The BEST episodes directed by Francis Whately
#1 - David Bowie: Finding Fame
BBC Documentaries - Season 2019 - Episode 19
This is the David Bowie story you don’t know. The story of how David Robert Jones became David Bowie, how David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust and how Ziggy became immortal, changing the musical landscape as he did so. The story that finally makes sense of one of the greatest icons of the 20th and 21st centuries. Part three of Francis Whately’s Bowie trilogy.
#2 - David Bowie: Five Years
BBC Documentaries - Season 2013 - Episode 105
An intimate portrait of five key years in David Bowie's career. Featuring a wealth of previously unseen archive this film looks at how Bowie continually evolved, from Ziggy Stardust, to the Soul Star of Young Americans, to the 'Thin White Duke'. It explores his regeneration in Berlin with the critically acclaimed album Heroes, his triumph with Scary Monsters and his global success with Let's Dance. With interviews with all his closest collaborators, this film investigates how Bowie has become an 'icon of our times'.
#3 - Judi Dench: All The World's Her Stage
BBC Documentaries - Season 2016 - Episode 391
An intimate portrait of Judi Dench, one of the most outstanding and best-loved British actors of all time, told by some of the biggest names in entertainment - Daniel Craig, Stephen Frears, Pierce Brosnan, Samantha Bond and Sir Ian McKellen.
#4 - David Bowie - The Last Five Years
BBC Documentaries - Season 2017 - Episode 4
There was nothing predictable about David Bowie - everything was designed to intrigue, to challenge, to defy all expectations. But perhaps no period in David Bowie’s extraordinary career raised more fascination, more surprise, and more questions, than the last five years. This film - to be broadcast on the night before what would have been Bowie’s 70th birthday - is an intimate portrait of one of the defining artists of our time, told by the people who knew him best: his friends and artistic collaborators. It follows the widely acclaimed film David Bowie: Five Years, first broadcast on BBC Two in 2013. It takes a detailed look at Bowie’s last albums The Next Day and Blackstar, and his play Lazarus. Through the prism of this last work the film shows how, in his final five years, Bowie not only began producing music again but returned to the core and defining themes of his career. These were artistic rebirth, a shedding of skins, a quest for a different palette to express the same big ideas - dissonance, alienation, otherness - the human condition. The film explores how Bowie was a far more consistent artist than many interpretations of his career would have us believe, by tracing the core themes from his final works through his incredible back catalogue. Viewers will see Major Tom reflected in Blackstar; Diamond Dogs in the play Lazarus; and Fame in the song The Stars (Are Out Tonight). Bowie’s urge to communicate feelings of spirituality, alienation and fame underpin his greatest works, from the 1960s to 2016. This is what lies at the heart of his success and appeal, music that deals with what it means to be human in a way that goes far beyond the normal palette of a rock star. This film is not a comprehensive overview of his entire career, but an in-depth exploration of its pivotal moments and a look at how the themes, the narrative, the approach are consistent - it is simply the palette that changes. It features every key member of the
#5 - David Bowie The Last Five Years
HBO Documentary Film Series - Season 2018 - Episode 1
In the last years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career.