BBC four

Patrick follows the grizzly bears that are taking a risk with the weather by leaving their winter dens early. Hungry wolves are struggling to bring down their elk prey in the unusually shallow snow. And for Great Grey owls it's the iciness of the snow that is hampering their hunts. Yellowstone's winter is always one of the most brutal on the planet. But 2016 saw weather records broken, and the wil

As Hetty Wainthropp (Patricia Routledge) reaches retirement age at 60 and faces an uncertain future financially, she decides that the life of a pensioner is not for her and opens a detective agency instead. Armed only with her no-nonsense Lancashire attitude and her notebook, she embarks on a series of criminal investigations. Aided by her teenage sidekick and reformed thief, Geoffrey, and her dev

Play for Today is a British anthology series that originally aired from 1970 to 1984. Featuring a number of original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels, the series produced more than three hundred episodes of high-quality drama. During its run, the show received numerous awards and nominations for superb writing and exemplary performances from the starring cast. Notable act

A documentary in which Alison Steadman talks about her impressive career, featuring archive clips, both treasured and rarely seen, weaved together with sincere testimony from friends and colleagues. The programme contains footage and stills from programmes such as Gavin and Stacey, Abigail's Party, Newshounds, Nuts in May and her early appearances in Frost's Weekly. It progresses from her earliest

With Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Fowlds, Michael Aldridge, John Nettleton, Diana Hoddinott. Classic comedy in which minister Jim Hacker finds himself transported to Number 10. MI5 drops a bombshell – the papers of a recently deceased head of MI5 show that he was, at one stage, spying for Russia. Worse still, he was investigated and cleared by an internal Civil Service Committee of Enqui

Elevated to the highest governmental office in unusual circumstances, the Rt Hon James Hacker MP sets about implementing his dream of reshaping Britain, introducing a host of exciting reforms, reinvigorating the economy and cementing his place in political history as a bold public benefactor and inspiring leader. Nothing less than a root and branch upheaval of the stuffy Whitehall machinery will d

As Hetty Wainthropp (Patricia Routledge) reaches retirement age at 60 and faces an uncertain future financially, she decides that the life of a pensioner is not for her and opens a detective agency instead. Armed only with her no-nonsense Lancashire attitude and her notebook, she embarks on a series of criminal investigations. Aided by her teenage sidekick and reformed thief, Geoffrey, and her dev

On 5 January 1922, world-famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack in his cabin aboard The Quest during his final expedition to the South Pole. Moored in Norway, The Quest was broken apart. However, one of the dockers had the foresight to remove Shackleton's cabin. He took it home and it served as his family's garden shed for three generations. Nearly 100 years after Shack

Time Shift reveals the history of the frozen continent, finding out why the most inhospitable place on the planet has exerted such a powerful hold on the imagination of explorers, scientists, writers and photographers. Antarctica – the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth. Only a handful of people have experienced its desolate beauty – the first explorers set foot here barely a hundred year

Britain's state-of-the-art Antarctic research base Halley VI is in trouble. Built on the Brunt Ice Shelf, it sits atop a massive slab of ice that extends far beyond the Antarctic shoreline. But the ice is breaking apart and just 6km from the station is a ginormous crevasse, which threatens to separate Halley from the rest of the continent, setting the £28 million base adrift on a massive iceberg.

Patrick follows the grizzly bears that are taking a risk with the weather by leaving their winter dens early. Hungry wolves are struggling to bring down their elk prey in the unusually shallow snow. And for Great Grey owls it's the iciness of the snow that is hampering their hunts. Yellowstone's winter is always one of the most brutal on the planet. But 2016 saw weather records broken, and the wil

On 5 January 1922, world-famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack in his cabin aboard The Quest during his final expedition to the South Pole. Moored in Norway, The Quest was broken apart. However, one of the dockers had the foresight to remove Shackleton's cabin. He took it home and it served as his family's garden shed for three generations. Nearly 100 years after Shack

Time Shift reveals the history of the frozen continent, finding out why the most inhospitable place on the planet has exerted such a powerful hold on the imagination of explorers, scientists, writers and photographers. Antarctica – the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth. Only a handful of people have experienced its desolate beauty – the first explorers set foot here barely a hundred year

When Lee Miller returned to New York from Europe in October 1932, newspaper reporters were waiting to greet her as her ship docked. Disembarking in a smart beret and fur-collared coat, she smiled for the journalist from the New York World-Telegram. When he referred to her as 'one of the most photographed girls in Manhattan', she retorted, 'I'd rather take a picture than be one.' Lee Miller is one

Medieval art historian Dr Janina Ramirez tells the incredible story of a book hidden for centuries in the shadows of history, the first book ever written in English by a woman, Julian of Norwich, in 1373. Revelations of Divine Love dared to present an alternative vision of man's relationship with God, a theology fundamentally at odds with the church of Julian's time, and for 500 years the book was

In this celebration of one of Britain's best-loved artists, the illustrator and author Sir Quentin Blake tells the story of his 70-year-long career in his own words and with his own pictures. Specially for this documentary, he has been filmed creating an extraordinary new work: a canvas 30 feet long and seven feet high, on which self-portraits and classic characters emerge in the instantly recogni

Play for Today is a British anthology series that originally aired from 1970 to 1984. Featuring a number of original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels, the series produced more than three hundred episodes of high-quality drama. During its run, the show received numerous awards and nominations for superb writing and exemplary performances from the starring cast. Notable act

Nowhere in the British Isles was the viking connection longer-lasting or deeper than in Scotland. Hundreds of years after their first hit-and-run raids, the Norsemen still dominated huge swathes of the country. But storm clouds were gathering. In 1263 the Norwegian king, Haakon IV, assembled a fleet of 120 longships to counter Scottish raids on the Norse Hebrides. It was a force comparable in size

A great maritime mystery lies deep beneath the waters of the Channel Islands. On the morning of 19 February 1917, German submarine UC-18 opened fire on Royal Navy Q-ship the Lady Olive. As the U-boat drew near to assess the damage it had inflicted, the Lady Olive counter-attacked. Both vessels were said to have sunk. For decades, divers and historians have searched to discover their fate and under