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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 189 movies from BBC Four
In the years following the American war a young woman from Hanoi teaches in a rural school in the south. There she meets a troubled young man, and they have a brief romance that she recalls wistfully years later in her unhappy marriage.
Apr 1994
New Order's Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert unpack a playlist of electro, pop and new wave classics spanning four decades. Stephen and Gillian have been married for 24 years and have been in New Order together for even longer, but they still manage to surprise one another with their musical tastes. While Stephen declares Captain Beefheart an early influence, Gillian confesses her teenage love for a disco classic. During an hour of top tunes, Stephen also reveals the moment he was mistaken for Stevie Wonder, and Gillian recalls how her Dad was a fan of punk. From Kraftwerk to Can, David Bowie to Kate Bush, Magazine to Grace Jones and many more, this stellar playlist by Stephen and Gillian is brimming with iconic performances.
Oct 2018
A look at the late-80s BBC series Star Cops, which followed the adventures of the International Space Police Force in the year 2027.
Nov 2006
The story of The Shadows to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary, using unseen archive, personal testimony and interviews with both the band and those they have influenced.
May 2020
Brit Award-winner Sam Fender goes in search of a musical hero from another era - the late, great, Alan Hull of Lindisfarne, in this one-off BBC Four documentary.
Nov 2021
Doris Day has often been dismissed as an actress and overlooked as a singer, despite career highs such as Calamity Jane and Pillow Talk. Covering her early years as a band singer, and her troubled private life, this documentary re-evaluates one of the screen's most enduring legends.
Sep 2007
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 remarkable stories of the men and women who discovered the truth about the cosmos. NOTHING: science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim Al-Khalili can prove it.
Mar 2011
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 wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.
Dec 2019
Historian Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of a centuries-old masterpiece in glass. At 78 feet in height, the famous East Window at York Minster is the largest medieval stained-glass window in the country and it was the creative vision of a single artist - a mysterious master craftsman called John Thornton, one of the earliest named English artists. The East Window of York Minster is far more than a work of artistic genius, it is a window onto the medieval world and the medieval mind - telling us who were once were and who we still are, all preserved in the most fragile medium of all.
Oct 2011
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 diaries he kept
Mar 2006
Short documentary of the making of Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur (2004).
Aug 2004
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.
Jan 2016
With new interviews with the actors and production team, this documentary reveals the inspiration for stories, outlines how the team knew they were upsetting the government and big business, and explains why Robert Powell left at the height of its popularity.
Rapper Rodney P. presents the story of Britain's second wave of pirate radio DJs. In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations appeared broadcasting from London tower blocks.
Sep 2017
The Old Grey Whistle Test presents Rod's Christmas Concert featuring The Rod Stewart Group performing on stage at The Olympia, London. With a new introduction to the 1976 programme by Bob Harris, the performances include Maggie May, Sailing, Tonight's the Night and I Don't Want to Talk About It.
Dec 1976
It is five times hotter than the sun and turns sand to glass in an instant. It can shoot 80 kilometres up above storm clouds. And it may even have provided the original spark that created life itself. This pacy, stylish documentary reveals the full power of lightning, why it is so dangerous, and what scientists are doing to protect us. Statistically, you are most likely to be struck in Florida, playing golf on a Sunday in July. Hear victims tell touching stories of the real experience, and why they feel it has changed them forever. View cockpit footage of NASA pilots flying through active lightning storms and find out why some scientists think the pollution in big cities could be 'baiting' lightning on an incredible scale. The more we learn about this maverick force of nature, it seems, the more we have to fear...
Nov 2004
A short documentary about the 1980's Sci-fi show, The Tripods, that didn't really have that many Tripods in it. It took producer Richard Bates 15 years to get John Christopher's trilogy The Tripods on to our screens, and even then it was never finished.
Dec 2006
Van Morrison showcases tracks from albums including Keep It Simple, Magic Time and Vanlose Stairway, backed by a full band and joined by guests including guitarist Mick Green and organ maestro Georgie Fame.
Feb 2008
Thousands of black soldiers fought in the First World War. Poet Jackie Kay tells the story of one of them - Arthur Roberts. Arthur grew up in Glasgow and joined the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1917.
Nov 2018
The extraordinary story of the most disturbing witch trial in British history and the key role played in it by one nine-year-old girl. Jennet Device, a beggar-girl from Pendle in Lancashire, was the star witness in the trial in 1612 of her own mother, her brother, her sister and many of her neighbours and, thanks to her chilling testimony, they were all hanged.
Aug 2011