SATURDAY 20 January
Private Passions (12 noon R3). University of North London architecture Prof. Robert Harbison chooses music.
Inauguration of the President (4.30 BBC2, also Sky News and elsewhere). George W. Bush live from Washington.
? (6.00 UK Horizons). Re-run (from BBC1 last August) of primates series with Dr. Charlotte Uehlenbroek begins with her getting close to gorillas in Rwanda and lemurs on Madagascar.
? – The Man from Madras (7.30 BBC2). About the success of southern Indian IT professionals.
Queen Victoria (8.00 R4). Amanda Foreman with archive recordings of people who knew the queen, or attended her funeral.
The Rise and Rise of Animal Rights (8.00 C4, also Sunday same time). Two-parter on changing attitudes to animals ranging from Desmond Morris’s Zoo Time on 1950s television via Jane Goodall’s chimps to current hunt saboteurs and anti-vivisectionists. Peter Singer and Roger Scruton are among those taking opposing positions. (Programme one is an interesting historical survey that seems to have little sympathy for the extremes - likely to be given a last-minute 'tweak'.)
? (8.15 BBC2). Part three: “The Empire of the Mind”. On the Peloponnesian War and Socrates. Last of disappointingly superficial US-made series which should really have been entitled The Athenians in the sixth and fifth centuries BC .
Coconut Revolution (11.50 C4). About the “world’s first true eco-revolution” on the Papua New Guinean island of Bougainville, where the activities of a copper-mining company were targeted. ? – The Long Struggle for Freedom and ?
SUNDAY 21 January
Two Thousand Years (11.30 am ITV). The seventh century in Christianity (revised repeat).
Five Live Report – Bushwhacked (12 noon R5). The shortcomings of the Florida voting system.
? (12.15 R3). Pianist Robert Levin on improvisation; organist Gillian Weir on her sixtieth birthday.
Performing Verdi (4.45 R3). The different versions of La Forza del Destino (NB: next Saturday is Verdi day on R3).
An Inequitable Life (5.00 R4). A Money Box special on the collapse of Equitable Life and its consequences.
Fairy-tale Economics (5.40 R4). Bridget Rosewell on The Elves and the Shoemaker – and its lessons concerning profit, loss and exploitation.
? : The Romantic Road (5.45 R3). Julian Evans meets Czech writers Ivan Klima, Michal Viewegh and Jachym Topal and talks about Kafka and other influences.
? (6.00 C4). A mid-Wales site that “in archaeological terms, is too good to be true”.
The Rise and Rise of Animal Rights (8.00 C4). Part two: after yesterday’s survey of animal rights ideas from the 1960s onwards, today’s is scheduled to look at Britain’s 1995 veal protests, and activists who target scientists involved in animal experiments.
The Day the World Took Off (8.00 History Channel). Another chance to see one of last year’s most interesting series, originally shown on Channel 4 last May and June. Using the first railway journey from Liverpool to Manchester (in 1830) as a framework, it sets out to explain the Industrial Revolution’s origins in north-west England. An academic team explore the world for evidence of other countries’ technological development, or lack of it; later programmes go back in time in search of earlier breakthroughs in technology.
The World at War (8.05 BBC2). Part two: Churchill replaces Chamberlain; the Nazis enter eastern Europe.
? : The Accidental President (10.15 BBC1). Gavin Hewitt on the Bush dynasty and the new man in the White House.
Scene by Scene (11.25 BBC2). Mark Cousins interviews Tom Hanks.