Following her acclaimed documentary series Lefties and Jews, film-maker Vanessa Engle's new three-part documentary, Women, comes soon to BBC Four. Coinciding with International Women's Day on Monday 8th March, Women will see Engle turn her attention to sexual politics, charting the rise of feminism and interrogating its impact on contemporary women's lives.
My word. We all know that the BBC are really good at making Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC One, Wednesday, 15 July, 9pm) but last night's show was a real stonker. Davina McCall starred and to be honest, I thought it was going to be a good 'un. Her personal life alone would make an excellent show in itself and, regardless of what you think of her professionally, there's no hiding from the fact that she seems like a really likeable gal. Delving beyond her life, things got more interesting that I could've ever imagined!
Related: Who Do You Think You Are? section
Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC One, Wednesday, 15 July, 9pm) is the kind of show that only the BBC could make. At least, it feels that way when you're watching. Treading the tricky line of saccharine and investigative perfectly, it's little wonder that it's always been a ratings heavyweight when aired. This week, it returns with Davina McCall looking through her back pages and beyond. Intriguingly, she's off in search of an ancestor that her family has long believed to be the illegitimate son of King George IV. Are we going to see some kind of coronation?
Related: More Who Do You Think You Are?
It must have been a year ago this week when I wrote a very similar Set The Video post, as this new episode of Alan Yentob's arts show Imagine...is about the main event at the Manchester International Festival - just like last year. 12 months ago, the programme concentrated on Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's opera Monkey: Journey To The West, and once again it's an opera written by a pop star that's grabbing all the headlines.
Related: Set The Video - Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy!
"There's these new legal highs". Hang on! Hang on stupid. Ever heard of glue? Aerosols? Paint thinner? Standing up a bit too quickly? Licking toads? Anyway, never mind all that. I've been aware of legal highs, As Sold In Shops, for well over a decade. I imagine they've been around longer than that too. However, that didn't stop George Lamb doing the whole 'There's A New Danger!' schtick in last night's Can I Get High Legally? (BBC Three, Thursday, 2 July, 9pm).
Related: Should I Smoke Dope?
"And we are here as on a darkling plain; Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight, Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Adam Curtis is a genius. He's been making documentaries for television and leaving all destroyed in his wake. He's given us The Century of the Self, The Trap - What Happened to our Dream of Freedom, the incredible The Power of Nightmares and provided a short documentary which appeared in Charlie Brooker's News Wipe. Now, taking TV Scoop into new territory, along with the Punchdrunk Theatre Co, he's made a documentary that you can't see on TV... but worth covering on these pages all the same.
Related: Our Charlie Brooker Interview | News Wipe Review
NASA's moon missions have been a constant source of debate. Did we? Didn't we? I don't care perhaps as much as I should as I like both stories equally. However, there's a key word in the questions asked, and possibly the most potent. When concerning the lunar landings and the like, for once, the human race refers to itself as 'we'. Nothing pulls us all together like our endeavours in space. So with the anniversary of the moon landing, the BBC has gone nuts, giving us a spate of shows full of ace spaceships and cool boiler suits. However, if the immense danger of these missions need to be underlined, then last night's NASA: Triumph and Tragedy (BBC Two, Wednesday, 1 July, 9pm) absolutely nailed it.
Related: James May on the Moon
"It's emotional, and, I'm not ashamed to admit, not just for him." And so our Anna wrote after watching James May On The Moon, which aired on BBC Two the other week. Now, our Anna doesn't get emotional very easily. She once laughed during a screening of The Puppy Meets The Business End Of A Claw Hammer. This is why we Scoopers don't get invited to The Opening Of An Envelope. Anyway, James May On The Moon was indeed a cracking show and if you'd like to own it and can't be bothered working out how to illegally rip it and install a Div X player or whatever it's called, you'll be pleased to know you can exchange old fashioned cash for a DVD product of the show.
Related: Our James May On The Moon review | Top Gear
Sending celebrities to be Famous, Rich and Homeless (BBC Two, Wednesday, 24 June, 9pm) was always going to send out mixed messages. On one hand, you've got an almost honourable line of wanting to highlight the plight of Britain's homeless by drawing people in with the use of slebs... yet by the same token, it seems a bit trite to get someone to play at being homeless for a while before returning to luxury. It was these two feelings that coursed through me as I watched the show, as the celebrities showed raw emotion and empathy, along with occasional smuggery and shrugging.
Related: Famous, Rich and Homeless preview
After the triumph of the Poetry Season, it seems the Beeb have done it again - the first few programmes in the Moon Season have been absolutely fascinating. But where James May on the Moon was something of a personal, emotional journey, this is much more straight - but no less interesting.
Related: Review - James May On The Moon
"Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused..."
Sexual assault is, to my mind, the worst crime of them all. The idea of being murdered is preferable to the initial assault, then slow torturous anguish and violation that pervades in the fall-out. It's not just a physical assault, it's an attack so personal that it strikes straight through the heart and carves a permanent scar on memory and basic function. In women especially, it robs them of their very essence and can take away the thing that makes them unique and wonderful, turning it into a painful, devastating reminder. Such events can stop a woman from feeling female, which is one of the greatest crimes of all. So, tuning in to Dispatches: Rape in the City (Channel 4, Monday, 22 June, 8pm), we were to face up to this grim aspect of human behaviour and look at sexual assault in Britain and how, depressingly, a large number of these attacks come from the black British community.
With the 40 year anniversary of the first moon landings coming up fast, I'm sure there won't be much getting away from that historic day in mid July, 1969 over the next few weeks. The countdown starts with the BBC's Moon Season, and this first documentary in which James May explores what it takes to walk on unearthly ground...
Related: Coming Soon... The Moon Season
Hot on the heels of the rather triumphant Poetry Season comes another group of programmes from the BBC intended to enlighten and entertain (that's what they do, y'know). This time we're looking at the moon - well, looking at and finding out about, probably - which is always a brilliant subject. In space, but just in reach, it has fascinated us for millennia, and the moon landings in '69 will, I reckon, be one of those moments in the history of man that is never forgotten, no matter how much further we get.
Related: Coming Soon - The BBC's Moon Season | James May's Big Ideas
Ok, who forget to tell me about this? A documentary on comedy songs? Do you not know me at all?! What do you mean I should know about these things? Oh... yes.. that's right. Oh dear. Basically, I love a comedy song - a much maligned genre that in fact takes a hell of lot of talent to get right - but could it really offer enough interesting material to fill a marathon ninety minute documentary?
Related: Our lovely comedy section | Our equally lovely documentary section
Okay. We normally give you a couple of days notice on good shows that are coming up, but this one is too good to be forgotten about. Basically, if you don't mind staying up late tonight, or indeed, want to record something really cool, you really need to catch Tears, Tiaras and Transsexuals (Channel 4, Wednesday, 17 June, 11.10pm) tonight. I've watched this before on More4 and I can't think of many other shows that I've enjoyed watching as much as this! The documentary follows the first ever World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant which was held in, where else, Las Vegas.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (or, the Pre-Raphaelites) were a bunch of painters and writers from England. They got together and decided that they needed to reform art. They believed that everyone else was simply doing it wrong. Well wrong. So wrong that they were corrupting everyone else. The most famous paintings in this field subsequently ended up on middle-class student's bedroom walls. Athletic women with big square jaws and women floating in water looking dead gazed down on scruffy beds with nine throws on, staving off the dread of the encroaching damp spots and mouldy windowsills. And so, ex-art students... or indeed, anyone with an interest in High Brow Stuff, this week gives us all the chance to learn about The Pre-Raphaelites (BBC Four, Wednesday, 17 June, 8pm) in the first of three shows, sub-dubbed, Victorian Revolutionaries.
I was just settling down to the inevitable rout that is tonight's football match, pondering what gem of a post to add to this newly-commentable site, when I remembered a little conversation I had on Twitter last night with Tony Gardner - he of Lead Balloon and the brilliant My Parents Are Aliens. Well, a rather one-sided conversation, admittedly, but we were tweeting about the same thing at the same time and that's close enough.
Related: More Springwatch Watch on TVScoop
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The wholesome Kate Humble's words, not mine, but I agree with the sentiment. Pensthorpe in Norfolk is looking especially lovely in the beautiful late-evening sun we've been treated to over the last couple of weeks, and the flora and fauna are putting on a great show for Chris, Kate, Simon and the Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen/James May hybrid.
From: Set The Video: The Men Who Jump Off Buildings, Channel 4, Wednesday, 28 July, 9pm