Browse 185 movies from BBC Four
Documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.
Oct 2009
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
Set and filmed at the iconic Maida Vale studios, The Dead Room tells the story of a long-running radio horror series and its veteran presenter and national treasure Aubrey Judd. But times are changing. Tastes are shifting. There’s a new young producer. Whatever happened to the classic ghost stories? The good old days? Aubrey soon discovers that all is not quiet in the eerie radio studio and that elements of his own past are not as dead and buried as he perhaps hoped…
Dec 2018
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
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 and bodhran player Kevin Conneff, flautist Matt Molloy and band leader Paddy Moloney, who plays pipes and whistle - and tributes from fans including Keith Richards, Sting, Elvis Costello, Sir James Galway and Andrea Corr.
Mar 2008
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
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
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
Fleetwood Mac are one of the biggest-selling bands of all time and still on the road. Their story, told in their own words, is an epic tale of love and confrontation, of success and loss. Few bands have undergone such radical musical and personal change. The band evolved from the 60s British blues boom to perfect a US West Coast sound that saw them sell 40 million copies of the album Rumours. However, behind the scenes relationships were turbulent. The band went through multiple line-ups with six different lead guitarists. While working on Rumours, the two couples at the heart of the band separated, yet this heartache inspired the perfect pop record.
Sep 2009
A look at the story behind Thunderbirds (1965).
Jan 2008
Could dyslexia be a gift? Or can it only ever be a disability? Documentary maker Richard Macer sets off on a road trip with his dyslexic son Arthur to find the answer. En route, they meet Richard Branson and Eddie Izzard, and many other successful dyslexic people. - BBC
Sep 2018
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
Filmed in black and white at the Theater Singer in Laren, The Netherlands on March 25th, 1965, this short concert features the Big O performing hits from the classic catalogue of songs he recorded for the American independent label Monument in the early 60s.
Mar 1965
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 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
The remarkable story of a pioneering aviator from Ulster during World War I.
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
Music concert from 1971 featuring American singer-songwriter James Taylor, with a special guest appearance by Carole King.
Nov 1971
Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how we have created machines that can simulate, augment, and even outperform the human mind - and why we shouldn't let this spook us. He reveals the story of the pursuit of AI, the emergence of machine learning and the recent breakthroughs brought about by artificial neural networks. He shows how AI is not only changing our world but also challenging our very ideas of intelligence and consciousness. Along the way, we'll investigate spam filters, meet a cutting-edge chatbot, look at why a few altered pixels makes a computer think it's looking at a trombone rather than a dog and talk to Demis Hassabis, who heads DeepMind and whose stated mission is to 'solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else'. Stephen Hawking remarked 'AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation. Or the worst'. Jim argues that AI is a potent new tool that should enhance our lives, not replace us.
Robert Wyatt is one of the best-kept secrets of contemporary British music. Drummer and vocalist in Soft Machine which played with Hendrix and Pink Floyd in their heyday, he split from the group in the late 1960s and started recording solo albums. A fall from a window left Wyatt confined to a wheelchair, but he continued recording, even in hospital. His most well-known song is probably Shipbuilding, a protest against the Falklands war written for him by Elvis Costello, while his 1997 album Schleep won acclaim as one of the best albums of the past 10 years. In addition to performance footage of the famously retiring musician, the documentary contains interviews with John Peel, Brian Eno, Annie Whitehead, Alfie and Robert Wyatt himself.
Nov 2001