In a revealing documentary, Mike Leigh, director of Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake and Abigail's Party among many others, talks to Alan Yentob about a unique body of work and a lifelong struggle to make films on his own terms. On day one of a Mike Leigh film, there is no script, no story and the...
Channel 4 (UK) ran a poll, in 2003, for viewers to nominate their "worst Briton". The nominations had to be people who were living, not in prison and British.
Karl Pilkington, best known for his podcasts with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and his travel show An Idiot Abroad goes on a quest to find out if intelligence really makes you happier.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, the seminal work of Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), continues to find new readers and inspire artists and creators around the world more than a century after its publication in 1891, because it was endowed with all the elements necessary to make it an undisputed...
It's a timeless classic of children's literature and the third most-quoted book in English after the Bible and Shakespeare. But what lies behind the extraordinary appeal of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to generations of adults and children alike? To mark the 150th anniversary of its...
Featuring interviews by famous fans and followers, this rare documentary encapsulates the essence of the controversial, enigmatic, and deliciously melancholic bard.
Examines and re-evaluates the 60-year history and cultural impact of A Clockwork Orange, as a novel, movie and stage play, with the help of archival content and interviews with important creative figures.
Leading London writers and cultural commentators Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand explore the importance of the liminal spaces at the city's fringe, it's Edgelands, through the work of enigmatic and downright eccentric writer and researcher Nick Papadimitriou - a man whose life is...
Crime writer Ian Rankin investigates The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson's nightmare in September 1885, Rankin traces the roots of this story, which stretches back to Stevenson's childhood. Grave-robbers, hallucinatory drugs and prostitution all play...
As one of the highly provocative British art duo The Chapman Brothers, artist Jake Chapman is no stranger to challenging his audience. In this new film, he poses the question, “why is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?” Perhaps the answer is...
European philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. The theme revolves heavily around the school of philosophical thought known as Existentialism, although the term had not been coined at the time of Nietzsche's writing and Heidegger declaimed the label. The...
Drama-documentary which explores the life and work of the writer Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name Saki, whose short stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.
Clay & Bone is an experimental documentary film, constructed from the film archive that was created during the building of Crossrail, the new railway under London.