THEGAYUK

Tag: BBC 4

All the latest breaking news on the UK broadcaster BBC 4. Browse THEGAYUK’s complete collection of news, articles and commentary on BBC 4.

  • Gay Britannia to rule the airwaves as BBC announces a raft of LGBT programming

    The BBC have announced that they are to broadcast a season of programming to mark the 50 years since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in the UK.

    CREDIT: BBC

    Led by programming on BBC Two and Four, with other content across BBC radio and online, the Gay Britannia season will feature bold and provocative stories, celebrating the LGBTQ community as well as challenging existing preconceptions and prejudices. The season will also cast a fresh light on the history of gay Britain, as well as highlighting just what it means to be gay in Britain today. Contributors announced today include Andrew Scott, Val McDermid, Olly Alexander, Sandi Toksvig, Susan Calman, Stephen K Amos, and Simon Callow.

    On BBC Two, the season ranges from the compelling dramas Against the Law, starring Daniel Mays as journalist Peter Wildeblood who was found guilty of homosexuality in the 1950s in the explosive Montagu Trial and the first screen drama from best-selling British novelist Patrick Gale: Man in an Orange Shirt starring Vanessa Redgrave to important and timely documentaries such as Is It Safe to be Gay in the UK? which uses testimony and found footage to explore the rise of attacks on lesbian, gay and transgender people.

    What Gay Did for Art celebrates the contribution lesbian and gay people have made to popular culture, the visual arts, literature, theatre and film on BBC Two whilst Prejudice and Pride: The People’s History of LGBTQ Britain, presented by Susan Calman and Stephen K Amos on BBC Four, reveals the precious mementos and memorabilia that have the changed the lives of LGBTQ people over the last 50 years. Also on BBC Four, Gluck charts the modern British history of female homosexuality and its representation in culture, literature, fashion and art through the untold story of the celebrated artist Gluck who defied the gender and sexuality definitions of her time; and Mark Gatiss offers his and other writers’ responses to the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act in Queers.

    On BBC Three, Olly Alexander, lead singer of Years and Years and a powerful voice on LGBTQ rights, explores why the gay community is more vulnerable to mental health issues, as he opens up about his own long-term battles with depression in Olly Alexander: Growing Up Gay.

    Highlights on BBC Radio include Val McDermid presenting Queer Britain on Radio 4, exploring the many ways that the LGBTQ community was accepted, tolerated, despised and ostracised and how this was reflected across culture, society and politics. On Radio 2, a two-part series will celebrate out and proud LGBTQ performers who utilised their sexuality to push boundaries, defining the sound of their generation. On Radio 3, the drama Victim will trace the bravery behind the 1961 film of the same name that was the first English language film to use the word ‘homosexual’.

    Patrick Holland, BBC Two Channel Controller, says

    “This is a rich and compelling set of programmes that challenge us all. From the heart-breaking testimony of the men who lived through the years before partial decriminalisation in Against the Law and Patrick Gale’s intensely personal Man in an Orange Shirt to a documentary revealing the experience of people facing discrimination in the UK today, this season is a powerful examination of how far we have come whilst also exploring how much further we have to travel.”

  • TV | Storyville – Queerama, BBC 4

    Storyville – Queerama

    Programme Length: 70 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    A BBC Storyville BFI archive film about a century of gay rights, desires and history with a soundtrack by John Grant and collaborators.

  • TV | Queers, BBC 4

    Queers

    Programme Length: 15 mins x8

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    Eight new and established writers respond to the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act in Queers, a series of monologues curated by Mark Gatiss.

    Focussing chiefly on the gay male experience, the monologues begin in 1917 with ‘The Man on the Platform’ – the story of a soldier returning from the trenches of the First World War and reflecting on both his attraction to another man and a very particular childhood memory. Other stories include Jackie Clune’s ‘A Perfect Gentleman’ in which we meet Bobby, a dandy with a very unexpected secret and Brian Fillis’ More Anger’ which examines the journey of a young gay actor in the 1980s.

    Taking in 1957’s Wolfenden Report, the HIV crisis and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act itself, these 15 minute monologues will mark and celebrate some of the most poignant, funny, entertaining, tragic and riotous moments before and after the ’67 Act and the very personal rites-of-passage of British gay men through the last 100 years.

    Queers is being produced in partnership with The Old Vic who will stage all eight of the monologues in July, in the run up to the television transmission.

  • TV | Gluck, BBC 4

    Gluck

    Programme Length: 60 mins

    Broadcaster: BBC Four

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    British artist Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein) was a well-known painter of the 1930s who painted aristocrats, judges, socialites and flower arrangements. The British establishment, including the Royal Family, flocked to her shows. What is perhaps surprising for the time is that Gluck also dressed as a man, had numerous female lovers and called her exhibitions ‘one man shows’. So what did 1930s upper-class society make of Gluck? This film tells the untold story of a celebrated artist who defied the gender and sexuality definitions of her time.

    From the use of the word ‘invert’ in Hall’s infamous book The Well of Loneliness to the word ‘sapphist’ used by upper-class bohemians in the 1930s, female homosexuality wasn’t clearly defined in Gluck’s time – the word ‘lesbian’ not yet widely used. As well as Gluck’s personal story, this film explores the modern British history of female homosexuality and its representation in culture, literature, fashion and art – from fashion glamorising of an androgynous look to Gluck’s most iconic painting Medallion, a double portrait of herself and her lover Nesta Obermer, which Gluck called her  ‘marriage portrait’.

    With exclusive access to part of the Gluck archive, the film will include interviews with Gluck’s relatives, official biographer Diana Souhami and leading experts in fashion, art and sexual politics alongside Gluck admirers including Sandi Toksvig.

  • TV | Prejudice and Pride: The People’s History of LGBTQ Britain, BBC 4

    Prejudice and Pride: The People’s History of LGBTQ Britain

    Programme Length: 60 mins x 2

    Broadcaster: BBC 4

    Broadcast Date: TBC

    In this unique series, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from across the country have been digging out and sharing the mementoes and memorabilia that changed their lives over 50 years since the landmark 1967 Act decriminalised homosexuality.

    The result is a crowd-sourced collection of some of the rarest, most personal, most heartbreaking and inspiring artefacts in our history; a banned book, a nun’s habit, a passport, an original Heaven Gold card, naval discharge papers, George Michael’s autograph and the long lost panels from the AIDS memorial quilt.

    Produced by 7Wonder and presented by comedians Stephen K Amos and Susan Calman, the films chart a rollercoaster journey – from the audacity of a Gay Liberation Front commune, to the anguish of the AIDS crisis, from the struggle against Section 28 to the ecstasy of Pride ’97, from the death of friends in the Admiral Duncan bombing to the joy of a lesbian marriage – this is the story of all of us, the people we loved and the people we sometimes hated.

    From being locked up for daring to love someone, to marrying that same person 50 years on, this extraordinary history is told by ordinary people through their personal stories and most treasured possessions.