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Post by marion on Aug 15, 2018 7:53:42 GMT
I saw two documentaries from BBC4 yesterday and I have forgotten the exact titles. I reckon they are both still on iPlayer and I found them very interesting.
The first was called something like The Stolen Maharajah. It was the story of Duleep Singh, the last Sikh Maharaja of Lahore who was deposed at 10, taken into the charge of the British and then came to Britain where he was a bit of a hit at the Victorian court before becoming disenchanted with his lot.
The second was called.something like Abducted! The child actors.if Elizabeth I, and concentrated on one court case of a boy who was snatched from the street and pressed into the service of one of the companies of boy actors. As well as him it gave details of the use of child actors at the time and the legalities thereof.
Both documentaries were aired without the fanfare of those which have big name presenters or expensive budgets but I found them jolly good. I started watching the Fergal Keane series.on Ireland too which I thought was very well done.
Sorry to squash all this in one thread but I am short of time today, and they may also not warrant much space!
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Post by Miranda on Aug 15, 2018 10:07:34 GMT
Ah! They do sound interesting.
I haven't watched much BBC4 recently so will have to check the iPlayer.
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Post by beatxt on Aug 15, 2018 10:57:14 GMT
Here's another: Mark Gatiss on John Minton: The Lost Man of Art was on Monday 13th at 9.00pm and got 5 stars in The Times. It's on my to watch list.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2018 11:27:34 GMT
The Stolen Maharajah: Britain’s Indian Royal was on Sunday 12th of August at 9pm and Abducted-Elizabeth Is Child Actors Mon Aug 6th if that helps.
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Post by vicky on Aug 15, 2018 13:36:04 GMT
I watched the one about Elizabethan child actors and have yet to watch my recording of the Maharaja one. I am also watching Fergal Keane's The Story of Ireland. I always make a point of looking at BBC4's listings because there are some really excellent documentaries which you wouldn't know anything about if you didn't go searching for them. When I'm discussing programmes with friends and I ask if they've watched a certain BBC4 programme, the answer is invariably "No, I never think to look what's on there". The BBC are missing a trick by not making more of this channel.
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Post by Miranda on Aug 15, 2018 13:49:58 GMT
There's often rumours of the BBC getting rid of it.
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Post by thecleaner on Aug 15, 2018 13:51:18 GMT
I lasted about 5 mins with the child actors one.....irritating cartoons was the reason. I was hoping the presenter would be abducted too.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2018 14:59:12 GMT
Loving Fergal Keane's Ireland. I seem to watch BBC4 most nights.
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Post by marion on Aug 17, 2018 19:16:01 GMT
I just watched another one!
Mark Gatiss on John Minton, the lost man of British art. Shown earlier this week and I assume now on iplayer
Gatiss is a huge fan of Minton and was so keen to make this film he paid for it himself when no one would finance it. I had never heard of him!!!!! He was a contemporary of Freud and Bacon (not my cup of tea) but is barely known today. I had seen his cover for Elizabeth David's Mediterranean Cookery (didn't know it was by him of course) but that was about it but I did like the drawings and.paintings MG included. JM crammed an awful lot into his brief life and it was all rather sad by the end. MG didn't say the word.bipolar but he did mention ecstatic gaiety followed by deep despair, so it suggests that. Very well presented and extremely interesting IMHO.
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Post by lugsbug on Aug 18, 2018 8:32:23 GMT
Marion - I watched this on iplayer and enjoyed it too! I had never heard of John Minton but was impressed by his work done in Cornwall and Corsica. Mark Gatiss was excellent - I love his delivery and his enthusiasm was there to see.
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Post by marion on Aug 22, 2018 14:32:42 GMT
I found another one!
Kidnapped: a Georgian Adventure.
Shown on 21 August, this was amazing. I don't like Don Cruikshank much as a presenter with his warbly voice and the film style was a bit too shades of Michael Wood for me, with all these shots of modern life going on in the background, at times quite noisily. But what a story, I was riveted.
It was one of the inspirations for RL Stevenson's Kidnapped. James Annesley was the son of an Irish baron whose father's mistress took against him so he was sent to live in lodgings aged 8. 8!!!! By 12 he was on the streets but taken in by a kindly butcher. When his father died his wicked uncle decided to get rid of him so at 13 he was kidnapped and sent to America as an indentured servant. I won't give away the ending for anyone who, like me, had never heard of him, but it was an astonishing story IMHO.
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Post by undertheparapet on Aug 23, 2018 16:14:23 GMT
That Soho crowd were bigtime users of most recreational substances, and some of them died of it, but, as always with creative people, it’s hard to know if they were users because of the company they kept or whether they hung out in places where they knew they wouldn’t be judged or whether they drifted there for company because of loneliness and depression.
In the end, it seems as though his style and genre of art just fell out of favour, together with his feckless user friends draining him dry and the art world patronising him as being less than a “serious” artist - whatever THAT is.
A horribly familiar tale......I don’t know if Victoria Coren included it in her series about decadence, but every decade for the last 100 or more years seems to have had a version of it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2018 16:50:35 GMT
Ever since the Radio Times moved BBC4 onto their 'front' pages I've been much better at keeping up with what they're showing. I've recorded the child actor one but haven't seen it.
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Post by Delia on Aug 25, 2018 21:42:06 GMT
I look nearly every day to see if there are any little gems hiding on BBC4. Let's face it, some nights there's nothing worth watching on the other channels, so I often seek to broaden my mind, or at least continue with my education!
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Post by marion on Sept 3, 2018 17:33:42 GMT
Hull's Headscarf Heroes. Aired Sunday 2 September. Now on iplayer.
Apparently this was a repeat from last year but I had never seen it and found it very interesting. It was the story of the Hull triple trawler disaster in 1968 and the women's campaign, spearheaded by Lil Bilocca, to improve the woefully inadequate safety arrangements onboard. Of course they met with some quite spectacular sexism and one trawlerman even punched one of them in the face for daring to speak! But I thought it was a well made film with some amazing footage from trawlers and it was very informative about how dangerous the industry was. It was followed by a 30minute discussion programme where Maxine Peake spoke with local women called The Last Testament of Lillian Bilocca. Sadly she died aged 59 and one chap who went to her n funeral said he was expecting the church and streets to be crammed, but there was no one there except for family. Maybe that's what they wanted or maybe she was just forgotten. And yet they got 88 safety provisions enacted.
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Anymore to come?
