The BEST episodes directed by Ian Michael Jones
#1 - Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America
BBC Documentaries - Season 2017 - Episode 223
Frank Lloyd Wright is probably America's greatest ever architect. But few people know about the Welsh roots that shaped his life and world-famous buildings. Now, leading Welsh architect Jonathan Adams sets off across America to explore Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces for himself. Along the way, he uncovers the tempestuous life story of the man behind them and the secrets of his radical Welsh background. In a career spanning seven decades, Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings and changed the face of modern architecture. Fallingwater, the house over the waterfall, has been called the greatest house of the 20th century. The spiralling Guggenheim Museum in New York reinvented the art museum. Wright's Welsh mother was born and raised near Llandysul in west Wales, and emigrated to America with her family in 1844. Her son Frank was raised in a Unitarian community in Wisconsin. The values he absorbed there were based on a love of nature, the importance of hard work and the need to question convention and defy it where necessary. Wright's architecture was shaped by these beliefs. He built his lifelong home in the valley he was raised in, and he named it after an ancient Welsh bard - Taliesin. It was the scene of many adventures and of a horrific crime. In 1914, a servant at Taliesin ran amok and killed seven people. They included Wright's partner Mamah Cheney and her two young children. 150 years after his birth, Adams argues that Frank Lloyd Wright is now a vitally important figure who can teach us how to build for a better world. Wright's belief in what he called organic architecture - buildings that grace the landscape and respond to people's individual needs - is more relevant than ever, in Wales and around the world.
#2 - Dylan Thomas: A Poet's Guide
BBC Documentaries - Season 2014 - Episode 322
Famous for his womanising, drinking and tragic death, Dylan Thomas is the rock star of 20th-century poetry. But for Welsh poet Owen Sheers, his tempestuous life often obscures the power of his poetry. Sheers takes us on a journey that reveals Dylan Thomas as a visionary and a craftsman.
#3 - Kyffin Williams: The Man Who Painted Wales
BBC Documentaries - Season 2018 - Episode 139
Kyffin Williams was Wales' best-loved artist, famous for his brooding mountain landscapes. However, his work was never fully accepted by either critics or the art establishment, and the man himself remained an enigma. Now, in his centenary year, the presenter and painter Josie D'arby goes on the trail of Kyffin Williams both as man and artist. She visits the beautiful places where he grew up, lived and painted, in Anglesey, Snowdonia and London. She meets the people who knew him best, uncovering a personal story of loneliness, stigma and emotional damage. But she also finds in Kyffin Williams a core of talent, determination and belonging. Looking again at his art, Josie finds landscapes, portraits and seascapes that rank with the very best of their kind. These are not just depictions of the external world, but expressions of Kyffin Williams' own interior life, and often troubled emotions. Kyffin's output was huge, and the quality varied, but the best of his work is world class, and deserves to be celebrated. The programme includes interviews with Rian Evans, author of a major new study of Kyffin Williams; photographer and godson Nicholas Sinclair; and art historian Peter Lord.