Horizon drama-docs and Microbes and Men

[Here Hare Here]

Hi - I'd love to track down a couple of excellent drama docs, done, I believe by the Horizon team. One is LIFE STORY - starring Tim Piggott-Smith as Crick, Jeff Goldblum as Watson and Juliet Stevenson and Rosalind Franklin. There was also a much more recent drama about Stephen Hawking, but I can't remember the title. I think Laurence Fox played Hawking.



I'd also be interested in any information on how to get hold of a copy of MICROBES AND MEN - BBC2 1974 series about the careers of Pasteur, Koch, Semmelwiess and Roux. Written by Robert Reid (or at least the accompanying book was). It was absolutely excellent. Starred Arthur Lowe (fantastic as Pasteur), Robert Lang and Milo O'Shea - music by Dudley Simpson.



Thanks everyone.

[mrs_emma_peel]

Hi there,

I'm also a great fan of Horizon - there have produced many memorable docu-dramas. The best of which must be Life Story: The Race for the Double Helix - an absolutely brilliant Horizon special.



Life Story was first broadcast on BBC2 TV as a Horizon Special, on 27th April 1987 and was the winner of the 1987 BAFTA Award for Best Single Drama. In November 2002, Life Story won the European Midas Prize for the best TV drama on a scientific subject made in the last 50 years. It was released on VHS NTSC in the USA under the title of: 'The Race for the Double Helix'.

But unfortunately this is a very, very rare, virtually unobtainable Horizon progamme.



Hawking is commercially available on Region 2 DVD and stars Benedict Cumberbatch who delivers a superb performance as Professor Stephen Hawking. Hawking is available from Play.com �11-99 delivered.



I have been searching for another wonderful Horizon special: The Eddystone Lights - a marvellously entertaining docu-drama on the three, often bizarre and crazy, attempts to construct the Eddystone Lighthouse - one lighthouse was, incredibly, built out of wood and of course caught fire and collasped into the sea, the second was simply blown over - finally the third, a substantial stone built lighthouse remained totally stable, fixed and upright! The excellent music, on this Horizon special, was by film composer George Fenton.

I would love a copy of this Horizon gem

[Steve Crook]

name='mrs_emma_peel']I have been searching for another wonderful Horizon special: The Eddystone Lights - a marvellously entertaining docu-drama on the three, often bizarre and crazy, attempts to construct the Eddystone Lighthouse - one lighthouse was, incredibly, built out of wood and of course caught fire and collasped into the sea, the second was simply blown over - finally the third, a substantial stone built lighthouse remained totally stable, fixed and upright! The excellent music, on this Horizon special, was by film composer George Fenton.

I would love a copy of this Horizon gem

That sounds like the Three Little Pigs go to Cornwall.

"I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your lighthouse down"



But it was a great feat of engineering to get any of them built in such hostile conditions.



They did another great edition of Horizon on Tuesday Is alcohol worse than ecstasy? where they looked at a scientific study of 10 of the most commonly used drugs and ranked them in order of danger - to the people taking them and to society as a whole. There were some interesting surprises with some highly illegal drugs being declared a lot safer and less dangerous than many legal ones.



Steve

[Here Hare Here]

Thanks Mrs Peel!

Gosh, was Life Story so long ago?? It is so vivid in my mind. I remember it was repeated and I tried to record it, but s*d's law, of course it didn't work.



I don't understand with all our digital technology why it's so difficult to get these gems of TV production. Do you think the digital archiving of the BBC's holdings will eventually make it more possible? Do hope so.



And thank you for the additional info about Hawking. I have a particular interest in this as I edited a children's book he and his daughter wrote recently, and actually met him at the launch at the Royal Society. Quite an experience!



Horizon is a great series (if a bit patchy these days). One of its greatest joys for me was the wonderful voice of their 'resident' narrator in the 70s and 80s Frank Gillard.



Thanks again Mrs P.

[Tony Pendrey]

name='Here Hare Here']

I'd also be interested in any information on how to get hold of a copy of MICROBES AND MEN - BBC2 1974 series about the careers of Pasteur, Koch, Semmelwiess and Roux. Written by Robert Reid (or at least the accompanying book was). It was absolutely excellent. Starred Arthur Lowe (fantastic as Pasteur), Robert Lang and Milo O'Shea - music by Dudley Simpson.



Thanks everyone.

I have posted a few times about "Microbes and Men". Nobody seems to remember it but I thought it was totally brillliant. Shown just once on BBC2 and as far as I know never repeated. There are a few details on IMDB. Some of the series were directed by the father of Robert and Philip Glenister.



The music by Dudley Simpson was particularly good and as you pointed out, Arthur Lowe showed us what a fine actor he was.

[Here Hare Here]

Thanks tony



I think M and M was repeated once in 1976 - which I think is when I first saw it as I'm sure I remember watching an episode the night before my biology O level exam.



I did track a set down to the Wellcome Institute in London where you can view their video collection on site. This was at least 15 years ago, if not more, and I only had chance to see two episodes - but it was just as good as I remembered, and at that time didn't seem to have dated.



I keep meaning to revisit the Wellcome in the hope they still have it, but I also keep thinking that as digitisation advances these things MUST at some point, become available.



Anyway, it's good to know that there area others out there who rate this series as well as me.



Cheers

[mrs_emma_peel]

My Pleasure, Here Hare Here Hi Steve and Tony

I hope the BBC will release some of their massive library of archive documentaries.



Very glad to be of help with the Hawking Horizon programme – wonderful that you got to meet such an extraordinary person and scientific genius. Another scientific genius was the brilliant Rosalind Franklin played so beautifully and intelligently by Juliet Stevenson in Life Story.



There was another superb, rare BBC documentary, (possibly Horizon?) Rosalind Franklin: DNA’s Dark Lady, a repeat of which (sadly I missed) was shown on BBC4 15th January 2006, originally narrated by British actress Barbara Flynn, telling the tragic tale of an unrecognized individual genius and heroine - Rosalind Franklin.



From BBC4 web-site:

Today, nearly all scientists agree that the hard evidence used to support Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins' revolutionary theory about DNA was based on the work of Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant molecular biologist and crystallographer.

Yet in 1962, when the three men were awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery, Franklin wasn't even mentioned. Tragically, she had died four years earlier at the age of 37. Her cancer was probably the result of over-exposure to the radiation she used in making her remarkable x-ray photographs - including Photograph 51 - the image that was the key to revealing the double-helix structure of DNA.

Dark Lady of DNA finds out why Franklin never received credit for her contribution, how the three men gained access to her crucial data and asks who this pioneering woman who worked in the male-dominated world of scientific research was.



This documentary has recently been released, but only on Region 1 DVD in the US, and re-titled under the US Nova production company banner:

Nova: DNA - Secret of Photo 51 (2003) aka Rosalind Franklin: DNA’s Dark Lady

and re-narrated by US actress Sigourney Weaver.



Extract from Rosalind Franklin's notes on her X-ray diffraction Photo 51 of DNA in Nov 1951:

“Structure B: Evidence for a 2 – chain helix … a double helix” - Rosalind Franklin



Watson and Crick could not have proposed their celebrated model structure for DNA in 1953, without unauthorized access to experimental X-Ray photographic results, specifically the famous Photo 51, obtained at significant cost to her own health, by the brilliant King's College scientist Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer whilst researching virus structures on 16th April, 1958, aged just 37, and because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously she was ineligible to share the honour.



Nova: DNA - Secret of Photo 51 DVD Region 1 50 mins

“That gifted girl who could not defend herself” - narrated by Sigourney Weaver

Available from Amazon.com Region 1 for $18 - but playable only on multi-region DVD players.

The documentary was based upon Brenda Maddox’s book - Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA.

[Steve Crook]

The Rosalind Franklin documentary was a joint BBC/Nova production, but not in the Horizon series. Having studied physics in my youth, and liking Barbara Flynn, I made sure I caught it when it was first broadcast and I added most of the details about it to the IMDb



Steve

[mrs_emma_peel]

Many thanks for the excellent info Steve.

Hope the BBC will release this superb documentary on Region 2 DVD with the Barbara Flynn narration

[Here Hare Here]

Lots of fascinating stuff here - I agree with you both that Franklin's contribution has been sadly overlooked in the double-helix story. I missed the Barbara Flynn narrated programme (one of my favourite actresses too) unfortunately.



I have been in touch with the Wellcome Institute, and they do have copies of both Microbes and Men and Life Story which can be viewed in their library. So at least if you can get to London, you can in theory go and see them. However, there is no possibility of copying them at the Wellcome, and sadly, it seems, little chance of getting copies by any other means. The very helpful contact at the Wellcome says:



"Unfortunately, you will not be permitted to copy this material in our organisation and you will not be able to purchase copies if your interest in the material for reference only (the BBC no longer offer this service.)



If you are a television professional then it's possible that the material would be available to licence in clip format (however, I have encountered plenty of examples where this older material is "unlicensable" for intransigent or uneconomic copyright reasons - such as actors/music licences).

http://www.focalint.org/MemberDetails.cfm?MemberID=21"



But I plan to make a pilgrimage to the Wellcome Library sometime soon to view at least one M+M episode, and Life Story.

[Here Hare Here]

PS - Thanks Mrs Peel for the info on Hawking - I have ordered a copy from Play.com.

HHH

[nanduthalange]

I managed to get "Life Story" through this forum (though I forget from whom, alas). I agree it is a thrilling tale of scientific rivalry, adventure and discovery.



Much has been made of how Rosalind Franklin was badly treated, but I think it is worth bearing in mind that the 1953 publication in Nature of Watson & Crick's paper was accompanied by separate papers from both Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. She certainly was not excluded from the scientific credit, and in Watson's book "The Race for the Double Helix" he gives due credit to Franklin.



Moreover Franklin went on to work closely with Francis Crick, and when she was stricken with ovarian cancer, Crick and his wife took her into their home and nursed her until her death.



Sadly, because she died, she could not be awarded a share in the Nobel Prize, which is never given posthumously.



If anyone is desparate for a copy of "Life Story", I'm happy to oblige - but bear in mind that my version is only a copy - just send me a message.

[yakima]

Horizon is a great series (if a bit patchy these days). One of its greatest joys for me was the wonderful voice of their 'resident' narrator in the 70s and 80s Frank Gillard.



I think it is Paul Vaughan you are thinking of.

[narabdela]

Horizon is a great series (if a bit patchy these days).

Just watched this weeks offering, "How Small is the Universe?". It was truly terrible, a potentially fascinating subject, ruined by dumbed-down tricksy presentation.

Horizon used to be one of the jewels in the BBC's crown. No more I'm afraid. It really is quite depressing.