Movies: Bbc Four

Profile of the band who has helped to save Irish traditional music from disappearing, spreading its sound and popularity across the world for more than four decades. Featuring interviews with the current four members - fiddler Sean Keane, vocalist an...

Ant colonies are one of the wonders of nature: complex, organised… and mysterious. This programme reveals the secret, underground world of the ant colony, in a way that’s never been seen before. At its heart is a massive, full-scale ant nest, specia...

The extraordinary story of comedian Bob Monkhouse's life and career, told through the vast private archive of films, TV shows, letters and memorabilia that he left behind....

what is everything, and what is nothing? Professor Jim Al-Khalili explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness. EVERYTHING: what the universe might actually look like and the remarka...

Over twenty-five years after his death in July 1989, the controversial Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan remains an enigma. He was the most successful conductor in the history of classical music. Many of his recordings - of Italian opera, of Wag...

Combining European musical influences, perfect production and lyrics of love and loss, ABBA made us fall in love with the sound of Swedish melancholy. This documentary explores the music of ABBA and chronicles how they conquered both Sweden and Brita...

Michael Palin visits the Baltimore apartment gallery of Etta and Claribel Cone, wealthy American sisters who amassed one of the world's finest collections of modern French art....

Profile of veteran country singer Emmylou Harris, witnessing the heady success of her career while also discussing her late flowering of intensely personal and groundbreaking music, dealing with loss and the passing years....

Katherine Ryan presents a celebration of one of the biggest comedy talents to ever appear on the small screens – the razor-sharp-tongued first lady of laughter, Joan Rivers....

Dr Michael Mosley investigates Britain's most secretive and controversial military research base, Porton Down, on its 100th anniversary. He comes face to face with chemical and biological weapons old and new, reveals the truth about shocking animal a...

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his ...

An all star cast unite to perform a distinctive BBC Wales Television adaptation of Dylan Thomas's radio play, presented in collaboration with National Theatre Wales, to mark the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth. The plot reveals the innermost though...

The exquisite Rosslyn Chapel is a masterpiece in stone. It used to be one of Scotland's best-kept secrets, but it became world-famous when it was featured in Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code....

On October 5th 1962, the Beatles released their first single, Love Me Do. It was a moment that changed music history and popular culture forever. It was also an extraordinary year in social and cultural history, not just for Liverpool but for the wor...

Kenneth Williams was the star of the Carry Ons and Round the Horne. Despite his fame, he led a life full of mental torture as he tried to overcome his homosexuality in 1950s Britain. This film follows his life and eventual death based on the many dia...

On September 15th 2008, the day of the the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £60 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemp...

Jake Chapman explores why Goya's The Disasters of War etchings are so central to his own art and explains why, for him, there is a fundamental conflict at the heart of Goya's art....

The BBC Symphony Orchestra perform a live soundtrack in this premier stage adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes thriller....

Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most influential musicians and poets of the last 50 years. In Don Letts's documentary, Gil tells his own story for the first time-from being one of the first black children to integrate an all white Southern state schoo...

David Hepworth interviews Mick Jagger about his career with The Rolling Stones and his solo work. Includes film clips and videos spanning Jagger's career....