History TV and radio in the UK: what's on our screens this week?
Can't decide which shows to watch or listen to this week? Here are the latest history radio and TV programmes airing in the UK that you won't want to miss
Valley Of The Kings: Secret Tomb Revealed
Channel 4
Saturday 17th January, 7.30pm
The two-part documentary charting the excavation of the tomb of Ramses III concludes with Dr Anke Weber’s team making small yet potentially significant discoveries. A central question here is how and why the tomb fell into disrepair? Plus did Egyptologist Howard Carter pinch treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb?
Sunday Feature: The Music Man For Africa
BBC Radio 3
Sunday 18th January, 7.15pm
Leo Sarkisian (1921–2018) was a roving sound recordist and broadcaster. In 1965, he created Music Time In Africa, which ran until March 2025 on the Voice Of America, at which point the show became the victim of funding cuts. As Maria Margaronis charts, Sarkisian’s work was of huge significance, not least because he recorded a young Fela Kuti.
Call The Midwife
BBC One
Sunday 18th January, 8pm
As anyone who remembers the early 1970s at first hand will testify, worries over the possibility of a rabies outbreak recurred as Britons were warned never to smuggle animals. It’s a concern picked up in the latest instalment of the baby-wrangling drama as an Easter egg hunt yields the discovery of a dog with a foaming mouth.
An American Journey – pick of the week
BBC Radio 4
Monday 19th January, 11am
James Naughtie sets out on a four-part travelogue where the overarching idea is to explore how the ideas of the Founding Fathers still shape the contemporary USA. First up, as the veteran broadcaster heads for the site of the first gold rush in northern California, his theme is “the pursuit of happiness”.
Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club
BBC Two
Monday 19th January, 9pm
The historian and her team of experts conclude their investigation into the case of the Thames Torso Murderer by looking into a discovery made in 1902, more than a decade after the initial killings. On Tuesday 20th January, Lady Killers With Lucy Worsley (BBC Radio 4, 3pm) focuses on a 1930s socialite, Elvira Barney, accused of shooting her boyfriend.
The Essay: Stories From The Museum Of Music History
BBC Radio 3
Monday 19th January, 9.45pm
Kate Kennedy, a biographer and the manager of the Museum Of Music History, offers a guide to objects from the institution’s collection that are too often overlooked. The first of five weekday episodes focuses on a piano that Napoleon gifted to his second wife, Marie Louise, as a wedding gift in 1810.
A People’s History Of Punk
BBC Radio 4
Tuesday 20th January, 4pm
It’s 50 years since the first British punk single, New Rose by The Damned, was released. Reason enough for Chris Packham, a man profoundly influenced by the movement’s energy and ethos, to celebrate the enduring influence of punk and its history via interviews with those whose lives were changed by 1976 and all that.
Putin And The Apartment Bombs
BBC Radio 4
Wednesday 21st January, 9.30am
In September 1999, over the course of just 12 days, four bombs blew up apartment blocks across Russia. Hundreds died. Vladimir Putin had recently become prime minister and the official line was that Chechen militants committed these atrocities. But, as Helena Merriman explores over seven episodes, could there be another, even darker explanation?
Digging For Britain
BBC Two
Wednesday 21st January, 9pm
Alice Roberts and Tori Herridge chart more discoveries from recent archaeological digs. Highlights include eavesdropping on work at an 18th-century slipway in the New Forest that has strong links to Admiral Nelson and a rather eerie bone box located at a Roman cemetery.
Monty Don’s Rhineland Gardens
BBC Two
Friday 23rd January, 8pm
While Monty Don’s trip along the Rhine focuses on the horticulture he sees, there are also plenty of insights into the history of the areas he visits. In the second of three episodes, he visits a decommissioned steel plant that speaks equally to the industrial past and, following its conversion into a public park, the present and future.