The BEST episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2004
Every episode of BBC Documentaries season 2004, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2004!
Documentaries produced by or for the BBC.
#1 - Raphael: A Mortal God
Season 2004 - Episode 35 - Aired 10/31/2004
Drama-documentary depicting the life and times of the most flamboyant and colourful Renaissance artist of all.
#2 - Dig with Dibnah
Season 2004 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/1/2004
The late, great and supremely enthusiastic Fred Dibnah's passion for Britain's industrial past continues apace as he sets about digging a 100-foot deep mineshaft in his back garden. In the programme the ex-steeplejack has reached a depth of 25ft in his bid to construct an authentic coal mine in his back garden, and visits some real working mines to pick up tips as he unveils his plans for a winding engine and railway.
#3 - Tetris: From Russia With Love
Season 2004 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/6/2004
Tetris is a computer game, but it behaves like a virus. Whoever comes into contact with it is gripped by its simplicity. Yet this simplicity belies a complex psychological power that prompted a global battle for financial rights every bit as gripping as the game itself. This film charts the birth of this most original of puzzles, from the hands of a computer programmer at Moscow's Academy of Science to its position as a multi-billion-dollar game. This is a story of communists playing at capitalism in a game that involved Robert Maxwell and intimidation from the heart of the Soviet state.
#4 - Noah's Ark: The Real Story
Season 2004 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/21/2004
It's part of everyone's childhood and one of the greatest myths of all but did it really happen? This programme puts some extraordinary claims about Noah, his Ark and the Great Flood to the test, using CGI to build a clear picture of the historical Noah and the dramatic events that inspired the story of the Ark and the Flood. New archaeological discoveries suggest that the biblical story was based on a real event: there was indeed a massive flood in Mesopotamia in 3000BC. Noah himself, though, was far from the man the Bible says he was.
#5 - The Other Side of Suez
Season 2004 - Episode 28 - Aired 6/23/2004
In 1956, Britain embarked on an unpopular war against Egypt, sparking public outrage and political crisis, and tarnishing the reputation of once-popular prime minister Anthony Eden. Egyptian politicians, soldiers and civilians tell their side of the story in a timely reminder of the dangers of failing to learn the lessons of history.
#6 - Pavarotti: The Last Tenor
Season 2004 - Episode 54 - Aired 5/29/2004
Documentary from 2004 about Luciano Pavarotti, hailed as one of the greatest tenors of all time. The film chronicles his background and upbringing and follows him as he performs to sell-out audiences on three continents, culminating with his valedictory performances of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Backstage in LA, the tenor greets celebrity admirers, including Michael Caine and Dustin Hoffman. In Berlin, he is reunited with Three Tenors group members Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo. And in his Italian hometown of Modena, the maestro gathers top names in rock and pop, such as Bono, Queen, Ricky Martin and Andrea Bocelli, to raise money for the children of Iraq.
#7 - A Sunday in Hell
Season 2004 - Episode 30 - Aired 8/2/2004
Jorgen Leth's film focuses on the 1976 Paris-Roubaix single day bike race over the cobbled farm tracks of northern France, normally reserved for cattle. Leth covers the race with twenty cameras and a helicopter and captures the drama as some of the sport's greats, including Merckx, De Vlaeminck, Maertens and Moser, battle it out through the dirt and dust clouds.
#8 - Colosseum: A Gladiator's Story
Season 2004 - Episode 31 - Aired 3/14/2004
A semi-documentary about the life of Verus, a captive from the Rome's Balkan province of Moesia, who is pressed into the harsh life of a slave in Italian rock quarry. He sees no long term future there, so when the owner of a gladiatorial school comes there to recruit prospective fighters for his school, he purposely picks a fight with another slave to attract attention. Both he and Priscus, the Celtic slave, join the school, become friends, and build careers as renowned gladiators, adored by the crowds in the arena and desired by women of the aristocratic class. The Emporer Titus completes his father Vespasian's pet project, the Colosseum, and wants the inaugural games worthy of his memory, so he specifically selects Verus to fight in them.
#9 - The Moors Murders Code
Season 2004 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/15/2004
An investigation into a collection of photographs owned by murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley that police claimed may have led to the identification of the sites of their victims' graves.
#10 - Roy Lichtenstein: Pop Idol
Season 2004 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/25/2004
Paul Morley investigates the lasting appeal of art's very own Pop Idol. From failed Abstract Expressionist to pioneering Pop Art hero, Roy Lichtenstein revolutionised the art world with his big, bold, brash cartoon images of American culture. Even before Andy Warhol had picked up his can of Campbell's soup, Lichtenstein was making merchandise into art and cultivating his own durable brand, turning out work that was highly consumable and tirelessly reproduced. (2004)
#11 - Band Aid: The Song That Rocked the World
Season 2004 - Episode 34 - Aired 10/1/2004
Midge Ure looks back at the story of the Band Aid famine relief single he co-wrote and produced, featuring contributions from the pop stars who took part.
#12 - Michael Jackson and the Boy He Paid Off
Season 2004 - Episode 36 - Aired 3/7/2004
Documentary exploring complaints levelled against singer Michael Jackson in 1993 by a 13-year-old boy, Jordan Chandler, whose allegations never came to court. The programme, in which it is claimed that a multimillion-dollar settlement was involved, talks to the boy's uncle, Jackson's former head of security and journalists who worked on the story.
#13 - The Hungerford Massacre
Season 2004 - Episode 37 - Aired 12/7/2004
On 19 August 1987, a 27-year-old loner and gun fanatic called Michael Ryan became one of Britain's most notorious mass murderers when, armed with a shocking arsenal of guns, he embarked on a killing spree in a quiet English town. Eyewitness testimony and reconstructions provide a chilling account of the bloodbath, while the one-off film also recalls how gun laws and police communication systems changed after the slaughter.
#14 - Why I Hate the 60s: The Decade That Was Too Good to Be True
Season 2004 - Episode 38 - Aired 6/12/2004
A light-hearted critique of the values of the 1960s.
#15 - Ice Dream: Lapland's Snow Show
Season 2004 - Episode 39 - Aired 3/4/2004
On the edge of the Arctic Circle some of the biggest names in art and architecture - including Zaha Hadid, Anish Kapoor, Yoko Ono, Tatsuo Mihijima and Future Systems - recently gathered to produce an extraordinary collection of artworks made of ice and snow. See ice harvested by chainsaw, flaming vodka coursing through Hadid's ziggurat (and threatening to melt it) and Anish Kapoor get cross as his 'Red Solid' begins to look more like a pink slush puppy. Charlie Luxton investigates
#16 - Bears: Spy in the Woods
Season 2004 - Episode 40 - Aired 11/30/2004
David Attenborough narrates a documentary about different species of bear. Spy-cams blend into the environment to capture unprecedented footage of wild pandas, grizzly and polar bears, and also the only South American species - spectacled bear cubs. Underwater, we follow grizzlies diving for salmon and, in the woods of Minnesota, we spy on black bears and their tree-climbing cubs.
#17 - The Secret Agent: BNP Exposed
Season 2004 - Episode 41 - Aired 7/15/2004
Contains very strong and offensive language In recent years the British National Party has denied that it's a fundamentally racist organisation and touts itself as a legitimate political party. But in a BBC documentary - The Secret Agent - a BBC reporter went undercover to infiltrate the BNP in the north west of England. What he captured on camera in secret filming is simply shocking: BNP activists fantasising about attacking mosques with rockets and Muslims with guns; members of the party admitting to campaigns of violence and intimidation against minority groups and a speech from the current BNP Leader Nick Griffin in which he boasts that his words could lead to seven years in prison if made public.
#18 - Trigger Happy: The Irresistible Rise of the Video Game
Season 2004 - Episode 42 - Aired 2/9/2004
Author and journalist Steven Poole examines the creative explosion occurring in video games and the impact this major new form of entertainment is having on contemporary culture. Contributors include Lord Puttnam, Julian Opie, Professor Susan Greenfield and games impresario Peter Molyneux.
#19 - Happy Birthday BBC Two
Season 2004 - Episode 43 - Aired 4/20/2004
First transmitted in 2004 to commemorate the channel's 40th birthday, stars and programme makers come together to look back at the story of BBC Two.
#20 - The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody
Season 2004 - Episode 44 - Aired 12/4/2004
For the first time ever the full story behind the nation's best-loved song, featuring a return to Rockfield Studios by Brian May and Roger Taylor where they rerecord the guitar and drum parts and tell the story of how the song came together. Narrated by Richard E Grant, the documentary includes exclusive rare recordings of Freddie Mercury performing the song in studio, Queen's first ever TV performance, and the making of the video, as well as interviews with Mercury's friends and family, The Darkness and Bjorn Ulvaeus from Abba.
#21 - D-Day 6.6.1944
Season 2004 - Episode 45 - Aired 6/5/2004
Dramatised documentary, based on the experiences of the soldiers who invaded France in the D-Day Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944 which were instrumental in ending World War II.
#22 - Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind
Season 2004 - Episode 46 - Aired 6/11/2004
BBC FOUR presents a profile of Vivian Stanshall - "The late, majestic Vivian Stanshall, one of the most talented, profligate, bizarre, infuriating, unfathomable and magnificent Englishmen ever to have drawn breath" - Stephen Fry. A veteran of the common law marriage between Sixties art school and rock 'n' roll, Stanshall was co-founder, lead singer and co-writer of cult Sixties sensation The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, the missing link between satire and psychedelia, pop and performance art, pastiche and Python. Stanshall was a dapper Zappa, perfecting what he called "ballet for the vulgar". Like Peter Cook, he burnt himself out tragically early, virtually drinking himself to death before dying in a fire at his house in 1995. He was, as the title of his last ever broadcast put it, a Renaissance man: writer, composer, performer and painter. This film tells Viv's life story from mum and dad to Dada and Mummery. It follows his progress from an 'odd boy' Southend seaside childhood, through art school, his intro to and outro from the Bonzo Dog Band and subsequent spectacular resurfacings as solo artist with his Peel Show monologue about Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (later a book and a film starring Trevor Howard), his comic opera Stinkfoot performed on board the Bristol Showboat and at London's Bloomsbury Theatre and his final appearances with Rawlinson DogEnds. Tracing Viv's musical journey from its Bonzo beginnings to Rawlinson End and beyond, this expedition into the archival canyons of his mind is peppered with contributions from colleagues, close friends and comic descendants. But at its centre is a portrait of the man who made his life and art into what he called "a sur-Ealing comedy", drawing on a wealth of largely BBC audio and video. It combines interviews with his collaborators from the Bonzos and beyond, including band members Neil Innes, Legs Larry Smith, Rodney Slater and manager Gerry Bron, plus later associates like J
#23 - The Truth About 60s TV
Season 2004 - Episode 47 - Aired 6/5/2004
Even people who have never seen it claim that television in the Sixties was better than it is now, perhaps the best there has ever been. For three decades, commentators have hailed Civilisation, Cathy Come Home, Dad's Army and The Wednesday Play as prime examples of a 'golden age' of television. Far less time is spent recalling the ratings success of Miss World and The Black and White Minstrel Show. As part of BBC FOUR's mind-expanding trip back to the Sixties, writer and broadcaster Mark Lawson takes a fresh look at 1960s television and explodes some long-cherished myths about the era.
#24 - What The World Thinks Of God
Season 2004 - Episode 48 - Aired 2/26/2004
In a unique event, satellite link-ups bring together guests from five continents to debate some age-old questions on religion, and consider its place in the modern world. Does belief in a god make the world a better place? Which god should we worship? When is it right to wage war in their name? Jeremy Vine hosts the programme from London, and reveals the results of a unique poll in which 10,000 people from ten countries across the globe gave their opinions on religion and belief today.
#25 - Sport in the Sixties: a TV Revolution
Season 2004 - Episode 52 - Aired 8/14/2004
Harry Carpenter, Martin Peters , David Attenborough, Anne Jones, Brian Cowgill, Alec Weeks, Anita Lonsbrough, Tony Lewis , Jimmy Hill, David Vine, Henry Cooper and David Hemery recall how sport itself was transformed by a revolution in broadcasting