The BEST episodes directed by Ian Denyer
#1 - Ryan Gander: The Idea of Japan
BBC Documentaries - Season 2017 - Episode 148
Ryan Gander OBE is a leading conceptual artist. He creates artworks full of symbolic meaning - images, sculpture, installations and films that may appear to be about one thing, but contain further messages for the thoughtful. And this, he believes, is why he is "big in Japan." Ryan believes he is appreciated there because the country has a highly sophisticated visual culture, expressed through images and symbols that broadcast cultural messages to the world, as well as to the Japanese themselves. The geisha and the samurai are obvious examples; bullet train, tattoo art, and Tokyo street style are less so.
#2 - London
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy - Season 2 - Episode 4
Stanley Tucci sets out to explore how Italian immigration has transformed the food scene in his adopted hometown of London.
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#3 - Venice
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy - Season 2 - Episode 1
Stanley Tucci visits the Veneto, home to the 'floating city' of Venice. He explores the ingenuity of the Venetians and their food culture, born from the aquatic environment and global influences.
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#4 - Umbria
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy - Season 2 - Episode 3
Stanley Tucci visits Umbria, nicknamed the green heart of Italy. From wild boar hunts to incredible black truffle farms, Tucci explores the riches this land has to offer.
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#5 - Treasures of Chinese Porcelain
BBC Documentaries - Season 2011 - Episode 181
In November 2010, a Chinese vase unearthed in a suburban semi in Pinner sold at auction for £43 million - a new record for a Chinese work of art. Why are Chinese vases so famous and so expensive? The answer lies in the European obsession with Chinese porcelain that began in the 16th century and by the 18th century was a full-blown craze that swept up kings, princes and the emerging middle classes alike. In this documentary Lars Tharp, the Antiques Roadshow expert and Chinese ceramics specialist, sets out to explore why Chinese porcelain was so valuable then - and still is now. He goes on a journey to parts of China closed to Western eyes until relatively recently. Lars travels to the mountainside from which virtually every single Chinese export vase, plate and cup began life in the 18th century - a mountain known as Mount Gaolin, from whose name we get the word kaolin, or china clay. He sees how the china clay was fused with another substance, mica, that would turn it into porcelain - a secret process concealed from envious Western eyes. For a time porcelain became more valuable than gold - it was a substance so fine, so resonant and so strong that it drove Europeans mad trying to copy it. Carrying his own newly-acquired vase, Lars uncovers the secrets of China's porcelain capital, Jingdezhen, before embarking on the arduous 400-mile journey to the coast that every piece of export porcelain would once have travelled. He sees how the trade between China and Europe not only changed our idea of what was beautiful - by introducing us to the idea of works of art we could eat off - but also began to affect the whole tradition of Chinese aesthetics too, as the ceramicists of Jingdezhen sought to meet the European demand for porcelain decorated with family coats of arms, battle scenes or even erotica. The porcelain fever that gripped Britain drove conspicuous consumption and fuelled the Georgian craze for tea parties. Today the new emperors - China's rising millio
#6 - The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood
BBC Documentaries - Season 2013 - Episode 77
Historian and author AN Wilson explores the life of Josiah Wedgwood, a self-made, self-educated creative giant famous for his pottery.
#7 - China in Six Easy Pieces
BBC Documentaries - Season 2013 - Episode 136
For centuries the West has been enthralled by flamboyant blue and white ceramics from China, but were unaware that all the time the Chinese were making porcelains for themselves that were completely different - subtle monochromes for the Imperial court, beautiful objects for the scholar's table and delicate domestic wares. Ceramics expert Lars Tharp, Antiques Roadshow resident and presenter of Treasures of Chinese Porcelain, has picked his six favourite pieces representing Chinese taste. He's goes on a journey through a thousand years of Chinese history, travelling from the ancient capital of Huangzhou in the south to Beijing's Forbidden City in the north, to uncover what these six pieces tell us about Chinese emperors, scholars, workers, merchants and artists. To him, they are China in ceramic form. But can they help us to understand China today?
#8 - Smoky Dives: Jazz Faces and Places
BBC Documentaries - Season 2007 - Episode 128
Documentary showing how drab post-war Britain was enlivened by the trad-jazz scene, which ballooned into our first mass youth culture, with thousands of young people dancing the night away in dimly light underground clubs, from Soho's infamous Cy Laurie Club to The Cavern Club in Liverpool. George Melly relives his Rabelaisian youth on the road whilst revisiting some the pubs, clubs and concert halls he once played in. His hilarious stories of singing, drinking and sleeping his way around the country, staying in rotten B n B's and playing to University students are confirmed and embellished by interviews with fellow band members. We learn how 50s Britain saw the emergence of two rival jazz groups - the modernist scene centred around professional bebop musicians Ronnie Scott and friends, and the more amateur raucous style of the trads. Trads wore oversized ex-army gear and duffel coats, drank beer and occasionally took speed to keep awake during their all night parties, whereas the modernists wore sharp suits and black dresses and some musicians dabbled with hard drugs. The bouncer from Cy Laurie's club, Bill Palmer, and regular club goers describe how hundreds of strangely clad trad fans crammed into the club every weekend. Musician Laurie Morgan explains how Archer Street in Soho was the centre of activity for the emergent modernist scene.
#9 - Queen Elizabeth's Lost Guns
History Channel Documentaries - Season 2012 - Episode 31
A mile off the coast of the channel island of Alderney lies a shipwreck that could rewrite English naval history. Presenter Saul David joins a team of divers and experts as they attempt to find and raise the ship's four-hundred-year-old cannons. By recasting and firing them, they hope to demonstrate how Elizabeth I became the mother of British naval dominance.