THE ART OF CORNWALL

The art colony of St Ives in Cornwall became as important as Paris or London in the history of modernism during a golden creative period between the 1920s and 1960s. The dramatic lives and works of eight artists who most made this miracle possible, from Kit Wood and Alfred Wallis to Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, are featured in a documentary which offers an alternative history of the 20th century avant-garde as well as a vivid portrayal of the history and landscapes of Cornwall itself.

BBC TV Director Spike Gellinger

PHILIP ROTH-UNLEASHED PARTS 1&2

Comprehensive Survey of a Great Author's Life and Work

Although now officially retired from novel-writing, Philip Roth can lay claim to be one of America's greatest living novelists. Throughout his long career he has experimented both with the content and form of the novel, to such an extent that the overarching themes of his oeuvre are very difficult to identify. He remains a protean figure, often writing autobiographically (using his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman), but seldom revealing too much about himself. This public persona remains much the same in Alan Yentob's documentary - although willingly consenting to be interviewed, he reveals little about himself, even though he seems ready and willing to talk about his work. This program (the first in a two- parter) focuses especially on Roth's Jewishness, and how it has colored much of his work: at once an insider and an outsider, he has rarely felt part of the New York society he has mostly inhabited. Most of his novels are about alienation, whether physical or mental; and how the protagonists learn to cope - or not to cope - with it. While critics have often represented him as a 'shocking' novelist (especially after the publication of PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT), Roth himself rejects that construction, preferring instead to concentrate on his experiments with the novelistic form.

BBC Imagine Special Directed by Sarah Aspinall

MEL BROOKS UNWRAPPED

In Mel Brooks: Unwrapped, a new documentary streaming on HBO, Brooks drums on his desk, shops at Whole Foods for pasta, and drives around Los Angeles during sunset. Often unprovoked, he bursts into song. He sits, he chats, he watches TV. He does what many people do. Except he’s Mel Brooks and he’s 93 years old and I want to watch every single second of it.

Just point the camera at Brooks so we can save as much of this natural resource as possible. (review by Jacob Rosenberg)

BBC Imagine Special/ HBO Director Alan Yentob

HOW ART MADE THE WORLD

How Art Made the World is a 2005 five-part BBC One documentary series, with each episode looking at the influence of art on the current day situation of our society.

"The essential premise of the show," according to Nigel Spivey, "is that of all the defining characteristics of humanity as a species, none is more basic than the inclination to make art. Great apes will smear paint on canvas if they are given brushes and shown how, but they do not instinctively produce art any more than parrots produce conversation. We humans are alone in developing the capacity for symbolic imagery."

BBC ONE

MODERN MASTERS- ANDY WARHOL

The first in a four-part series exploring the life and works of the 20th century's most important artists: Matisse; Picasso; Dali and Warhol.

Art critic Alastair Sooke sets out to discover why these artists are considered so great and how they still influence our lives today. He begins with Andy Warhol, the king of Pop Art. On his journey he parties with Dennis Hopper, has a brush with Carla Bruni and gets to grips with Marilyn. 

Along the way he uncovers just how brilliantly Andy Warhol pinpointed and portrayed our obsessions with consumerism, celebrity and the media, and then went on to re-invent them.

BBC TWO Director Sarah Aspinall

LEONARDO

Semi-dramatised documentary series on the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci from his illegitimate birth to the unveiling of his masterpiece, The Last Supper. Presented by Alan Yentob, starring Mark Rylance

BBC One Director Sarah Aspinall, Tim Dunn, Nick Rossiter