Great Expectations. BBC2, Saturday, March 25, 1.55pm. This adaptation of Dickens’s novel is broadcast as one of the BBC’s best 100 films of the century. Director David Lean’s atmospheric 1946 version, starring John Mills, is often cited as the definitive on-screen Dickens.
* Horizon: The I-Bomb. BBC2, Monday, March 27, 8.00pm. The claim that information is power is becoming a political reality, according to this study of the computer-driven “Information Age”. The documentary particularly addresses the link between information technology and military power, using the example of the Gulf War, where generals not only deployed tanks and infantry, but 3,000 computers, managing the information traffic of 118,000 mobile satellite stations and 30 million phone calls that co-ordinated the air campaign. The “triumph of software over steel” has now been enshrined in military doctrine information technology is becoming as significant to the Nineties as nuclear supremacy was to the superpowers of the Cold War.
* Diary of a Composition. Radio 3FM, Monday, March 27, 9.10pm. How is music imagined, composed and then taken from the page to the orchestra? This five-part series follows composer, Simon Bainbridge, from the first inkling of an idea to a fully-written piece. The finished product is broadcast live from the Royal Festival Hall, on Radio 3FM, Wednesday, March 29, 7.30pm, in BBC Symphony Orchestra.
* Education Matters. Radio 4LW, Monday, March 27, 11.00pm. This week’s edition looks at the pressures on schools to perform well in league tables and at how some schools are working to improve their popularity rating for prospective parents.
* Back to Work. BBC2, Wednesday, March 29, 2.45pm. Back pain has long been a problem for teachers, and this new series identifies it as the single largest incapacitator of the workforce as a whole. This first episode explores ways of preventing its advance, with correct ways of standing, sitting and lifting. Later episodes will look at the range of treatments on offer.
* Take Two. BBC1, Wednesday, March 29, 4.35pm. This children’s version of Right to Reply airs the views of young viewers about the media. Along with television and radio programmes, magazines and videos are open to the comments of young critics, with items showing the background to how programmes and publications are made.
* Churchill. BBC2, Wednesday, March 29, 7.00pm. This television biography of Winston Churchill is based on eye-witness accounts from contemporaries, providing a portrait of Britain’s prime minister during the Second World War. Along with interviews recorded specially for the series, there is also use of first-hand accounts from previous studies of Churchill, building up a bank of oral evidence, given by people who were there.
* The Secret Life of The Word Processor. Channel 4, Friday, March 31, 12.00pm. The inner-life of the computer is examined in this documentary, including an explanation of why they crash and what’s inside a silicon chip.
