Season 8

1975 · 22 episodes

Episodes

1A Small ImperfectionShould a new-born baby's life be preserved at all costs-even if the quality of that life is going to be painful, with severe retardation and with enormous strain on the family that supports it? Spina bifida is one of the most common birth defects. Sometimes it has only a small effect on the child; it can be disastrous. The decision whether or not to preserve the lives of some of the worst cases has caused deep controversy in medicine. What causes it? Two years ago the potato was a prime suspect. and might still hold the clue as to the solution. Can it be prevented? In the last few months a triumphant experiment in an Edinburgh laboratory has shown that thousands of women need not fear that they might give birth to a crippled spina bifida child. Robert Reid looks at the work which is trying to unravel one of medical science's most intriguing but deadly riddles.
2The War That Never EndedA personal view of the Vietnamese by RICHARD WEST. For eight years, writer and journalist Richard West has been covering the war in South Vietnam and has come to regard its people with awe, respect and a deep affection. In tonight's film he revisits Vietnam and looks at some of the legacies of the American participation and at the way in which the people seem not only to survive but to retain their peculiar charm and character, despite a war that has been going on for nearly 30 years.
3Pierre Trudeau Of Canada - A Chalfont ProfileHe was once 'Trendy' Trudeau, the darling of the press photographers and the gossip-writers. He excelled at everything, fast driving, high diving, canoeing, skiing, judo. He was rarely seen out without a pretty girl on his arm. He was Canada's political superstar, Prime Minister and Leader of the Canadian Liberal Party after being in Parliament for a mere two-and-a-half years. Now, at 55, he has been in office continuously for the past seven years and has recently won an election that should keep him there almost to the end of the 70s. Now married, with two sons (both born on Christmas Day), he has matured into one of the most interesting and thoughtful leaders in power today. Tonight's Chalfont Profile is presented while Prime Minister Trudeau is on an official visit to Britain in the course of an intensive five-nation European tour.
4The Face Of FamineDo you know what it is like to starve? At least one in ten of the world's population will find out this year. That is 400-million people. Not all will die, but all will suffer severe mental and physical damage. Children, of course, will suffer most. As one medical expert says: ' Severe shortage of food is the worst thing that can happen to any human being - it's the one thing when you clearly have no hope for the future at all.' The world's food crisis is far worse than the energy crisis-worse even than a nuclear war. Famine is not a distant problem of far-off countries, but is directly related to our own eating habits. This programme analyses how we got into this crisis and shows how certain patterns, which you may not have noticed, are rapidly changing our lives.
5Police - Harrow RoadA film portrait of a busy Metropolitan Police station in West London and of the men and women who work there. The police only make front-page news when crisis strikes - an accident, a major crime, the heroic policeman or the bent cop. Now, for the first time, cameras have been allowed behind the scenes in a police station - following police on the beat and in the charge-room - dealing with lost kittens and bomb scares-interrogating the suspects - coping with the tragedy of a serious fire. And we have a chance to compare make-believe thrillers with genuine police work. Esther Rantzen meets the policemen and policewomen who tackle violence, face danger and fight crime in real life. They talk to her about the life they lead and their attitudes to it - about crime and punishment, the public and the police.
6Lothersdale: An Image Of EnglandIt is a tiny village in the Yorkshire Pennines, yet it was already established when the Domesday Book was compiled. Its land was farmed by the Vikings and usurped by Normans. It has sent men to the wars from Flodden and Agincourt to Gallipoli and Alamein. It sheltered Quakers from persecution; gave Charlotte Bronte a job as governess; today its farmers grapple with the Common Market Agricultural Policy. The people of Lothersdale make their contribution to the programme in their own forthright way. ' Nobody's ever heard of Lothersdale,' says a local farmer but if the spirit of England is alive and flourishing it is in a place like this.
71956: The Year The Illusions EndedTwo illusions died in 1956. One was that Britain could wield her power without interference; the other was that the end of Stalinism would mean a slow liberation behind the Iron Curtain. Suez and Hungary were to prick those balloons. But 1956 was also the year that saw the arrival of The Angry Young Men, the wedding of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco, the rise of Rock and Roll and the personal tragedy of a British Prime Minister.
8Getting OnEvery week, in this country, more than 10,000 people reach retire, ment age. One week, seven years ago, five people - an engine-driver, a foreman, a box-maker, a lorry-driver and a welder - were filmed as they passed through this crisis point in their lives. It became a documentary called I Don't Know How I Found Time to Go to Work. Tonight's programme shows again some of their experiences as they celebrated their retirements and planned for the future: and now, seven years later, looks at what has happened to them and how they are getting on.
9Tomorrow's Saudi Arabia - A Family AffairIn ten years, this deeply traditional, country has experienced more change than most nations have achieved in the past century: education for women, sophisticated weapons for its army, and new agriculture in a land where water is more expensive than oil. Faisal's dream was just beginning. Now he's dead. William Woollard and Ian Smart give an account of the achievement of the ultra-conservative who dragged his nation into the 20th century, yet feared the consequences of rapid change. Powerful as they are, Saudi Arabia's new rulers remain entirely dependent on the West for realising King Faisal's dreams.
10Greece: The Seven Black YearsLife in Greece under the Dictatorship 1967-1974. This programme, filmed only weeks after the fall of the Colonels, investigates what it was like to live in Greece during those seven years. What sort of resistance was possible? And how were people able to express their feelings against the regime? The film includes remarkable documentary footage of the Polytechnic siege of November 1973 and describes an attempt by the resistance movement in Crete to stage a spectacular show of force against the Colonels. But above all it listens to ordinary people describing their own experiences of those seven years - seven long years which will never be forgotten.
11What Use Is Wildlife?What use is a mouse, or a wasp, or even a tiger? Surely, in this day and age of technology, wildlife is becoming more and more of a luxury? Should we bother to give it space unless its value can be proved absolutely convincingly? Julian Pettifer , who has mixed feelings about the animals that ransack his own garden, look far and wide for proof that man really needs wildlife anymore.
12KGB: The Soviet Secret PoliceFew initials in modern times have more sinister or frightening connotations than those three letters: KGB. For the KGB is not just the Soviet intelligence service, it is a vast secret police apparatus penetrating every aspect of everyday life in Russia. One of the most important KGB officers ever to defect to the West, Yuri Ivanovitch Nosenko , recently agreed to be interviewed for the first time on television, for this new and completely updated version of the programme originally shown on BBC2. Before he left Russia, Nosenko was deputy head of the department concerned with the surveillance of tourists in Moscow. What operations does the KGB mount against foreigners who visit Russia? How much is the ordinary tourist watched? Another ex-KGB officer, Nikolai Khokhlov , talks about what it feels like to work for the organisation. Others with first-hand experience of the KGB describe some of the methods it uses.
13Chastity, Poverty And ObedienceAn examination of the world of the Nun. Over the last ten years nuns have been directed to reconsider their attitudes to the values flowing from the three vows. Because of this they have come under enormous pressures and are in a state of anxious change. Tonight's documentary examines the inner world of the nun to discover what happens when women answer the irresistible call to serve God in the most complete way they know.
14Grand Junction - CreweBritain invented railways 150 years ago and many of the greatgrandchildren of the men who built and ran them still run them today. Tonight's documentary is about the men and women of a town that lives and breathes railways - Crewe. Crewe was a hamlet until the Grand Junction Railway created a railway colony there and began building engines - 'The Pioneers of 1843.' Since then they have built and repaired tens of thousands of engines and are still hard at it today. The Mayor, like many past mayors of Crewe, is a railwayman, his father was a railwayman and his father before that - ' Crewe has no middle class,' he says, it's a working-class town - it's an island of industry in a vast agricultural area - like a French Foreign Legion Post in the Sahara Desert.'
15The Shah Of Iran - A Chalfont ProfileHe's heir to a monarchy that has lasted 2,500 years. Now, thanks to oil, he has become one of the most powerful figures of the contemporary world. In tonight's Chalfont Profile, both the Shah and his Empress talk frankly about themselves and the challenges facing their people.
16Rabin, Prime Minister Of Israel - A Chalfont ProfileProfile Yitzhak Rabin talks frankly about his remarkable rise to power, and discusses the many problems facing his embattled country today.
17Pilots At SeaFor 60 years naval pilots have flown their aircraft from ships at sea. During World War I the machines were frail wooden biplanes flying from makeshift platforms on the gun turrets of battle-ships. By 1942 great naval battles were being fought in the Pacific solely between aircraft. The aircraft carrier had supplanted the battleship as the capital ship of the fleet. Tonight's documentary charts the rise of this remarkable weapon of war at sea and features some of the first pilots who daringly pioneered the technique of landing on a moving runway.
18What Are You Eating?Can you tell the difference between a tin of 'Stewed Steak with Gravy' and a tin of 'Stewed Steak with Gravy, Pie Filling'? Do you know how much water you buy with every frozen chicken or tin of ham? Could you tell the difference between a lump of vegetable protein and a lump of beefsteak? Exactly one hundred years ago Disraeli introduced the first effective Food and Drugs Act to protect us from adulterated food. Now that Act has grown into a massive tome of rules and regulations and in this programme Christopher Brasher wends -his way through the complexities of modern food trying to find out what we are really eating.
19Ships Of StateOne by one the great ocean liners -which once carried the prestige of nations with them - have vanished from the north Atlantic. The ss United States, the fastest of them all, rusts slowly away in a naval dockyard in Virginia; the Michelangelo has made her final voyage from New York to Genoa; the France is laid up in Le Havre, her future a mystery; the Queen Mary is anchored for ever at Long Beach, California; and the Queen Elizabeth, the greatest liner ever built, lies a burnt-out shell at the bottom of Hong Kong harbour. All these, and many more, have been unable to bear the burden of inflation, the rocketing cost of fuel, the competition of the big jets. Only the QE2 has managed to survive and prosper, the last of the great ships on the Atlantic run. Long may she sail, but for just how long is there a future for the Ships of State like her?
20The Infernal Element - PlutoniumThe power that destroyed Nagasaki is being tamed. For more than 20 years the nuclear industry has been trying to harness plutonium and make it the fuel for a new generation of nuclear reactors - the 'fast breeders.' But many people outside the industry consider the dangers are too great. The benefits are clear: the harnessing of plutonium can provide cheap, abundant electricity for hundreds of years. But how can we assess the risks: atom bombs in the hands of terrorists or unscrupulous governments; cancer from a few grains of plutonium dust? Will our descendants curse us for the legacy of radioactive waste? Do we need the electricity anyway? Decisions will soon be made on Britain's nuclear future and the fast breeder reactor. Should we go ahead or do the risks dictate that we search for a safer alternative?
21Everything New Under The Sun - Abu DhabiThey call Abu Dhabi the richest country in the world. Yet a decade or so ago this place consisted of a cluster of mud houses and an old fort on the edge of the Arabian Gulf between the desert and the deep blue sea. In a technological explosion fuelled by oil Abu Dhabi is rocketing into the twentieth century. But it has not yet quite lost its innocence and its wonder at its own good fortune, and the foreigners from East and West who flock to this newest of the newly-rich oil kingdoms seem to enjoy working here. 'I would not recommend it as a place for a holiday,' says Patrick O'Donovan, 'but it is a place where, without violence, they have tried to distribute a wealth that came like showers of gold from heaven. For beginners in the capitalist game they are doing pretty well.'
22Crisis And The Dairy FarmThe story of one herd in 1975. After a cold wet spring and the long drought of summer, a staple food is running short. Milk - and that means butter and cheese - is losing its attraction for farmers. Over 600 farms abandoned milk production in July alone. If that trend were to continue, there would be no milk at all in 1984. The national herd is being slaughtered at the rate of one hundred thousand a year. No British butter has been made since July and supplies of milk at Christmas are already threatened. Against this worrying background is the star of this film, Celia, a patient dairy cow, programmed to conceive, deliver and lactate for our benefit every nine months.