Sunday 24th of October 2021
Wetherspoons: how do they do it? Channel 5, 8 pm I admit to using Spoons regularly for food and drink. Mainly because it is incredibly cheap. This programme looks at how it achieves this.
Monday, 25 October 2021
Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, BBC2. 10 pm A welcome return for this sardonic take on the news from Frankie and his guests.
King Arthur, Sky Arts, 9 pm. Performance of is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Henry Purcell and a libretto by John Dryden. If you are expecting tales of Camelot you will be disappointed. The plot is based on the battles between King Arthur’s Britons and the Saxons. It includes Cupid and Venus plus references to the Germanic gods of the Saxons, Woden, Thor, and Freya. The tale centres on Arthur’s endeavours to recover his fiancée, the blind Cornish Princess Emmeline, who has been abducted by his arch-enemy, the Saxon King Oswald of Kent.
Tuesday 26th of October 2021
Who Was Frida Kahlo? Sky Arts 12 pm. Just who was this artist? This seeks to answer that question with a journey through her key works. Using letters Kahlo wrote to guide us, this reveals her deepest emotions and unlocks the secrets and symbolism contained within her art. It highlights the source of her feverish creativity, her resilience, and her lust for life, politics, men and women.
Sky Arts Book Club, Oliver and Elizabeth Day host as members of the Idle readers bookclub from Manchester meet Ian Rankin. Plus, Delia Owens talks via Zoom from America.
Barry Humphries on the music Hitler Banned, Sky Arts, 10 pm. Comedian Barry Humphries examines the innovative and powerful music and art of the post-world war one Weimar Republic. The film details how Barry first became acquainted with these works which were so hated by the Nazis and takes him to Vienna to find out more about the artists who had to flee and start new lives elsewhere.
Black Klansman, Film4, 10 pm Spike Lee’s dark comedy with John David Washington and Adam Driver. Can a black detective infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan?
Wednesday 27th of October 2021
Utopia in search of the dream, BBC4, 12 am. Can utopian visions for living ever reconcile the tension between the group and the individual? Richard Clay travels to America, where he encounters experimental communities, searching for greater meaning in life. Richard visits a former Shaker village in New Hampshire and immerses himself for a day at the Twin Oaks eco-commune in Virginia, where residents share everything, even clothes. He looks back at the grand urban plans for the masses of the 20th-century utopian ideologies, from the New Deal housing projects of downtown Chicago to the concrete sprawl of a Soviet-era housing estate in Vilnius, Lithuania. He also meets utopian architects with a continuing faith that humanity’s lot can be improved by better design. Interviewees include architect Norman Foster and designer Shoji Sadao.
Thursday, 28 October 2021
Billy Graham, PBS America, 6:30 pm. Explores the life of one of the most influential religious leaders of the 20th century. Billy Graham built media empire and preached to millions worldwide.
And finally a plug for Dune which is on cinema screens now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmu12FH9ydY
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