-
Episode 1 - The Van Gogh Fakes
Release Date: 1997-10-26Geraldine Norman investigates the growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the authenticity of paintings which have long been held to be works of Vincent Van Gogh.
-
Episode 2 - Big War in Lilliput
Release Date: 1997-11-03Hungarian businessman Gyorgy Klapka attempts to resurrect the once-famous Lilliput dwarf theatre in Budapest, closed down long ago by the Communists, to mount a production of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. But after suffering years of exploitation as well as banishment, the dwarf actors are keen to maximise their assets by appearing in other, perhaps more lucrative productions.
-
Episode 3 - In Search of the Amber Room
Release Date: 1997-11-09Anthony Wilson tries to solve the mystery of the Amber Room of the tsars in St. Petersburg, stolen by the Germans and never found.
-
Episode 4 - A Very British Psycho
Release Date: 1997-11-23Vilified on its release in 1960 as pornographic, Michael Powell's film Peeping Tom is now regarded by many as a masterpiece.
-
Episode 5 - Rebel With a Cause
Release Date: 1997-11-30Can flamboyant US ad-man Tony Kaye market himself as a serious artist?
-
Episode 6 - Naked and Famous
Release Date: 1997-12-07Profile of rap artist and writer Tricky, who returns to the Bristol estate where he grew up.
-
Episode 7 - Ivanov Goes to Moscow
Release Date: 1997-12-14Ralph Fiennes, Harriet Walter, and the rest of the Almeida Theatre Company earlier this year took their acclaimed production of Chekhov's Ivanov back to its roots in Moscow.
-
Episode 8 - Songs from the Golden City
Release Date: 1997-12-20Returning from exile, Joe Mogotsi of the legendary Manhattan Brothers, takes us on a cinematic journey into the virtuosity, exuberance and resistance of South African jazz. Joe reconnects with jazz greats Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim as he seeks justice, recognition, and recompense for the Manhattan Brothers’ extraordinary catalogue of music.
-
Episode 9 - Making a Killing
Release Date: 1998-06-28Through the story of the Gutmann family's quest to recover the art collection stolen by the Nazis from their parents, questioning the international art market's collusion in Nazi art looting.
-
Episode 10 - Spy in the House of Love - Anaïs Nin
Release Date: 1998-07-19Back in the 1960s, the novelist Anaïs Nin was acclaimed as a feminist icon when her revelatory diaries were published. But she had omitted much of her bigamous past, and it is only now that a complete picture of this secretive writer is emerging.
-
Episode 11 - The Fine Art of Crime
Release Date: 1998-07-26The theft of a Caravaggio from a Palermo church nearly 30 years ago shocked the art world. Since then, art has come to play an integral part in the laundering of the proceeds of crime. Reviewing some of the most famous stolen works of art.
-
Episode 12 - The Other Francis Bacon
Release Date: 1998-08-02Art-world orthodoxy holds that Bacon did not prepare or rehearse his paintings. But Bacon's friend and neighbour Barry Joule has revealed an enormous cache of sketches and treated photographs he claims Bacon left to him.
-
Episode 13 - The Lost Frescoes
Release Date: 1998-08-09Restoration of frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, badly damaged in a 1997 earthquake, is being held up.
-
Episode 14 - Tuning With the Enemy
Release Date: 1998-08-16American piano tuner Ben Treuhaft tries to get pianos into Cuba.
-
Episode 15 - Daydream Believers
Release Date: 1998-08-29Tells the story of five people who auditioned to become Monkees but failed to make the cut. Their feelings about it range from relief to embarrassment, self-justification, and regret.
-
Episode 16 - A Roll of the Dice: The Story of The Capeman
Release Date: 1998-09-06The 40-member cast of Paul Simon's Broadway musical disaster The Capeman grapple with the staging of the controversial show based on a true story about a 16-year-old Puerto Rican kid, Sol Agron, who murdered two people in the 1950s.
-
Episode 17 - The Lost Supper
Release Date: 1998-12-27The restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous masterpiece, The Last Supper, produced results some call glorious and others call tragic. Da Vinci’s famously fragile fresco was always going to be a challenge for its secretive Italian restorers. No one, however, could have foreseen how problematic and strange their task would become. Marked by a series of extraordinary mishaps, mistakes, and miscalculations, the incredible restoration is hilarious to watch but may have resulted in the loss of a masterpiece.
-
Episode 18 - Loving Lenin
Release Date: 1999-01-10Imaginative use of archive footage and interviews to examine how Lenin achieved mythical status, and why his death is still mourned by some in Russia.
-
Episode 19 - The Cowboy and the Eclipse
Release Date: 1999-08-08James Turrell is famous for creating the world's largest piece of "land art" - reshaping a volcano. But he has also built a giant camera obscura on a Cornish hillside to record the eclipse image.