Gulag, the Story

A major political, historical, human and economic fact of the 20th century, the Gulag, the extremely punitive Soviet concentration camp system, remains largely unknown.

The Great Smog: Winter of '52

Dr Xand Van Tulleken and Raksha Dave investigate the Great Smog of 1952 - the deadliest environmental disaster ever recorded and one of the world's worst peacetime catastrophes. Lasting just over four days, the Great Smog plunged London into a terrifyingly murky gloom - the acrid pollution seeping into homes, leaving Londoners gasping for breath, shutting down transport and emergency services, and overwhelming hospitals and undertakers alike.

Corleone: A History of la Cosa Nostra

How, from 1974 to 1993, Totò Riina (1930-2017), supreme boss of the Corleone family, ruled by blood and terror over the Sicilian Mafia. An implacable account, based on the testimony of his men and those who fought against them.

The Vietnam War

An immersive 360-degree narrative telling the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. Featuring testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.

España, el siglo XX en color

Fifties Features - The Women behind the Pictures

A three part series about women working in the British film industry during the 1950s.

Del Miño al Bidasoa

At War for Algeria

North Africa, 1954. The Algerian war of independence begins, a traumatic and extremely violent catastrophe that for eight long years will shake and finally overthrow the foundations of the colonial regime established by France in 1830.

The Darling Buds of May

An idyllic picture of 1950's rural England as seen through the lives of the Larkins, a farm family living in Kent. The show revolves around Pa Larkin, a man of a kind and mischievous nature with a penchant for getting into scrapes and talking his way out of them with equal equanimity; and his daughters, as they deal with growing up and discovering the joys and sorrows of young love.

Get Some In!

Get Some In! is a British comedy series set in the 1950's that focused on the Royal Air Force National Service. The show was broadcast between 1975 and 1978 by Thames Television. Scripts were by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, the team behind the BBC TV sitcom The Good Life. The programme drew its inspiration from late 1950s/early 1960s National Service situation-comedy The Army Game, and from nostalgic BBC TV sitcom Dad's Army, but the RAF setting gave it enough originality not to seem formulaic. Thirty-four half-hour episodes were made. The series has never been repeated in full on terrestrial TV, although the UKTV Gold cable channel has aired the episodes uncut.

Happy Days

In 1950s Milwaukee the Cunningham family must contend with Fonzie, a motorcycle riding Casanova.

Hi-de-Hi!

Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom set in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, during 1959 and 1960, and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst others. It aired on the BBC from 1980 to 1988. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's management and entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of writers Perry and Croft: after being demobilised from the army, Perry was a Redcoat at Butlin's, Pwllheli during the holiday season. The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In 2004, it came 40th in Britain's Best Sitcom and in a 2008 poll on Channel 4, 'Hi-de-Hi!" was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase.

The Bletchley Circle

The Bletchley Circle follows the journey of four ordinary women with extraordinary skills that helped to end World War II. Set in 1952, Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean have returned to their normal lives, modestly setting aside the part they played in producing crucial intelligence, which helped the Allies to victory and shortened the war. When Susan discovers a hidden code behind an unsolved murder she is met by skepticism from the police. She quickly realises she can only begin to crack the murders and bring the culprit to justice with her former friends. The Bletchley Circle paints a vivid portrait of post-war Britain in this fictional tale of unsung heroes.

Quirke

Quirke is the chief pathologist in the Dublin city morgue – a charismatic loner whose job takes him into fascinating places as he investigates sudden deaths in 1950s Dublin. His pleasures in life are raw and deep, a drink, a smoke, good food, a woman: With one woman in particular – his adoptive brother's wife Sarah and the forbidden love that has shaped and dominated Quirke's life.

Lipstick on Your Collar

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, two young clerks at the stuffy Foreign Office in Whitehall display little interest in the decline of the British Empire. To their eyes, it can hardly compete with girls, rock music, and the intrigue of romantic entanglements.

Lord of the Flies

The story of a group of young schoolchildren who find themselves stranded on a tropical island with no adults, following a deadly plane crash. In an attempt to remain civil, the boys organize themselves, led by Ralph and supported by the group's intellectual, Piggy. But Jack, who is in charge of signal fire duty, is more interested in hunting and vying for leadership and soon begins to draw other boys away from the order of the group and, ultimately, from hope to tragedy.

Masters of Sex

William Masters and Virginia Johnson are real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory.

The New Force

The year is 1958, and Sweden's first female police officers graduate; a small group of pioneers taking a big step for gender equality but struggling to take even the smallest step themselves, as the skirts they're forced to wear chafe like sandpaper against their thighs. They are ridiculed by the public, belittled by the media, and scorned by their colleagues. The new recruits are placed in the country's most crime-ridden district; the Klara police district in Stockholm, and as they start patrolling the streets of Stockholm, they soon realize that their biggest problem isn't the criminals; instead, the resistance comes from colleagues and their own families.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries

Dr Lucien Blake left Ballarat as a young man. But now he finds himself returning to take over not only his dead father's medical practice, but also his on-call role as the town's police surgeon, only to find change is afoot, nothing is sacred, and no one is safe.

In Cold Blood

At the end of the 1950s, in a more innocent America, the brutal, meaningless slaying of a Midwestern family horrified the nation. This film is based on Truman Capote's hauntingly detailed, psychologically penetrating nonfiction novel. While in prison, Dick Hickock, 20, hears a cell-mate's story about $10,000 in cash kept in a home safe by a prosperous rancher. When he's paroled, Dick persuades ex-con Perry Smith, also 20, to join him in going after the stash. On a November night in 1959, Dick and Perry break into the Holcomb, Kansas, house of Herb Clutter. Enraged at finding no safe, they wake the sleeping family and brutally kill them all. The bodies are found by two friends who come by before Sunday church. The murders shock the small Great Plains town, where doors are routinely left unlocked. Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation heads the case, but there are no clues, no apparent motive and no suspects...