The cover version has always been a staple of the pop charts. Yet it's often been viewed as the poor relation of writing your own songs. This film challenges and overturns that misconception by celebrating an exciting, underrated musical form that has the power to make or break an artist's career. Whether as tribute, reinterpretation or as an act of subversion, the extraordinary alchemy involved in covering a record can create a new, defining version - in some cases, even more original than the original.
For more than 2,000 years, a mathematical riddle has baffled the world’s greatest minds. It’s a problem of such difficulty that it has tormented those brave enough to tackle it. Some have given up in despair. Others have been driven mad. Primes are fundamental to mathematics yet they seem to surface entirely randomly along the number line. But are the primes truly random or is there some hidden pattern? It’s the greatest unsolved problem of mathematics. In The Music of the Primes, Marcus du Sautoy investigates the fascinating story of great mathematicians who have all grappled with the problem of the primes
Documenting the rise of mass air travel, starting with a look at the advent of commercial air travel through to the dropping of prices and the rise of mass air tourism. The series looks at how the system of airports developed, and how they have transformed people's attitudes towards travel and made long distance travel more widely available.
We live in a world ablaze with colour. Rainbows and rainforests, oceans and humanity, Earth is the most colourful place we know of. But the colours we see are far more complex and fascinating than they appear. In this series, Dr Helen Czerski uncovers what colour is, how it works, and how it has written the story of our planet - from the colours that transformed a dull ball of rock into a vivid jewel to the colours that life has used to survive and thrive. But the story doesn't end there - there are also the colours that we can't see, the ones that lie beyond the rainbow. Each one has a fascinating story to tell.
Dr James Fox explores how, in the hands of artists, the colours gold, blue and white have stirred our emotions, changed the way we behave and even altered the course of history.
Dr James Fox tells the story of three cities in three exceptional years - cities whose artists and thinkers, writers and musicians set the world on a new course.
Unnatural Histories is a 3-part British television documentary series produced by the BBC and BBC Natural History Unit. It takes a new look at three of the world's most iconic wildernesses; the Serengeti, Yellowstone National Park and the Amazon and discovers that far from being wild and untouched, each has been shaped over time by man. It was first broadcast on BBC Four 9–23 June 2011.
Vienna was the capital of the Habsburg dynasty and home to the Holy Roman Emperors. From here, they dominated middle Europe for nearly 1,000 years. In this series, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore describes how the Habsburgs transformed Vienna into a multi-national city of music, culture and ideas. Napoleon, Hitler, Mozart, Strauss, Freud, Stalin and Klimt all played their part.
Julia Bradbury sets out on four walks that explore South Africa's claim to be 'a world in one country', going far beyond the normal tourist destinations to a series of increasingly remote locations.
Soul and jazz singer Gregory Porter explores the transcendent power of the popular singing voice in this joyous new series, celebrating everyone from Prince to Whitney, Caruso to Freddie Mercury
Robert Hughes tackles the work and lives of three remarkable 20th-century architects: Albert Speer, Mies van der Rohe, and Antonio Gaudi - whose work did so much to shape the modern world. Hughes looks at how each one used space in different ways to express our response, respectively, to the power of religion (Gaudi), the power of the State (Speer), and the power of the corporation (Mies van der Rohe).
With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of cultural highlights. So what should an art lover see on a flying visit? Art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on entertaining and revealing cultural city breaks, offering surprising new insights into famous locations and uncovering hidden gems and untold stories, as they discover how religion, revolution and trailblazing individuals can shape the art - and soul - of a city.