
A two-part Storyville documentary that tells the inspiring story of a group of men and women in the USA struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes.\n\nThe Bard Prison Initiative is one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programmes in the United States. Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the films tackles a pressing issue - the failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for over two million Americans living behind bars. \n\nThrough the stories of the students and their families, we discover many dropped out of high school before being incarcerated and never imagined they would go to college. During four years of study, however, they become accomplished scholars, beat the Harvard debating team, reckon with their pasts and discover how truly transformative education can be.\n\nThe debate team faces West Point and Harvard. Seniors complete their 100-paged thesis projects. Giovannie is sent to the Special Housing Unit and might not finish his project. Students at Taconic and Eastern receive their degrees at graduation.\n\n
Source: BBC 4
Price Of Gold
The world could not keep its eyes off two athletes at the 1994 Winter Games – Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. Just weeks before the Olympics in 1994, at the US Figure Sk ...
03-02-2026
BBC 4
Songs Of Earth
The dizzyingly beautiful mountainous landscapes of Norway provide the backdrop for this immersive story of a family whose lives are linked intrinsically to their environment. Se ...
18-12-2025
BBC 4
Welded Together
Katya is a young welder, tough, self-reliant and determined to leave her traumatic childhood behind. But when she's unexpectedly forced to care for her vulnerable half-sister, e ...
28-10-2025
BBC 4
Sanatorium
In a vast, crumbling Soviet-era sanatorium on the shores of Odesa, thousands arrive each summer in search of healing. Some come for the legendary black mud, rumoured to cure eve ...
21-10-2025
BBC 4
Mr Nobody Against Putin
When Russia invades Ukraine, a quiet schoolteacher in a small industrial town picks up his camera and becomes an unlikely dissident. Pavel Talankin isn't a journalist or activis ...
14-10-2025
BBC 4
The Librarians
In an era of escalating censorship, librarians have found themselves on the front line of America’s culture wars. This film follows the dispute between librarians with a d ...
07-10-2025
BBC 4
Holding Liat
On 7 October 2023, Liat Beinin Atzili and her husband, Aviv, are kidnapped from their kibbutz as part of the Hamas-led attack on Israel. This film begins by following her parent ...
30-09-2025
BBC 4
Attica: America’s Bloodiest Prison Uprising
A Storyville documentary about the violent five-day standoff between inmates and law enforcement which gripped America in 1971.
23-09-2025
BBC 4
The Hijacker Who Vanished: The Mystery Of Db Cooper
A mysterious fugitive, a hijacked airplane and a daring mid-air escape. This is the extraordinary, real-life tale of one of the greatest unsolved heists in American history and ...
06-08-2025
BBC 4
Jailed In America
For director Roger Ross Williams, prison was not a distant possibility when he was growing up, but a daily threat. 'As a young black man in a chaotic environment, I always felt ...
22-07-2025
BBC 4
Stranded! The Andes Plane Crash Survivors
In October 1972, a student rugby team boarded a small plane in Montevideo to fly across the Andes for a long weekend of playing rugby and partying in Chile. But they never reach ...
30-12-2024
BBC 4
White Man Walking
A Storyville documentary that traces the 1,500-mile walk that film-maker Rob Bliss embarked on through America’s southern states while wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
27-05-2025
BBC 4
Welded Together
Katya is a young welder, tough, self-reliant and determined to leave her traumatic childhood behind. But when she's unexpectedly forced to care for her vulnerable half-sister, e ...
28-10-2025
BBC 4
Undercover Oap: The Mole Agent
A recently widowed 83-year-old goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home in a warm-hearted and surprising look at age, isolation and loneliness. \n\nSergio is a Chilean spy - so ...
24-07-2024
BBC 4
The Queen Of Africa: The Miriam Makeba Story
A Storyville documentary that takes a look at the life of South African singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba. Forced into a life of exile for exposing the harsh realit ...
30-05-2023
BBC 4
26.2 To Life: Inside The San Quentin Prison Marathon
Behind the walls of San Quentin State Prison in California, three men sentenced to life for murder undertake running a marathon. Training all year, their route is unconventional ...
11-02-2025
BBC 4
Collective: Unravelling A Scandal
In 2015, a fire at a nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, leaves 27 dead and 180 injured. Soon afterwards, the burn victims recovering in hospital - from seemingly non-life-threaten ...
04-10-2022
BBC 4
Songs Of Earth
The dizzyingly beautiful mountainous landscapes of Norway provide the backdrop for this immersive story of a family whose lives are linked intrinsically to their environment. Se ...
18-12-2025
BBC 4