Bbc Four Movies

Ardal O'Hanlon looks at what started the showband era in Ireland, the people involved, and how it came to an end in the 1980s.

A look back at the life and career of Robbie Coltrane, one of Britain's best-loved stars and a giant of both the big and the small screen, through a s...

Alastair Sooke takes us on an exclusive personal tour of the Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective at Tate Modern. Offering an in-depth look at one of the ye...

Melvyn Bragg travels from Oklahoma to California to examine the enduring legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck.

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolut...

Over twenty-five years after his death in July 1989, the controversial Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan remains an enigma. He was the most succe...

Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in...

Documentary celebrating the triumph, tragedy and human comedy that was Manchester record company, Factory. Started by the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasm...

Yehudi Menuhin was the 20th century's greatest violinist. He was a child prodigy but the man behind the violin was harder to know. Endlessly touring a...

Rory Bremner looks back at the life and career of Mike Yarwood, master of the imitation game and one of the BBC's most successful stars of the 1970s a...

The programme shows Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie's fascination with music from an early age, listening to the sounds of Elvis and Aretha Franklin b...

Robert Wyatt is one of the best-kept secrets of contemporary British music. Drummer and vocalist in Soft Machine which played with Hendrix and Pink Fl...

Dennis Wilson was the drummer in the Beach Boys. And he was the real Beach Boy. In a band of geeks who sang about surfing, cars and girls, Dennis was...

Despite the mantra of 'live fast, die young', Britain's first rock 'n' roll generations are now enjoying old age. What was once about youth and taking...

A look at the history of America's multi-billion dollar missile defence system, from President Eisenhower to Reagan and Bush.

Virginia Woolf said that Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventure...

TB is the most deadly infectious disease in history - it has killed over a billion people in the last 200 years. Multi-BAFTA winning film-maker, Jezza...

Materialist scientist Professor Mark Miodownik challenges two-Michelin-star chef Marcus Wareing to the ultimate cookery competition. Over the course o...

Documentary following English folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention as they celebrate their 45th anniversary in 2012. Fairport's iconic 1969 album Li...

Stephen Smith explores the extraordinary life and work of the virtuoso jeweller Carl Faberge. He talks to HRH Prince Michael of Kent about Faberge ite...