TV & Radio

TV and radio listings will be updated every Friday

The British At Work
The British At Work
BBC Two
Friday 1st April, 9.00pm

Kirsty Young concludes her series on British working life with the years from 1995 to the present day. It’s a tale of all of us working longer hours and of sometimes desperate attempts by managers to make their employees adopt corporate values.

Archive On 4: The Referendum Question
Archive On 4: The Referendum Question
Radio 4
Saturday 2nd April, 8.00pm

The British have traditionally been rather wary of referendums down the years. Nevertheless, we’re about to vote over whether to introduce the alternative vote (AV) in general elections, a cue for Shaun Ley to look back at previous referendums down the years.

The Tudors
The Tudors
BBC Two
Saturday 2nd April, 10.00pm

The historically dubious drama-cum-romp reaches its final episode with the king confronting his own mortality. Cue the ghosts of his wives dropping by to say hello and Holbein getting out his paintbrushes to capture the monarch at his most corpulent.

Civilization: Is The West History?
Civilization: Is The West History?
Channel 4
Sunday 3rd April, 8.00pm

Niall Ferguson turns his attention to consumerism. It’s a Western invention that’s been adopted by countries elsewhere, so that high streets and shopping malls around the globe have become increasingly homogenous. But will consumer culture one day permeate the Islamic world?

Imagine… The Trouble With Tolstoy
Imagine… The Trouble With Tolstoy
BBC One
Sunday 3rd April, 10.25pm

Alan Yentob concludes his two-part profile of the Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy. It’s a portrait of a man growing turning his back on success in the wake of a mid-life crisis. In the process, the increasingly ascetic Tolstoy became a thorn in the side of the tsarist regime.

Filthy Cities
Pick of the Week
Filthy Cities
BBC Two
Tuesday 5th April, 9.00pm

Dan Snow’s latest series finds the historian considering how we’ve dealt with waste down the years. First up, Snow travels back to medieval London, where he tries out muck-raking and delves in the guts of a recently slaughtered pig.

Don't forget to have your Scratch & Sniff card of medieval smells to hand while watching this – free in this month's issue of BBC History Magazine.

A History Of Celtic Britain
A History Of Celtic Britain
BBC Two
Thursday 7th April, 9.00pm

With a slight tweak to the series title, Neil Oliver continues his history of ancient Britain. He picks up the story in 1000 BC and the end of the Bronze Age, a time of social crisis and sudden climate change, a prelude to a new era – of iron.

Room At The Top
Room At The Top
BBC Four
Thursday 7th April, 9.00pm

A two-part adaptation of John Braine’s classic novel stars Matthew McNulty as Joe Lampton, a clever working-class lad trying to make good in post-World War Two Yorkshire. But as he clambers up the social ladder, he leaves a trail of destruction in his wake.

The Kennedys
History
Thursday 7th April, 9.00pm

Greg Kinnear stars as John F Kennedy and Katie Holmes plays Jackie in a drama that tells the story of the political dynasty. In the first episode, expect some scene-stealing from Tom Wilkinson as the family patriarch, the monstrous Joe Kennedy Senior. The series will be shown on BBC Two later in the year.

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Sounds Of The 20th Century
Radio 2
Thursday 7th April, 10.00pm

Here’s an epic new series that tells the story of the second half of the 20th century in Britain through hour-long sound collages that draw on the BBC archives. We begin in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain and Jackie Brenston’s ‘Rocket 88’, often said to be the first true rock’n’roll record.