In the week before lockdown began and schools were closed across the UK, the BBC’s Children’s and Education department realised it had a special duty in this national emergency.
“At that moment, we started to see stretching out before us what the BBC should do in terms of education during the pandemic. We set the ball rolling,” says Alice Webb, director of BBC Children’s and Education.
The grand finale of the 49th edition of University Challenge promises a clash of the titans between Cambridge’s Corpus Christi College and Imperial College London.
Here are our top picks.
This documentary examines the case of The Central Park Five, which was recently turned into a Netflix drama miniseries called When They See Us.
The shocking and heartbreaking documentary tells the story of a 28-year-old white female jogger, Trisha Meili, who was beaten, raped and left for dead in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
Five young black and Latino boys aged 14-16 years old were accused and convicted of the crime.
Line of Duty has become a national institution, with series six still to come.
In a whole new spin on the police procedural, Line of Duty puts the coppers themselves under the microscope, as the series follows the anti-corruption investigations of AC Unit 12.
March 2020 was a month like no other in television. Concern that staff might become infected by Covid-19 brought rapid changes as broadcasters cancelled filming on some of their biggest shows. For what is believed to be the first time in more than half a century, even the set of Coronation Street went dark.
The UK is being tested as never before in peacetime – and in an age when communication is immediate and uncontrollable and diffuse. But, if the nation does come together and get through the challenges of Covid-19, it will have done so with the help of the most traditional forms of public service broadcasting (PSB).
Jim Carrey returns as Jeff Piccirillo, the publicly beloved but personally tormented children’s television presenter of Mr Pickles’ Puppet Time.
The platform will include a wide range of both entertaining and educational series and films from the CBBC and CBeebies, as well as other suitable BBC programming.
To access the site, users simply have to select the monster shaped ‘children’ button when asked who’s watching.
The categories have also been simplified to make it easier for child viewers, who will find their favourite series divided into Trending, Drama, Funny and Cartoons. Live broadcasts of the CBBC and CBeebies channels can also be easily accessed.
More than 40 broadcasters, production companies and industry bodies set up home for the day in the Business Design Centre, London, to dispense advice to 1,300 young people hoping to break into TV. A series of sessions – featuring expert panels from across the industry – cast light on television genres, skills and opportunities.
BBC continuing drama head of production Nikki Saunders revealed there was a huge number of entry-level jobs across her department, including runners, camera assistants and make-up artists.
Both mother and son come of age in this new bawdy comedy series based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name.
