The BBC Four Thread

An outbreak of a deadly virus in Antwerp will be the focus of the latest Saturday night foreign drama on BBC4, with the broadcaster also due to show the new series of The Bridge and French cop series, Spiral.
The Belgian city is sealed off from the outside world in the 10-part thriller, Cordon, following the discovery of a contagious and deadly virus which brings out the very best of the people trapped inside, but also the very worst.

Other new series include a season of programmes exploring the nation’s fascination with all things Gothic across BBC3 and BBC4 and a series of Storyville films about love in the 21st century.

Elsewhere, Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman will join Lucy Worsley to tell the story of British dance in a three-part series, Dancing Cheek to Cheek.

Other new BBC4 shows already announced include metal detector sitcom The Detectorists, starring Mackenzie Crook, and Puppy Love from Getting On co-creators, The Thick of It star Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine.
The gothic season will include programmes about Frankenstein, gothic architecture and a goth music special featuring The Cure, Sisters of Mercy and The Mission.

A new documentary, Spider House, will feature a gothic family house taken over by spiders, showing “in unprecedented detail” the secret world of the spider, while three-part Treasures of the Indus will explore the treasures of the Indian Subcontinent.

The three-part love season will include 100 Years of Love and Courtship, featuring the “very first kisses ever caught on film” with a soundtrack by Richard Hawley, a documentary about a Japanese love hotel and 112 Weddings, about 112 weddings.

Tony Jordan takes us into the pages of Great Expectations for a bit of textual and authorial analysis.

Using the author’s own private manuscripts, Jordan explores how the serialized form may have shaped Dickens’ storytelling – there are more cliffhangers in Oliver Twist than the old Doctor Who – and why he performed a last-minute rewrite to give Pip and Estrella a happy ending.

Other works to be featured are Shakespeare’s First Folio of plays, with a focus on King Lear; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and The Mabinogion.

evilivor wrote: »

Proud, sad day for BBC Four as "Only Connect" departs for BBC Two - I hope they don't try and dumb it down.

Created by Mackenzie Crook, Detectorists follows Andy, a wannabe archaeologist who, alongside his friend Lance, spends time in muddy fields with a metal detector and a packed lunch, dreaming of finding that priceless Saxon hoard that will make them rich and cement their place in detecting history.

The satirical show Spitting Image began during Margaret Thatcher's government and lasted to the end of John Major's. The puppets themselves became almost as famous as the politicians they represented, and in 2000 were auctioned at Sotheby's. The programme traces where they now reside, and meets the caricaturists, mould-makers, writers, directors and the rest of the team who worked tirelessly to make the series a success. It also investigates what the show got right, what it got wrong, and whether its 17-year absence has left a hole in the modern broadcasting schedule. Includes contributions by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and John Lloyd

brian_t wrote: »

The next year 1987 the same award was won by The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

Plenty of notice for this starting next week on Tuesday at 10.00pm.

It stars Patricia Hodge, Dennis Waterman and Julie T. Wallace. I remember watching it at the time but I haven't seen it since. I don't remember enough of it to comment further.

http://www9.tvcatchup.com/programme/476708/the-life-and-loves-of-a-she-devil