transformed into one of the biggest scientific controversies of the modern age.
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