Menu
© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 187 movies from BBC Four
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Mandrin Cave in southern France has been attracting the attention of archaeologists for 30 years. The cave was regularly occupied in prehistoric times, and a remarkable record of human habitation going back thousands of years has been preserved by its soils. In 2015, the remains of a Neanderthal were uncovered, and the archaeological evidence points to this individual, named Thorin, living in close proximity to newly arrived Homo sapiens. This documentary follows an international team of scientists as they discover and investigate precious relics of the Paleolithic period, resulting in groundbreaking revelations about the human populations of around 50,000 years ago as researchers uncover some of the secrets of the Mandrin Cave.
Sep 2025
Jan 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
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
A look at the story behind Thunderbirds (1965).
Jan 2008
Short documentary of the making of Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur (2004).
Aug 2004
A look at the history of America's multi-billion dollar missile defence system, from President Eisenhower to Reagan and Bush.
Nov 2003
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
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
A sharp, witty, mind-expanding and exuberant foray into the world of logic with Computer Scientist Dave Cliff. Following in the footsteps of the award-winning The Joy of Stats and its sequel, Tails You Win - The Science of Chance, The Joy of Logic takes viewers on a new Wingspan roller-coaster ride through philosophy, maths, science and technology all of which, under the bonnet, run on logic. Wielding the same wit and wisdom, animation and gleeful nerdery as its predecessors, this film journeys from Aristotle to Alice in Wonderland, Sci-Fi to Supercomputers to tell the fascinating story of the quest for certainty and the fundamentals of sound reasoning itself.
Dec 2013
A witty and mind-expanding exploration of data, with mathematician Dr Hannah Fry. This high-tech romp reveals what data is and how it is captured, stored, shared and made sense of. Fry tells the story of the engineers of the data age, people most of us have never heard of despite the fact they brought about a technological and philosophical revolution.
Jul 2016
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