Original title
40 Minutes
Released
10/1/1981
Origin country
GB
Genre
Documentary
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
14
Number of episodes
322
40 Minutes was a BBC TV documentary strand broadcast on BBC Two between 1981 and 1994. The documentaries could be on any possible subject, the only connection being that they last forty minutes. Some documentaries in the original series were revisited and updated in a 2006 version, Forty Minutes On.
Portrait of a fractious Welsh village near Merthyr Tydfil.
Portrait of a Comprehensive School in the heart of the Falls Road, Belfast.
Story of a Hijack on Independence Day 1977 in New York.
Test case for inmates of mental hospital to get the vote.
Life style of Quentin Crisp-esque 'Queen'.
Attempt to beat record run from John o' Groats to Land's End.
Gary Glitter stars in Gerry Cottle's Circus.
Gorilla N'Pongo gives birth to Kumi in Jersey Zoo.
Hereford family educating children at home.
Spastic girl's struggle to live a normal life.
Backstage at the News of the World.
An anthology of various children's parties.
The bald facts revealed: What men will do to counter hair loss.
The London to Brighton vintage car rally.
Glenthorne high security prison for youngsters.
Biopic of renowned comedian and ukulelist.
Burglary - Britain's fastest growing industry.
Sheffield's Herol 'Bomber' Graham and Brendan Ingle his trainer in bid for boxing glory.
1943 Mutiny of British soldiers in Salerno.
Artefacts saved from demolished buildings.
Michel Odent and 'natural' childbirth at his clinic in Pithiviers France
Cameras follow shock troops of anti-hunt demonstrators disrupting hunt.
Magdi Yacoub and his surgical team at work at Harefield Hospital.
The leading girls' public school.
Four 'skins' in 1982 London; their lifestyle and the skinhead culture.
Looks at the increasing militancy of activists protesting at experiments on animals.
The senior education officer in Durham County and his difficult decisions to close certain schools.
Problems of loneliness. Five people who are trying to find their own ways to deal with overcome loneliness are in a compartment in a train. They tell their stories to us, but do not communicate with each other, despite their shared problem.
A typical week for Howard Wolfenden, one of 250 NSPCC inspectors who investigate child cruelty cases.
Looks at the lives and beliefs of miners in a small Yorkshire mining community.
The life and career of Frankie Vaughan, the entertainer.
The charity dinner for the Stable Lads Welfare Trust.
Extreme slimming remedies including wiring jaws together and surgery.
Bernard Perks, who has spent 15 of his 20 adult years in prison, is about to be released and his problem in combating alcoholism.
Holiday makers on a flight from Manchester to Spain, their impression of their holidays in Benidorm and their return to Manchester.
The domestic and commercial uses of video including surveillance.
Tranmere Rovers FC, fighting for survival in their centenary season
Children who have to look after their elderly parents.
New arrivals at Liverpool University coping with their first time away from home, especially the problems of a blind student, Gillian Wake.
Nine Polish seamen who sought political asylum in the Falklands where they were caught up in the war and their later stateless existence in London.
Female circumcision in the Sudan and the evidence that it is practiced in the western world.
Fishermen from the North-East attempt to lobby the EEC on the issue of fishing rights.
The first of 6 films on the work of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.
Interviews with three mistresses.
The M.C.C. Cricket tour of Australia in 1931 and the controversial tactics of the M.C.C. Captain Douglas Jardine.
Mr Universe, Bachelor of the Year and others competitions for men.
The religious cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
The remand system in the UK and the lives of untried prisoners.
The maximum security unit at Maidstone Prison.
Finding Miss Pears 1983.
Professional pranksters and singing telegrams.
Comparison between life in Orwell's novel and the reality of life in 1984.
A week at a health farm.
Three English girls at Institut Villa Pierrefeu in Switzerland.
The effect of a divorce on a couple and their children
How parents' access to children of a broken marriage is determined.
The annual 'crack' at Lisdoonvarna in Ireland visited by a group of Chicagoan women in search of romance.
The history of Skiffle and the development of 'home-made' music.
Attitudes to pigeons.
Working class children in assisted places at public schools.
Attitudes in a small Cornish community to two lovers and their baby.
The work of the sex therapist.
Lagan College in Belfast, a school planned for the integration of protestants and Roman Catholics.
Rare breeds of farm animals.
Professional political lobbyists.
The African Las Vegas.
Bertrand Russell and the founding of CND.
How the world would look to a being from another planet.
The career of cricketer Geoffrey Boycott.
Gigolos and the different types.
About the medium Doris Stokes.
Grendon prison in Buckinghamshire, Britain's only voluntary psychiatric prison.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in self-imposed exile.
The history of lavatories.
Young male prostitutes in Manchester and Birmingham.
The mental asylum in Choroszcz in Poland where patients work in the community.
The Animal Medical Centre in New York.
Britain forty years ago, contrasted with present day Britain.
Accents and dialects provoke strong prejudices and reactions. In a 40 Minutes film that examines why this should be, broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, Radio 4 announcer Susan Rae and actor Peter Bowles are among those who have suffered because of the way they speak. Meet the Queen's English Society, which keeps a candle burning for the purity of the spoken word, and the Devon Dialect Society, which has very different ideas about how vowels should sound. Eavesdrop on an elocution class, hear from Scottish schoolchildren whose accents might affect their job prospects, and go behind the scenes at the BBC Pronunciation Unit and the northern auditions for the Speaking Clock. See how fashions have changed over the years, and how trends are likely to develop in the future as we enter a world of talking robots and computers.
The group 'Fascinating Aida' and the making of their first pop record.
The problems of putting on a show in the old style of pier entertainments at Cromer, Norfolk.
A group of 'Hell's Angels' in East Anglia.
A film for St Valentine's Day.
Old Victorian mental hospitals are being closed down and the former patients face problems.
A local Council has a compulsory purchase order on the home of two elderly men.
The first film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.
The second film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.
The third film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.
Plymouth, the area near the docks.
The story of a woman who took her baby to hospital where he was found to have several fractures. She denied having caused the injuries but he was taken from her care.
The effects of government cuts leading to the closure of a ward in Guy's Children's Hospital.
Animals used in advertising.
The biennial festival of humour in Bulgaria. Can humour cross national boundaries?
The story of a family whose daughter is handicapped because of a drug taken by her mother during pregnancy. The American drug company claims the drug is safe.
A film about being 16. A group of four friends in between being children and adults, emotionally, sexually and physically.
A Golden Wedding holiday. Four couples married in 1935 celebrate 50 years of life together, and talk of the happiness and sadness of their golden years.
Girls who become pregnant under 16. The girls, their boy-friends and their parents talk about the consequences.
10 years ago a famous documentary was made by Franc Roddam about "Mini" Cooper, a most attractive and intelligent child arsonist. Now released from a secure psychiatric institution, he hopes to make a career as a magician.
A Western-style beauty contest in austerity-ridden Poland.
A child with a genetic disease and his young parents go from Northern Ireland on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees. After a week they find there is a change.
The story of Sharon, a young hopeful still at school, ambitious to become a famous top-less pin-up, like Samantha Fox and Linda Lusardi.
Asian alternative-medicine men in Britain, attracting increasing custom from Westerners.
All over Britain are strange and delightful buildings with one thing in common - they were created for animals. Lucinda Lambton is your guide to such follies. Castles, temples, palaces, obelisks and pyramids, they are a happy by-product of the British passion for animals.
The Foreign Office opens a new mission in China. The film follows the new Consul-General during his first week in Shanghai. A high-powered trade delegation is due, led by Lord Young; our man has to look after them while finding his own feet. He succeeds in seeing the only performing panda in the world.
A film for Christmas. Alcholics, criminals, down-and-outs and tramps find a sanctuary in a remarkable Christian community in Dorset.
Seven couples in Hammersmith Hospital go through the long and painful process of trying to conceive a test-tube baby. one succeeds.
The Hebrides - idyllic isles of wild beauty, majestic, remote, peaceful? That's not how Neil Gillies, 23 years old and unemployed, sees his island home of Vatersay. For him it's a place of isolation, boredom and drink. He can't wait to leave Vatersay, his widowed mother and his eight brothers and sisters, to try his luck in Glasgow. His prospects aren't good. Jobs are scarce, accommodation hard to find. There are compensations - Vatersay has few girls; Glasgow seems alive with them. Over the months, the demands of fending for himself begin to tell. When Neil leaves his hard-won job he escapes into the illusory comfort of alcohol. Should he have stayed on the island? Or can he come to terms with this uncompromising city of bed-sits, the dole and bars?
Strange and moving tales of people being jilted at the altar.
The pressure on student nurses. Three girls at different stages of their training at St. James Infirary, Leeds.
Dramas of life and death with the ambulance service in action in central London.
The singles scene in Miami, Dallas and New York.
'I'm British', says the young lady with strawberry blonde hair and a Midlands accent, 'but I don't have a drop of British blood in me.' Carmen Laanemagi is from Leicester - and Estonia. Pauline Riemers is a nurse in Epsom; her parents are Latvian. Algis Kuliukas, a British Airways computer programmer, lives in Hounslow; he's part-Lithuanian. Last July they embarked on the Baltic Star in Stockholm. It was the beginning of an emotional and exciting voyage. The aim was to sail as close as they could get to the coasts of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - now part of the Soviet Union. Forty years ago their parents had fled as refugees when the three Baltic states lost their short-lived independence. Now the lost children were returning - hoping for a distant glimpse of home. Narrator Ian Holm
They are four friends, rich young men - city commodity-brokers, the drinks trade. They belong to the right clubs. They hunt, shoot, play polo, make money. They had the idea of going fishing in Scotland for a few days in the autumn, to see if they could break the world record for a catch of skate. They ended up with something else. As the October weather squalls and shines, as the boat rolls on the stormy waters of the Pentland Firth, as the days pass without the big bite, so the jokes flow, the bottles are cracked, and Robert, John, Henry and Guy reveal their spirited, outspoken opinions. "Better for some to have privilege rather than nobody - let's lead from the top, not the bottom ... Many of our friends, in the City and the army, worry about the aggressive young men of the loony left...."
The women who really matter in the dream city. Reporter - Mrs Richard Burton.
A Yorkshire coal miner caught up in the bitter industrial warfare between strike pickets and police. The traumatic events of 24 August 1984 have changed the course of his life.
A young black girl, once fostered by a Scottish family, then snatched back to Ghana, returns to her foster parents - with not altogether happy results.
The tragic and comic story of the ground nut scheme, a Government fiasco of the 1940s.
The inside story of the birth of a new daily newspaper, filmed over a period of months.
The story of three people retiring from work in Lancashire, their families, and their changed way of life.
Carrick is a dirty British coaster - a 30-year-old tramp carrying unglamorous cargoes from port to port in the Channel and the North Sea. Her skipper and owner is Rick Waters , once part-time butler to Edward Heath: 'I resent people calling my ship a rust-bucket. She's an old lady who needs the occasional helping hand.' George Norman, the mate, looks after the cargoes. The ship could capsize if a cargo shifts at sea. Tom Owen, ex-Royal Navy, struggles with Carrick's dodgy engine. 'Most other merchant seamen regard coaster crews as the scum of the earth,' he says. Carrick makes uncertain progress through the mad March days, carrying fertilizer to Exmouth, grain to Antwerp, and spuds, improbably, to Wisbech. Coasters like Carrick can reach the ports that other ships can't....
An inside view of Holloway Prison, reflecting the immense problems and tensions of Britain's largest and toughest women's jail.
The glittery world of ballroom dancing - behind the scenes at the World Ballroom Dancing Championships, held this year in Blackpool.
The lives of the men who make up the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team - a voluntary body of men who help those in difficulty on Ben Nevis and the surrounding mountains.
In 1978 David Lomax secretly interviewed a Russian couple in Moscow after they had been refused exit visas. They were filmed a year later as they arrived in the West. Now they live in Los Angeles. What price have they paid for their freedom?
Angela Huth asks why is it that as a nation, we have such a rotten reputation as dressers? What are we trying to say about ourselves through our appearance? 'Oh not black again, dear,' says Denis - but Margaret Thatcher knows a secret or two about old faithfuls and reliable standbys. Tonight the Prime Minister reveals, for the first time, the inside story of her wardrobe. Selina Scott always wanting 'to look a bit different from everyone else'; the probation officer who last wore a dress when she danced with the Prince of Wales; the bubbly society hostess who seems to wear only party dresses; the housewife with an eye for the 20p bargain with a designer label - these are just some of the extraordinary and ordinary women who unlock their wardrobes and tell all, proving that the only thing in vogue is individuality.
Plans for dumping nuclear waste in rural Lincolnshire - and how traditionally conservative villagers were aroused to protest against them.
England cricket hero Ian Botham at home and at work during his Test Match ban.
The Civil Service Selection Board has never been filmed before. The first of two programmes concentrates on two candidates, one an ex-employee of the Greater London Council, the other a "near miss" of last year.
The second film tells of two hopefuls at the last round, one hoping to enter the Foreign Office, the other aiming for the Home Office. Filmed from the points of view of both the candidates and the selectors. The final result is a shock.
Eight sisters talk frankly and movingly about the complex relationship of sisterhood.
Ten-year-old William, suffering from leukaemia, undergoes a successful bone marrow transplant at the Royal Free Hospital in London
The small world of dwarves and midgets.
Documentary about Colonel Hilary Hook, formerly of the Indian cavalry and leader of extravagant safaris in Kenya. Hook returned home to England after being evicted from his home in the Kenya Hills, and is finding it hard to readjust to the English way of life.
Young blacks in deprived Brent struggle for a community centre in a bus garage.
Tea, Britain's national beverage - and the ladies who stir it.
Uneasy relationships between step-parents and step-children.
Lucinda Lambton reveals strange and amusing tales from the dusty corners of museums.
The annual re-union of thousands of bikers in South Dakota.
Kingston-upon-Hull (Yorks.) fire station in action.
The son of a wartime aviator traces his father's remarkable survival and escape in France.
Spiritualists in London's Belgravia communing with "the other side".
Moral problems facing a mother who has taken a pregnancy drug and whose child has suffered.
The training of British Airways hostesses and cabin crew.
World championship competitive leek-growing in the North-East of England - with dirty deeds in the greenhouses.
Caroline Moorehead inquires if pacifists have ever achieved anything over the years.
Child and juvenile prostitutes in Balsall Heath, Birmingham.
Upstairs and downstairs at the famous Taj Mahal Hotel - a luxurious establishment surrounded by poverty.
How three people's lives were permanently affected by the TWA plane hi-jack.
Two South African school-girls, one black, one white - their contrasting attitudes and lives.
Five couples describe what happened when they first met - and the long-term consequences.
The only inner London Education Authority boarding school, in a Suffolk country house.
Two contrasting 26-year-olds in London's newly-developing Docklands.
Tim Piggot-Smith investigates the famous sleuth of 221b Baker Street.
Seven entertaining parties.
A portrait of the once-famous British singer, dancer and film star, Jesse Matthews.
Dilemmas faced by parents of mentally handicapped offspring who reach childhood and independence.
Three young adults addicted to gambling on fruit machines, with disastrous results.
Scarfe's Follies with Bob Geldof, Jane Asher, Terry Jones, Ian McKellen, Robin Bailey, Julian Glover, Marcia Warren, John Bird, John Challis, John Watts, Nellie the elephant and Ivy the camel. Gerald Scarfe records the follies of man in his cartoons. Now he wants to create his own folly. But what are follies - and why did eccentrics build them? Surrounded by high-kicking follies girls and borne by noble beasts, Scarfe sets off on a quest of discovery. He encounters a naughty vicar who built a folly garden for his gypsy girlfriend; a Welshman who burned his own son; a politician who got voters drunk; a man whose house resembles a jungle; and 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who built a steeple overnight to win a wager, and was buried in a pyramid with a bottle of port and a cold chicken. And as all the best follies contained a resident hermit, Scarfe advertises for one in the Times - with startling results.
A specialist with the Thames Water Authority attempts to clean up the Ganges.
Ten pupils from an independent public school (Rugby) and a state comprehensive school (Ruffwood) exchange places and lives.
A self-operated video camera was set up in Peter Tilson's home to record a personal diary in his battle with AIDS.
Annie, a nurse from Manchester, leaves the NHS to set up a new life as a nurse in Los Angeles.
Lucinda Lambton travels along the Great North Road, the backbone of Britain that links London to Edinburgh, discovering many weird and wonderful delights en route.
The story of a remarkable young woman. It's Alison French's wedding day. She's 24 - vivacious, candid, attractive, with a warm smile and a lively sense of humour. Alison, professionally qualified as a youth worker, is marrying Mark John. What makes her wedding different is that she's an athetoid spastic - her body's never still, and she has difficulty with her speech. Seven years ago, 40 Minutes made an acclaimed film about Alison, telling of her bid to gain independence in the able-bodied world. Tonight's follow-up is a passionate love story. But in marrying the man she loves, Alison has to leave her family in Watford, set up a new home in South Wales, and adapt to being a clergyman's wife. Her heart is still set on finding an independent job. The harsh reality is that despite her skills and rare qualities, she may face rejection. But Alison doesn't give up easily...
Catrine Clay presents the disturbing story of gypsy children abducted from their parents in clean and ordered Switzerland.
Perhaps the last holiday for a group of children, some of whom are gravely ill. They fulfil their dream of visiting Disney World.
A 13-year-old boy hopes to be adopted by Dave, a single man of 42 - but things go wrong.
Long-term unemployment in rural Herefordshire.
Three widows at different stages of their recovery.
An old white woman colonial settler staying on in up-country Kenya.
An old-fashioned sea-side hotel, with many retired residents, is to be refurbished. The residents must go.
Two people are waiting on an NHS hospital waiting list - one for a minor operation, the other for a major one.
The story of a mix-up in a Nottingham nursing-home. Margaret Wheeler and Blanche Rylatt each gave birth to a baby girl on the same day. Margaret is convinced that she was given the wrong baby.
The East Kent Dole Fraud team cracking down on "fiddlers and scroungers".
Kate Matthews extraordinary fight against cancer to survive, after learning that she has just 12 weeks to live.
The impact of 2,500 gypsies and travellers on the sleepy market town of Appleby in Cumbria, which each June the travellers invade for the annual horse fair.
Lucinda Lambton has photographed houses for 27 years. She conducts a personal and enthusiastic tour around her favourites - some of Britain's oddest, most individual and delightful homes. Lucinda's travels take her to a Hollywood hacienda in Derbyshire, created for a man who banished straight lines; a clairvoyant's bijou residence in the air; a Gothic castle now being built by a ruralist in deepest Cornwall; a haunted Victorian hotchpotch of a place north of the Humber, where the tiles don't match; and a circular confection of great charm in Devon, created by the Misses Parminter.
Out on patrol with the policewomen of the West Midlands Force, revealing the change in their role since the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act.
The inside story of the examinations of the Royal School of Music, following four musicians and their examiner through their rehearsals and preparation, and into the exam. room itself.
Three soldiers - all members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, all in the-front line of Northern Ireland's tense security troubles - and all three are women.
Highlighting the desperation that debt can bring to people's lives.
Three women who have had to face the break-up of long and seemingly happy marriages, and to being single once again.
Memorable meetings between subjects and their monarch - revealing the special place the Queen holds in the hearts of her subjects.
The largest leisure and shopping complex in Europe, the Metro Centre in Tynemouth, and its creator John Hall.
Darren Lillywhite was 17, mischievous and high-spirited. He and his mates were a lively lot, always getting into scrapes around the village of Cranleigh, where they grew up. Darren had owned his prized Vauxhall Astra for just a few weeks. One August evening in 1987 he drove it into a roundabout and was thrown from the car. Now he is paralysed from the neck down and can do nothing for himself. Darren has been at Stoke Mandeville Hospital for ten months, but his family is determined to get him back home. Terry and Marilyn Lillywhite have built a special extension to their house. If Darren makes it, his family, neighbours and friends will all be joining in the celebration. No one can help liking Darren. 'I don't feel bitter about it at all,' he says. 'It's like being born again, really....'
The effects of jealousy on three victims.
The Brooke Hospital for Animals in Cairo aims to provide the best veterinary care for the poorest section of the community.
Celebrates the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe's hero, music-hall comedian Max Millar.
The story of Hill House School and its unique headmaster, Colonel Stuart Townend.
A journey by Intercity into the world of the supernatural. Do you believe in ghosts? Helen McCormick does. She found an ancient crucifix in her cellar - and then saw a medieval monk walk past her kitchen window. Ambulanceman Ken Lobley rescued his aunt after a warning from an apparition. Nichola Thompson, aged 13, was reading, looked up, and saw her grandmother - wearing the pink shroud she'd been buried in two years earlier. Rev Jack Richardson investigates spooky Harnham Hall in Northumberland. He blesses the earthly remains of Kate Babington, who died a prisoner at Harnham in 1670. Eddie Burks, a 'clairsentient', is summoned to an RAF base to contact the ghost of an airman. Eerily, he describes how the man died and why he returns. And four nurses spend the night in 'the most haunted house in Britain' - with strange tales to tell the following morning....
The two top women's wrestlers in Britain fight for the most coveted prize, The British Ladies' Championship Belt
A dedicated engineer and tough businessman goes from South Wales to the Sudan to rehabilitate Sudan's decaying railways.
One in six in the old coal-mining district of Easington is out of work. Tom and Dawn are both unemployed and it is their wedding day. What does the future hold for them?
Apparently unprovoked and irrational acts of violence. Why do they happen? What are the effects on the victims?
It's said that 2,000 dogs and 4,000 cats are destroyed in Britain every day. Celia Hammond was a top fashion model. Now she's so furious about the destruction of healthy animals that she's given up her career, even her personal life, to rescue as many strays as she can. She prowls the wastelands and alleyways of London to save frightened, injured and lost cats. Her ultimate aim is to set up her own low-cost spaying and neutering clinics.
A real life soap opera is unfolding in Cardross Street, West London. A Royal Ballet star, a man who owns a share in a race horse, and a peer's daughter now live side by side with old folk who have rented their houses all their lives. Once the street was filled with families. Now it's being taken over and tarted up by the young rich with no children. 'Funeral today - skip tomorrow' is how the locals describe what's happening. Had they been able to afford it, the old timers could have bought their homes for £200. Now unmodernised two-up two-downs with outside loos are snapped up at £150,000. 'For the old people the street is a way of life,' says the Hon Henrietta Roper-Curzon . 'For us it is just a transitory thing. When they leave it's in a hearse. We leave in the removal van'. With John Pitman.
The famous high-security hospital and a new therapeutic regime.
Following two people, one in the North and one in the South of England, from the time they are made redundant through three months of job-hunting.
An insight into the first few months of Britain's first purpose-built AIDS hospice. London Lighthouse is an experiment. The building is striking. The approach to nursing is radical. The project could provide a model for the health care of the future. Beatty King, 26, is one of 15 nurses working at Lighthouse. On night shift, she spends the small hours gently negotiating with Colin, who's desperate to smoke, and sitting with Christopher, who is close to death. The patients appreciate having as much say as possible in how they are looked after. But as relationships develop, emotional pressures increase. Beatty admits, 'I don't think I realised what I was letting myself in for....'.
A young American travels from Tampa to Vermont, inspecting the parents who want to adopt her unborn child - and finally makes her choice.
Ten of the most dangerous and disruptive men in the prison system have been brought together in an experimental unit at Hull Jail. A new softly-softly regime is being tested on inmates like Fred Low, who is serving three life sentences - one for killing a fellow prisoner - and Patrick Mackay, serving five life sentences for manslaughter and robbery. 40 Minutes gained access to the unit as the prisoners started to reveal themselves to the hand-picked staff, and as conflicts began. The most serious clash was over the only woman working full time in the unit, and it involved David McAllister, serving 19 years for armed robbery and assault, who later escaped from the unit and was on the run for five days. This film tells the story of the most controversial unit in our prisons.
A eulogy to the joy of cycling.
This film documents one day in the life of Angel station on the Northern Line of the London Underground in the days before its refurbishment. We see the ticket collectors, station manager and other staff as they cope with angry passengers, lift failures and cancelled trains.
At least one in every five children in Britain suffer from bullying. In our schools the problem is worse than anywhere else in Europe. 40 Minutes reveals what's really going on in the playground.
John Pitman meets a selection of women to ascertain their views on the wearing of coats made of fur.
In New Jersey, USA, a team of cops and scientists is 'busting' polluters. For the first time a film crew has been given total access to their operations. 40 Minutes follows the trail - the surveillance. the 'sting', the raid. Whether it's one small operator dumping chemicals on the street or the president of a multi-million-dollar company caught polluting a river - both are likely to face serious criminal charges. In New Jersey, they believe only tough action will deter dumpers. Is there a lesson for us in Britain?
Two children who feel sure they died terrible deaths and have been born again tell their extraordinary stories. Nicola, aged 12, lives in Keighley, Yorkshire, near to the railway tracks where she played in the 19th century in another life. Then, she says, she was a boy. Parish records suggest that it isn't just a childhood fantasy. Titu, aged 6, lives in north India in the shadow of the Taj Mahal. His is a violent story. He alleges he was gunned down by a murderer. Another vivid imagination? The radio shop he ran still exists, and his widow is still alive. When he mentions buried gold, it seems to jog her memory...
Malika Shawa is an old girl of Cheltenham Ladies College. She's also a Palestinian aristocrat, who owns the only hotel in the Gaza Strip. In the refugee camp next door, the Palestinian intifada - an uprising against Israeli occupation - began three years ago this week. Today, Malika's guests are a strange collection of journalists, diplomats and foreigners on fact-finding tours. For them, her hotel is 'an oasis from the filth, smells and violence that surrounds it'.
The BBC 40 Mins documentary team follow Trevor Smith, owner of Trevor Smith's Animal World, a company that supplies animals for film and television.
'I was born and brought up in Britain. I was 8 years old when I was circumcised. I really thought I was going to die, because of the pain, having no anaesthetic. You have a lady holding your mouth so you cannot scream, you have two ladies on your chest and the other two holding the legs.'. Seven years ago, 40 Minutes' first film on female circumcision led to the law which banned it in this country. Today's film reveals that the practice of genital mutilation of young girls is still flourishing in Britain today.
Five young Russian survivors of the Soviet Union's worst rail disaster arrive in Manchester for medical treatment. Badly burned in the explosion in 1989, they hope plastic surgeon Stewart Watson can help. Bewildered, without a word of English, they face major surgery and the unfamiliar west. Immediately they're the centre of attraction, with a press conference on their first day in hospital and an invitation to Downing Street before they leave.
For 47 years Alec Krawczynski has lived in Scotland. He is known as Alec the Pole. But his real name is not Krawczynski and he has never been to Poland. He came from the Ukraine and for nearly 50 years has kept a deadly secret. Now, as the Ukraine reaches out for independence, he discovers members of his family are still alive. He returns to the Ukraine to discover if his country and family are ready to forgive him for being, in his own words, a traitor.
A rape in the Irish village of Bray divides the community. Local man Gerry is sent to prison, separated from his wife Saundra and his children. But the rape victim is also isolated by her neighbours. "Nobody believed her. In Irish society it's all black and white, virgin or whore." Fifteen months later, Gerry's appeal draws near, raising new hopes in Saundra and old conflicts in the small world torn apart by the crime.
During the property boom, big profits could be made buying and selling London hotels used by councils to house the homeless. Now property prices have dropped and councils are cutting back on bed and breakfast bills. 40 Minutes takes a closer look at this notoriously secretive world.
An adventure story by international Emmy award-winning film-maker Nigel Evans. Into the jungles of a small Pacific island, Dr Danforth Artie Bookout leads his team of intrepid Texans to search for an aircraft and the body of Weyland Bennett, a "home-town boy" missing in action 50 years ago. Deep in the bush sits Chief Jean Marc waiting for his Texan pay packet to lumber into view. And two days' walk behind the Texan strides a local explorer who knows the secrets of Dr Dan's past.
Capturing escaped pythons, confiscating pet cougars or wrestling with exotic crocodiles - it's all in a day's work for Miami specialist police officer Lieutenant Kat Kelley. The locals are crazy about owning flamboyant pets and many of these exotic animals have escaped and multiplied over the years, threatening both people and native wildlife. Kelley is on call 24 hours a day and never knows what she will have to face. "We're fighting a losing battle here. Basically, nature is out of control."
At 34, 5ft 2ins tall and weighing 16 stone, Annette is desperate to lose weight. She has been told the only permanent solution is a stomach stapling operation. The surgeon says that with a specially adapted staple gun he can reduce the size of Annette's stomach to the length of a teaspoon. And that would mean she would only ever be able to eat tiny portions of food. Unable to bear her fat any longer, and with a family history of diabetes and heart disease, Annette feels she has nothing to lose. Meanwhile her friend Kath, who reduced from 19 to seven stone after her operation, is now back to a size 22 and about to enter hospital for a fourth operation.
The story of Radio Luxembourg, from its inception until 30 December 1991; the last day of broadcasting on 208 metres. Features interviews and appearances by many of its DJs
What has happened to Essex Man in the 90's? Martin Smith and his girlfriend Mandy epitomise many young people whose champagne lifestyle has suffered in the recession-hit 90's. How do they feel about the country now?
Independence, self-reliance, confidence. These are some of the qualities that the traditional single-sex English boarding school gives the children in its care. 40 Minutes follows some 8-year-old boys off to different boarding schools for the first time. Their parents and headmasters are confident that they are doing the right thing. But some ex-boarders are not so sure. These men feel that the experience of boarding at a young age was damaging.
This film looks at a theatre group who specialise in prison remedial work. By turning hardened criminals into actors, they challenge them to reveal human emotion from behind their masks of hardness.
The engaging lives and intimate stories of Squeegies - people who wash car windows at traffic lights for small change - in South London. Del, living with the effects of having grown up in care up that stunted his promising career as a musician, Tony, struggling with abandonment and alcoholism and Leah, the mother figure of the group, who is pregnant, bringing new life and hope into the tough circumstances they inhabit.
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