Counter Culture

Highlights this week include: Britain’s Big Cat Mystery, The Missing Hancocks: Prime Minister Hancock on BBC Radio 4 and Jimmy Carr Destroys Art.

Saturday 22 October 2022

Three Days in June: The Story of the D-Day Forecast PBS America 7.30pm

For a few tense days in June 1944, the success of the greatest military invasion the world had ever seen depended on weather readings taken by Maureen Sweeney at the remote Blacksod weather station on Ireland’s west coast.

Sunday 23 October 2022

Afghanistan’s Top Porn Star Channel 4 10.15pm

Afghanistan’s top porn star Yasmeena Ali shares her story. From fleeing the Taliban, to surviving her father and uncle’s murder plot, Yasmeena has defied all the odds to pursue her career.

The Murder of Emmett Till PBS America 10.50pm

In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly flirted with a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn’t understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including their tale of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till’s death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

Kings of Coke (2022) Sky Documentaries 9on

A ragtag gang of Irish bank robbers from Montreal rose to become one of North America’s most feared criminal organizations.

Monday 24 October 2022

A Bloody Legacy: The War Continues (1/2) PBS America 6.15pm and 10.50pm

Having been dominated by the defeated empires of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary, the peoples of Eastern Europe had hoped for self-determination at the end of WWI. But it soon unfolded that armed conflict didn’t end at all – on the contrary. Poland fought against Russia and chaos prevailed in the Baltic States as well.

Today’s Ukraine was split up between Poland and Russia. This gave rise to an underground movement led by Stepan Bandera, a man who is still revered as a national hero in West Ukraine. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Bandera saw an opportunity for his independence movement. His troops take up arms to fight alongside the Wehrmacht. As German soldiers occupied today’s Lemberg in West Ukraine, pogroms were carried out against the Jews – allegedly with the participation of Bandera’s Ukraine nationalists.

Foyle’s War ITV3 10pm Monday-Friday, 24th-28th October

Another chance to catch the much-loved World War II-set mystery drama series, starring Michael Kitchen as the razor-sharp Hastings detective Christopher Foyle. Foyle is unhappy not to be on the front lines of the battle against Britain’s enemies, but he soon learns that the role he plays is in no way a small one as the war has intensified the heinous nature of domestic crime carried out against innocent people

America: The War Within ITV 11.05pm

In advance of America’s crucial midterm elections on 8 November 2022 Robert Moore examines widespread fears for the sanctity of the country’s political system.

Moore – named Journalist of the Year for his reporting of the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021 – investigates whether an attempt is now being made by Donald Trump and his Republican supporters to ensure their 2020 defeat and the “stolen” election never happens again.

Moore explores the machinations on the ground in contested electoral battlegrounds – from the deserts of Arizona to the remote mountains of Montana, where both sides cry foul over what seems to be an increasingly vulnerable electoral system.

With faith in the system becoming seriously undermined, and violent rhetoric becoming the norm, are we witnessing the demise of democracy in the world’s ‘greatest superpower’? This film will explore a country at a crossroads and ask whether it risks being destroyed from within.

Tuesday 25 October 2022

The Missing Hancocks: Prime Minister Hancock (4/8) BBC Radio 4

Hancock stands for Parliament, with no success whatsoever. But in his dreams he’s swept to power on a landslide, and the country salutes….Prime Minister Hancock.

Jimmy Carr Destroys Art Channel 4 9.15pm

Is it okay to burn artworks, even if Hitler painted them? This is the question being posed by Jimmy Carr Destroys Art. It seems that Channel 4 has bought a painting by the dictator as a prop in this televised debate, where participants will decide if Jimmy should destroy it using a hammer and various other implements. Also under the hammer, as it were, will be works by convicted sex abusers Rolf Harris and Eric Gill, and other ‘problematic’ artists. Where will people draw the line?

Frankie Boyle’s New World Order (1/7)

A welcome return for this darkly funny programme but how will he find anything in current UK politics to mock?

Wednesday 26 October 2022

Talking Pictures: Time to Remember 7.30pm

A gang of jewel thieves rob a house which has just become empty following the recent death of it’s rich lady owner. The robbery is not a complete success and one of the gang hides the jewels in the house as he’s about to be captured.

Voices of Ireland (2/2) 9pm Sky Arts

Voices of Ireland explores the works of some of Ireland’s most famous novelists, poets and playwrights.

Thursday 27 October 2022

Inside Russia: Putin`s War At Home ITV 10.45pm

Friday 28 October 2022

Britain’s Big Cat Mystery BLAZE 9pm

Feature length documentary exploring the unusual phenomenon of the UK’s sightings of large cats. The Beast of Bodmin, the Highland Panther and the Fen Tiger, myth or reality?

Selections by Henry Falconer and Patrick Harrington