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All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 The Secret Life of Norman Wisdom Aged 92 & 3/4

    • January 16, 2008
    • BBC Two

    For the last 30 years, Norman Wisdom has lived independently of his family in a house he designed for himself on the Isle of Man. But his live-in carer has decided that she can't cope with looking after him any more. Norman's children, who live 300 miles away in Sussex, don't know what to do with him. He insists on daily trips around his beloved island, looking for opportunities to perform his songs and- despite having lost his driving licence several years before- trying to buy a car.

  • S01E02 The Man Who Eats Badgers and Other Strange Tales

    • January 23, 2008
    • BBC Two

    To many, the A30 is just a road, but to retired civil servant Arthur Boyt it's more like a delicatessen. Arthur eats roadkill. He has sampled cat, barn owl, squirrel, hedgehog and badger. But his lifestyle is under attack. His isolated cottage on Bodmin moor has started receiving abusive calls from disgruntled locals. His wife, a vegetarian he met in Watford, is so afraid that she refuses to leave her bedroom. But Arthur refuses to change.

  • S01E03 Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love

    • January 30, 2008
    • BBC Two

    Carolyn is a 37 year-old mother of four in the midst of a passionate affair. She's spending up to 18 hours a day with her lover online on 'Second Life', the website. She has never met him, but, to her husband of nine year's dismay, she is abandoning her family and flying 5,000 miles to London to start a new life with her lover, Elliot. What makes this website, which has three million members, so compelling?

  • S01E04 The Madness of Dancing Daniel

    • February 6, 2008
    • BBC Two

    Daniel is 29 and has a personality disorder so unusual that even his psychiatrist can't name it. He's obsessed with London, red ties ("like Tony Blair would wear") and dancing to Madonna. He often behaves aggressively, and no London care home will take him in. Most people like Daniel spend their lives in prisons or long stay mental hospitals, but Daniel's psychiatrist really doesn't want to see him locked up. Is there an alternative?

  • S01E05 The End of the World Bus Tour

    • February 13, 2008
    • BBC Two

    Sharon is leading a group of tourists who believe the Apocalypse is due in a few years. Her customers are going to Israel to take a last look at the valley of Armageddon before it is awash with the blood of unbelievers. They will be baptised and will spend a day helping out at an Israeli military base. As the passengers relate their beliefs, some of which seem to have come straight out of science fiction, they clamour to rescue the film makers' souls.

  • S01E06 The 92 Year Old Danger Junkie

    • February 27, 2008
    • BBC Two

    Ron Cunningham is the world's oldest working stuntman. He lives in Brighton with his exasperated son David. Battling cancer and strokes, Ron is often wheelchair-bound: but that doesn't stop him pouring petrol over his jacket and setting himself alight on Korean TV or for an audience in his local pub. Filmmaker Daniel Vernon has followed Ron for 5 years, and will be with him when he pulls his final stunt: dying on stage.

  • S01E07 The Woman Who Bought a School For Her Son

    • March 5, 2008
    • BBC Two

    When her thirteen year old son didn't fit in at his ninth school, single mother and barrister Annabel Goodman decided that she had to teach him herself. She put her career on hold, cashed in her savings, and set up a private school in Worcestershire. But as Annabel becomes swamped with the school's financial problems, her younger son reveals that what he really wants is some time with her. This film follows the school's first two terms.

  • S01E08 The Curious World of Frinton-on-Sea

    • March 12, 2008
    • BBC Two

    Frinton-on-Sea is a town that doesn't like change. The shops, the sea front and even the people haven't changed for decades. So when Network Rail announced it was going to automate the town's manually operated level-crossing gates, there was a call to arms. Filmmaker Marc Isaacs meets the people who have decided to grow old in England's most conservative seaside resort.

Season 2

  • S02E01 The British in Bed

    • October 29, 2009
    • BBC Two

    From their own double beds, British couples talk with disarming frankness about sex, infidelity, love and marriage, and offer an insight into what makes and breaks a relationship.

  • S02E02 The Ghostman of Skye

    • October 31, 2009
    • BBC Two

    The Isle of Skye is a place marked out not just by its rugged Scottish beauty, but also by an extraordinarily high number of reports of ghost experiences. Local crofters, churchmen and policemen are among the myriad witnesses who claim to have seen a ghostchild, a headless woman, a strange light, or the island's most famous phantom - a ghost car that approaches before evaporating into the night. With the memory of his deceased wife Nina still fresh in his mind, former missionary Donald Angus Maclean has set himself up as a collector of the island's ghost stories. As he investigates the strange and sometimes sinister tales, it's revealed that he too is haunted - not by visions of disappearing cars or headless women, but by the memory of his dead wife.

  • S02E03 I Won University Challenge

    • November 5, 2009
    • BBC Two

    How has life played out for those endowed with the nation's biggest brains, the previous winners of quiz show University Challenge? After university, is it easy to put those brains to good use? For some there's a pleasure in simply being brainy. 'I'm very happy being clever. In fact one of the abiding pleasures of my life is the things my mind can do,' says 2002 winner Luke Pitcher. For others, having the kind of mind capable of winning University Challenge is as much a curse as a blessing. 'People don't like intelligent people - they like successful people, but they don't like intelligent people', declares Thor Halland, member of the 2003 winning team. 'The problem with a lot of my life', reveals 1968 winner Pamela Maddison, 'is that I've had to dumb myself down.' From the champion who was drunk when his team won to the brilliant polymath who now works as a postman, the film unravels the lives and careers of Britain's brainiest.

  • S02E04 Seven Pups for Seven People

    • November 12, 2009
    • BBC Two

    The documentary series follows the fate of a litter of puppies born in east London. Often called `devil dogs' by the media, the Staffordshire bull terrier crosses are one of the most sought-after breeds in the country, yet are also the most frequently abandoned. As their owner tries to find new homes for them, the film examines the people behind the headlines of hoodies, knife crime and dangerous dogs.

  • S02E05 Can We Get Married?

    • November 19, 2010
    • BBC Two

    Like many couples who have been together for six years and are in their late twenties, Emma Bishop and Ben Marshall are thinking of getting married. But for them, it is not entirely straightforward. Emma and Ben both have Down's syndrome and are residents of a supported-living community in Devon, where they have an active social life and part-time jobs. They live in a small house with their friend Cy Clench, who also has Down's syndrome. If Emma and Ben were to get married, it could mean a completely different way of living. Through the high spirits of their dance nights to the tired conversations at the end of their working days, this film follows Emma and Ben as they decide whether married life would be an enormous stress they could do without, or the romantic dream they always imagined.

  • S02E06 Virgin Swimmers

    • November 26, 2009
    • BBC Two

    Nine very different adults are brought together to face a challenge that has always defeated them - learning to swim. Instructor Linda has seen it all before. She knows that most of the women will be petrified of getting their hair and faces wet, the men will be embarrassed by their lack of prowess, and all of them will probably have to conquer demons that run much deeper than a fear of water. Fifty-six-year-old Sandy from Southend-on-Sea is enthusiastic to begin with, but at the end of the second week, still reluctant to get her face wet and asking for armbands, Sandy reveals stories of a cosseted childhood that still haunts her adult years - the girl who was never allowed to play with other children has become the woman who hides behind an ever present mask of make-up. Thirty-seven-year-old Mandy, almost too afraid to don a swimming costume at the beginning of the course, is fighting a feeling that no one ever expects her to achieve, while 39-year-old kitchen salesman Wyn's floundering breaststroke speaks of a nervous history that he is resolved to master in what becomes his own version of chlorine therapy. After six weeks, Linda leads her protégés to the ultimate test in the big pool. It's sink-or-swim time.

  • S02E07 The Trouble With Mother

    • December 3, 2009
    • BBC Two

    Like many elderly people, 80-year-old former concert pianist Pauline is in need of some help and care. Unlike most other elderly people, however, Pauline is marooned in an ocean of clutter inside her five-bedroom South London house. For much of her life Pauline has been unable to throw things out, anything at all; even coat hangers, newspapers or old advertising leaflets. Far from being depressed about this, however, Pauline is resolutely cheerful in her own chaos and - even as she witnesses an 'avalanche' of papers collapsing down her staircase - stubbornly resistant to the attempts of her middle-aged son Frederick to sort out her life. When Frederick moves in to take on the task, he assumes it will be a fortnight's work - but it soon becomes clear that getting his mother's home in shape is not something that can be done in a few days.

  • S02E08 The Alzheimer's Choir

    • December 10, 2009
    • BBC Two

    Documentary film about love, time and the astonishing ability of music to return people who were thought lost. Ted's wife Hilda doesn't know who he is any more: she no longer has the ability to recognise even those closest to her. Ted, a devoted husband of 50 years, calls her his 'lovely little stranger'. There's one thing she has not forgotten: the tune to Que Sera, Sera. Ted and Hilda are members of Singing for the Brain, a group of singers in Bristol made up of Alzheimer's sufferers and their spouses. As the group bursts into song, an extraordinary thing happens. People who may not even recognise their own partner find the words of a song learnt half a century earlier, and suddenly -- just for the time it takes to sing a few verses -- it is impossible to tell who is the Alzheimer's patient and who is the carer.

Season 3

  • S03E01 Boy Cheerleaders

    • October 13, 2010
    • BBC Two

    On a South Leeds estate in the heart of Rugby League territory, a group of nine young boys are preparing for competition. But they are not taking on Bradford Northern or Hull Kingston Rovers. This is a documentary about Britain's leading all-boys cheerleading team - the DAZL Diamonds and their coach Ian Rodley. Director James Newton follows the team and their families as the boys fluff up their pom poms and prepare for the National Championships in Coventry, where they hope to be the first boys team to lift the trophy - a win which could change their lives forever.

  • S03E02 High Society Brides

    • October 20, 2010
    • BBC Two

    For over 100 years Country Life magazine has celebrated the great country houses of England, and peeked into the lives of those who lived in them. This film tracks down five blue-blooded women who were featured announcing their engagements on its most well-known page. Dubbed 'Girls in Pearls' by Country Life's readers, these women were brought up to believe that marrying someone with a stately home or a large country estate would deliver them wonderful lives. From Kate Sackville-West, who grew up in Knole, one of the largest houses in the country, to Henrietta Tiarks the 1950s 'It girl' who married a duke, this film charts the highs, lows and extraordinary reversals of fortune that followed the publication of their engagement photos in Country Life magazine.

  • S03E03 Mad Cats and Englishwomen

    • October 27, 2010
    • BBC Two

    Documentary following the efforts of two women who work round the clock caring for London's stray cats. Celia Hammond, a former model, has been rescuing these animals for the past 40 years, and runs a clinic in East London to treat and neuter them, while former folk singer and hippie Pat has turned her own home into a haven for sick and unwanted cats.

  • S03E04 The Trouble With Love and Sex

    • May 11, 2011
    • BBC Two

    The first full-length animated documentary made for British television takes us inside the counselling rooms of Relate, as clients wrestle with champagne soaked fantasies and impotence, with dark family secrets and shocking confessions of infidelity. With their true identities hidden behind the animation, thirty-somethings Ian and Mandy reveal they can barely stand to be in the same room together. Long-term singleton and serial romantic Dave is falling in love with yet another woman he can't bring himself to ask out. And fifty-one year old Iain is struggling to work out why his wife isn't having sex with him. Can Relate counselling help any of them?

  • S03E05 A Hasidic Guide to Love, Marriage and Finding a Bride

    • May 18, 2011
    • BBC Two

    Wonderland delves into the Hasidic Jewish community of Stamford Hill, north London, where the people live in a unique world divided between 21st-century urban life and 18th-century traditions. For the most part this community is reserved and publicity-shy, but filmmaker Paddy Wivell has spent three months with members of the community who have decided it is time to let the rest of the world inside their personal and religious lives. Father of five Avi Bresler invites him to his eldest son's wedding - a scene of religious solemnity, family gathering and drinking - and on his quest to find a wife for his second son. Over the months there ensue trips to spend Jewish New Year in the Ukraine at one of the world's largest Hasidic festivals, a visit to Avi's family in Jerusalem, regular audiences with a Hasidic scholar to find out about his notions of love and mariage, and a meeting with a shadchan (Jewish matchmaker) at which the family-loving Avi reveals something from his past that takes everyone by surprise.

  • S03E06 The Men Who Won't Stop Marching

    • June 1, 2011
    • BBC Two

    More than ten years after the end of the troubles, filmmaker Alison Millar explores Belfast's Shankill Road to find out how well the scars of war have healed. For four months she joined the men of the famous marching bands and in particular, spent time with Jordan, an eleven-year old aspiring drummer from one of the most famous former paramilitary families on the estate. What she found is a mixture of entrenched prejudice, relief that the troubles are over, nostalgia for the days of paramilitary discipline, and a battened-down resistance to talking about the past. But when Jordan makes a shocking discovery at the end of his road, his father's brittle silence cracks and he decides to take his son on a journey into his own past and through the Maze Prison where he had been inside for several years.

  • S03E07 Travels with My Family

    • June 8, 2011
    • BBC Two

    Long family car journeys. A bit of anticipation. A lot of scenery. And talk. Travels with My Family climbs aboard with four families as they take to the road on journeys which are momentous and trivial, touching and funny. In the process the film unravels some of the preoccupations and secrets of the British family. Kerry Lewis and his three young sons are driving to the Isle of Wight, but this is no ordinary trip. The four of them are en route to Compton Bay where they are going to scatter the ashes of the boys' mother a year after she died. The Hennessey family are taking their silent-movie obsessed son, a charismatic 16-year-old-boy with Aspergers, on a pilgrimage to the Stan Laurel museum in Cumbria. And Ian Craig and his sister Alison are driving to a prison visitor centre, a journey which, even a couple of years ago, they could have never imagined themselves taking.

  • S03E08 The Kids Who Play with Fire

    • June 15, 2011
    • BBC Two

    Approaching half of deliberately set fires in Britain are started by children and teenagers. And fire services are running more and more intervention schemes for thousands of young people every year. This film follows three of them. The charred mattress of ten year old Liam, the brazen fire-fascination of Ryan and the random acts of bedroom firesetting by fourteen year old North London girl, Hulya, all represent different challenges for the Fire Sevice counsellors, who are determined not just to stop the firesetting, but also to understand the anger and frustration that underpins it.

Season 4

  • S04E01 I Had the X Factor... 25 Years Ago

    • December 12, 2011
    • BBC Two

    With the 2011 X Factor champion newly crowned and all the finalists wanting to make the most of their sudden celebrity, this show looks back at the lives of those who were in their shoes exactly 25 years ago. It was 1986 and six nervous candidates were waiting to step out on the shiny floor of New Faces, the TV talent show of the day that had the nation hooked. They included a pair of comedians, two Scouse singers, a teenage violin prodigy and a club crooner from Birmingham. New Faces had already made stars of previous finalists, such Victoria Wood, Jim Davidson and Les Dennis, and now these six were about to get their own taste of overnight national fame. It was a night that transformed all their lives - but not in ways they had ever imagined. Tracking them through the following quarter-century involves a rollercoaster ride of tangled and international love stories, a major business collapse, an unlikely appearance in the semi-finals of Britain's Got Talent, and even a prison sentence and homelessness.

  • S04E02 Meet Britain's Chinese Tiger Mums

    • January 5, 2012
    • BBC Two

    In terms of academic achievement, British Chinese children are the most successful ethnic group in this country, and behind each success story you will usually find a formidable Tiger Mother. Play by her rule book, and you get hours of homework and music practice, strict discipline, and not too much time for play. But you are also more likely to get A grades.

  • S04E03 The Real Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

    • January 23, 2012
    • BBC Two

    Documentary following three teams of microlight enthusiasts who navigate their way across Britain armed only with a map and compass, hoping to win the Round Britain Rally.

  • S04E04 My Child Rioter

    • January 31, 2012
    • BBC Two

    The riots that engulfed England in August 2011 were seen by many as the failure of parenting by some. This episode goes into the homes of parents whos children became "rioters".

  • S04E05 A Dad is Born

    • February 16, 2012
    • BBC Two

    If there is one day on which a boy turns into a man, it is the day he becomes a dad himself. Award-winning film-maker Kira Phillips follows three men in the weeks before and after this day. She watches the struggle to become new men, the drama of birth and joins them on the steep learning curve of paternity leave.

  • S04E06 Two Jews on a Cruise

    • February 29, 2012
    • BBC Two

    Until last October, Stamford Hill's highly orthodox Gaby and Tikwah Lock -married for 40 years and who featured in a previous Wonderland film about Hasidic weddings - had never been on a holiday. Their leisure time was spent divided between religious study and domestic duties. For Gaby and Tikwah, the story of the holiday throws a surprising and revealing spotlight on married life. Home truths and frustrations emerge from their visits to the cruise ship couples workshop, which Gaby resolves with an unexpected gift for his wife and a little more understanding of Tikwah's exasperation at his domestic shortcomings.

  • S04E07 Granny's Moving In

    • March 7, 2012
    • BBC Two

    With costs of retirement homes rising, more people are choosing to take on the care of elderly relatives in their own homes. Sue and Phil Carroll have decided they have to do something about Sue's 83-year-old mother, Peggy. Paddy Wivell's film follows them as they try to manage an octogenarian who has become as difficult as a teenage daughter. A 90-year-old manfriend, a passion for dancing, a love of night life, and a cavalier determination to enjoy herself at all costs mean Peggy is out on the town while Sue and Phil are repeatedly left worrying about her safety. After a few stressful months of them all living together under one roof, Sue and Phil alight upon what they hope will be the perfect solution to their lives - a garage conversion designed to give Peggy her independence and them their peace of mind.

  • S04E08 A Very British Holiday

    • March 26, 2012
    • BBC Two

    When money is tight and budgets are cut, the public return in droves to the most traditional of all holiday destinations: the British campsite.Philippa Robinson's film is pitched in the midst of one of Britain's busiest camping destinations- Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight. It follows family barbecues and campsite entertainment shows, as well as joining a group of junior campers who are being schooled in self-sufficiency and independence by the the 2nd Enfield Boys rigade. As the summer unfolds with water fights, a fishing expedition and a best hat competition, the tents and caravans reveal a world which offers many a week's refuge from the pressures and stresses of inner city Britain.

Season 5

  • S05E01 Young, Bright and on the Right

    • August 9, 2012
    • BBC Two

    The story of two boys with a dream to scale the heights of Oxbridge university politics, the fabled nursery slopes for Westminster. Both Chris Monk, 19 and Joe Cooke, 21, are passionate about politics and have been Conservatives from a tender age. Now they face an academic term that could make or break their future political careers. Despite the three-piece suits and plummy vowels, both are state-school educated and see themselves as outsiders in the Oxbridge social and political scene. When Joe tries to effect change and bring about reform in the society, he comes head-to-head with 88 years of tradition. Will he eventually turn his back on a life in politics? And will Chris have the knowhow to impress the members of the political elite he aspires to?

  • S05E02 I Was Once a Beauty Queen

    • October 8, 2012
    • BBC Two

    They were feted as the most beautiful women in Britain. Once crowned in front of TV audiences of 20 million, they dated royalty, rock stars and football players. But what happened next? This film finds out what has become of Britain's beauty queens of the 1970s and early 1980s and discovers just how far their looks have taken them in life.

  • S05E03 Walking with Dogs: A Wonderland Special

    • October 15, 2012
    • BBC Two

    This film, by acclaimed director Vanessa Engle, explores our remarkable relationship with dogs. Over a number of months in north London's Hampstead Heath, Engle approached people who were walking their dogs to discover why they have a dog and the role their dog plays in their emotional lives. The people she meets tell their stories, many of which are moving, surprising and profound.