Ewan McGregor narrates a captivating portrait of wild Shetland and traces the course of a breeding season as the animals on these remote islands battle for survival.
In 2009, art detective Dr Bendor Grosvenor caused a national scandal by proving that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's iconic portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the rebel Stuart who almost seized power in 1745, was not in fact him. Keen to make amends, and suspecting that a long-lost portrait of the prince by one of Scotland's greatest artists, Allan Ramsay, might still survive, Bendor decides to retrace Charles's journey in the hope of unravelling one of the greatest mysteries in British art.
Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten the distance between two very different worlds.
13 years ago, they didn't know what it was like to cycle in a harsh country. What it means to be knocked off their feet by winds. What it's like to wade through cold glacial rivers. For Algirdas, Iceland was the start of his travels, which led to trips to Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, India, Namibia and countless other countries. After 13 years of wandering, he returns to Iceland to find that what once seemed the most spectacular, beautiful and perfect country is still the same. This time, not without a bike, but with the same uncertainty in his heart: after travelling the world, will Iceland still look like a fairy-tale land? Or has it changed into an unrecognisable land, trampled by tourists...? In this adventure documentary, Dagne, who is seeing Iceland for the first time, travels across the island's inner wilderness, searching for those untouched shards of beauty, and occasionally discovering themselves instead.
A long distance solo hiker maps out a 1000 mile route across the vast and untouched Nevada wilderness and spends the next 67 days making the trek.
The persecution of the Scottish Highlanders 250 years ago.
Alex Norton discovers how showbusiness has handled the portrayal of the Scottish accent. For over 100 years audiences have struggled to understand our braw brogue: silent Harry Lauder films attempted an accent in the captions, and in Hollywood's golden era , everyone wanted to paint their tonsils tartan- but as examples from Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Richard Chamberlain show, they couldnae. Then Disney made Brave and proved that it disnae have to be all bad!
Twenty years on from winning Pop Idol, Scottish singer Michelle McManus reflects on her roller coaster life and career, and revisits iconic TV talent show moments.
Quadruple amputee Alex Lewis sets out to prove to his son that anything is possible by attempting to cross the Simien Mountain wilderness and climb Ethiopia's highest peak using the world's first solar-powered, mobility hand-cycle.
In 1980, Jack Shae and Allen Moore, two ethnographic filmmakers from Harvard University, moved their families to the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Over the course of 18 months they documented the everyday lives and struggles of the crofters they lived among, whom were even then a vanishing breed. The film is in English and Gaelic. This carefully observed documentary by filmmakers Jack Shae and Allen Moore is a poetic ethnographic film in the style of their mentor, Robert Gardner (“Dead Birds”). It follows the rhythm of life on a wind-swept island in the Outer Hebrides through the four seasons and in the filmmakers’ observation of the day-to-day struggles of a vanishing society we see the deep-time legacy of their kind. The film is in English and Gaelic.
Dame Mary Berry travels to her mother’s homeland of Scotland, where she’s joined by friends Andy Murray, Iain Stirling and Emeli Sandé to cook indulgent Christmas dishes.
The Isle of Mull is one of the UK's largest islands, located in the Inner Hebrides, and is home to one of the largest Eurasian otter populations in Europe. This documentary delves into the intricate relationship shared between this fascinating species and humans - through several sequences, each offering a different perspective.
Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.
Stand-up comedian and presenter Iain Stirling explores the history of Saturday nights out across Scotland since the 1950s.
The exquisite Rosslyn Chapel is a masterpiece in stone. It used to be one of Scotland's best-kept secrets, but it became world-famous when it was featured in Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code.
Actor Mark Bonnar is on a mission to understand more about the Scottish new towns in which he grew up, exploring the street sculpture made by artists such as his dad in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He discovers why the new towns are there and how they enticed people out of the bigger cities, and uncovers the surprising ways in which public art changed the new towns and the new towns changed public art. Mark's father, Stan, made sculptures that stand to this day on the streets of Glenrothes, East Kilbride and the Scottish new town that never was, Stonehouse. These new towns employed town artists to make artworks in the very housing precincts the new residents were moving into.
The programme shows Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie's fascination with music from an early age, listening to the sounds of Elvis and Aretha Franklin before graduating to punk. He talks about his passion for music and how to keep creativity on the right track. In the early 90s the UK music scene was changing - with Oasis and Blur emerging, this alternative rock band was recording in Memphis but suddenly sounded out of step with the music scene.
The rivalry between football clubs Rangers and Celtic goes past typical name calling and dives into violence, racial slurs and pure hatred. The rivalry between Glasgow's "Old Firm" sides is the most famous in world football. It's the game's flagship loathing, proof of the power of the sport to inspire profound levels of tribal loyalty and a near-Pavlovian revulsion at anything to do with a rival. We examine the situation and try to get a handle on the political, religious, and national identity clashes that have shaped the rivalry, speak to fanzine editors on both sides of the divide and travel with the Bhoys' away support to a match at Tannadice.
Scotland is a country of three distinct regions—the highlands, the islands, and the lowlands. These regions are examined, showing how the isolated people contact the outside world with their use of channel boats called “Puffers,” how they observe the customs of the seasons, and how the various clans and regiments celebrate their history at the Edinburgh Festival.
The development of the Maxim machine gun and its effects on a remote Highland community.