Pains of Glass: BBC2, Saturday, April 15, 7.20pm. Stained glass was one of the great art forms of medieval Europe, and in this Easter special, the stained-glass windows in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge are considered, putting them in their religious, social and artistic context. The college’s choir provides the musical background.
q Marsalis on Music - Why Toes Tap: BBC2, Saturday, April 15, 6.25pm. What is rhythm? With examples from jazz and classical music, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis considers the foundations of music, in a style intended by BBC Education to be accessible to a non-specialist audience. Marsalis bounces a basketball to introduce the concept of beat, the nature of rhythm and the sensations implied.
q Wilde Night: Timewatch The Life and Loves of Oscar Wilde. BBC2, Saturday, April 15, 9pm. This documentary, marking the centenary of Oscar Wilde’s prosecution and imprisonment for homosexuality, considers the writer’s rise to fame, his celebrity-status in the United States, his trial at the Old Bailey and his death in exile five years later in Paris at the age of only 46.
q London at War The Making of Modern London: ITV, Sunday, April 16, 4. 35pm. A woman who worked as an inspector of London’s public air-raid shelters during the Blitz, returns to the sites of her wartime work, in a documentary profile of how hundreds of thousands of Londoners sought safety underground in shelters and on the crowded platforms of tube stations.
q Watch Out: BBC2, Sunday, April 16, 7pm. This new natural history series looks at wildlife in town and countryside, with a regular update of how the seasons change particular locations, monitored week by week. In the first programme there will be reports on the best flower meadow in the south and a hunt for adders. The series, a BBC Education production, is backed by information on the Internet, at http:www.bbnc.org.uk, and the first cuckoo sightings are being invited on e-mail, at “watchoutbbcnc.org.uk”.
q Henry IV Parts 1 and 2: Radio 3, Sunday, April 16, 7.30pm. Falstaff is played by Robert Hardy in Shakespeare’s account of civil strife, rights and responsibilities. The production is preceded by a scene-setting, 55-second version of Richard II.
q A War of Words: Radio 4, Sunday, April 16, 10.45pm. An anthology of Second World War poetry, focusing on the theme of living with war as normality. There are poems from Henry Reed and Alan Ross, anonymous wartime doggerel, along with poetry from Hungary, Germany and the United States.
q Big Byte: Radio 5, Sunday, April 16, 12.15pm. A report on how the Internet beat other sytems to collate information on casualties in the Kobe earthquake in Japan. The programme also takes a stroll down Tokyo’s ‘computer alley’, checks a palm-size television and finds how computer keyboards have accommodated the Japanese language’s 11,000 Japanese characters.
q Mental Health Season All in the Mind: Radio 4, Tuesday, April 18, 11. 30am. Mental illness is a major public health issue, a problem as common among adults as heart disease. This series seeks to tackle the myths and misconceptions that surround it.
