Episode 5 Points of View

Good afternoon and welcome to Points Of View,

your chance to review the programmes

you've been watching on the BBC over the past week.

But, unusually, we are starting this week with a programme

you didn't actually get to watch.

'..A change to the schedule,

'as we meet the father of modern archaeology.'

Jerusalem: An Archaeological Mystery Story

was pulled from BBC Four schedules

before it was due to air on Thursday last week.

And the scheduled repeat of the programme,

which should've gone out on Monday of this week, met the same fate.

'..A change to some billings here on BBC Four...'

The Jerusalem programme was billed as having new evidence

that would suggest the majority of Jewish people may not have been exiled

after the fall of Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago in 70AD.

The documentary had been planned as part of an archaeology series on the channel.

The decision to pull the programme has created a storm.

Many of you who got in touch want to know why that decision was taken.

I belong to Pax Christi UK,

which is a Catholic peace organisation

which is involved in looking at various issues of peace and justice.

In this instance, looking at the issues raised

by the situation in Palestine and Israel.

We work alongside Israeli and Palestinian peace organisations.

I sat down to watch Jerusalem - An Archaeological Mystery Story,

because I was interested both in the archaeology,

but also in the issues that it raised.

So, having made sure that I was in time to sit down and watch it,

turned it on, and found that, without explanation,

a different programme was being shown.

The reason that the BBC gave seemed incredibly implausible,

because, I don't think, from a practical point of view,

you would, at that last minute, decide,

after all the planning that goes into programming,

that this was something that didn't fit in with the long-term plans you'd had.

It seemed to me more like a very last-minute knee-jerk reaction,

possibly to complaints about the programme being aired.

So, we went right to the top of the channel,

to the man with ultimate control

over what does and doesn't make it to air on BBC Four -

that's channel controller, Richard Klein - to request an interview.

And he declined. Instead, we were given this statement.

It seems, for now, that this one has an uncertain ending.

Another programme which left some wondering, "Where's it gone?"

was The Prisoners. Fans tuned in to BBC One on Monday evening

expecting to see the third

and final episode of the observational documentary series

which looks at life in two of our major prisons.

In the slot instead was the BBC's monthly search

for those not yet in jail, Crimewatch.

So, what happened? Where have The Prisoners gone?

We asked head of scheduling, Dan McGolpin.

The Prisoners was planned to play in three consecutive weeks,

but on the day that episode one was due to transmit,

Baroness Thatcher died,

and the BBC decided to show an obituary programme

for the life of Margaret Thatcher.

So, that was put on that evening instead of the first episode.

The series knocked back to the following week.

But it wasn't possible to do it for three weeks after that,

because in the third week, we had already booked Crimewatch

and Crimewatch had a studio booked,

police force booked and all the presenters booked.

So, actually, we had to have a gap in a series.

We put it back on the next available opportunity, which May 13th.

So, next Monday, the third episode of Prisoners will be on.

The good news is this one has not been locked up indefinitely and will now air.

OK, to cooking.

After 23 episodes, all of which went out, you'll be glad to hear,

MasterChef finally announced its, well, master chef for 2013.

It's Natalie.

Congratulations, Natalie.

You must be delighted. But viewers were less than happy with the way

some of the contributors were treated by the judges.

What you've done today, Dale, is try to go too far left-field.

You can't keep on reinventing the wheel, Dale.

OK, don't worry, mate, don't worry. You're all right.

And it wasn't just poor old Dale.

Larkin got the hairdryer treatment as well.

We have two different flavoured sludges.

I'm sorry, Larkin. But I'm not going to taste that.

Guest judge Marcus Wareing holding back on the taste test,

but not on his criticism.

Some food for thought there for programme-makers.

We like our creative dishes, but not necessarily served up with anger.

Now, one man who never saw the need to get angry over his specialist subject

was the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, who sadly died in December.

But, of course, his Sky At Night programme lives on.

And we went behind-the-scenes for you with the team

to find out how they are keeping his spirit alive,

putting some of your questions and comments to the series producer.

The Sky At Night was first on air on the 24th April 1957,

presented by Patrick Moore...

-Good evening.

-..who continually presented it

until, really, the day he died.

Let's begin our tour between the planets.

It was his baby, it was his legacy.

Almost anything may happen at any moment... ..Aerodynamically shaped.

We are never going to be able to replace Patrick. He is irreplaceable.

Good night.

I did ask him, on a couple of occasions, about what he wanted

to happen to the programme, after he couldn't make it any more.

He was absolutely adamant that he wanted the programme to go on.

This is just incredible! This is like the EastEnders credits.

We are in a strange building just outside Oxford, near Didcot.

This is a place for UK companies

and researchers who want to control satellites.

We've come here because we wanted to use their big screen

in order to film the 726th episode of The Sky At Night.

Action.

Weren't we lucky to get clear skies? Let's hope we get good weather...

The current team are people who Patrick more or less picked

and nurtured and brought on.

And he was quite happy that they carry on the programme

after he couldn't make it any more.

The question we keep getting is, how do we step into Patrick's shoes

now he's not here to guide us on The Sky At Night?

At the first thing I want to say is that we don't.

For starters, they're big shoes. They are size 13.

But more than that, there won't be another Patrick Moore.

No-one can replace that.

It's amazing to think what might be going on beneath these clouds.

'We've got to get our own trust from the audience.'

Suddenly to step out and know that it was going to sink or fail

on what WE said was daunting. But, hopefully, people are enjoying it.

We are now going to Hampshire...

That was the one. Well done, everybody.

We have a very dedicated audience who are searching us out

and find us and watch us, so what they've got to say about us

is something that I'm very excited to hear.

"With the demise of Sir Patrick, The Sky At Night last Sunday..."

Good night.

I have the Sun, which is at the centre of the solar system...

This is something we've used before, it isn't something new.

It was something that Patrick really enjoyed using.

He often held up the Sun and the other planets.

Here is a globe to represent Uranus.

And here's a globe to represent the Earth on the same scale.

It's a lemon and two hoops.

The lemon, as you'll immediately realise, represents the Sun.

We don't have a fantastic graphics budget on The Sky At Night,

we do have to improvise.

We do have to come up with interesting ways of doing it

which sometimes explain things better than some fancy graphic.

Water coming out of the watering can is the solar wind

being thrown out from the Sun at a million miles an hour.

-AS PATRICK MOORE:

-Sir Patrick Moore, of course,

capturing the fascination of astronomy beautifully like that.

We do want to keep that eccentricity up,

I think that Jon does offer valuable input into the presenting team.

He's a guest on the programme, we love having him,

he loves being on the show, and as long as the audience loves him,

hopefully we'll be seeing more of Jon over the next few months.

In 1957, The Sky At Night began.

They asked me to present the show. Well, I'll do the best I can.

We are moving forward, without Patrick,

and that is incredibly difficult. We all miss him tremendously.

Some of the things that we do

are bound to need a little bit of bedding-in time,

just keep feeding back to us what you feel works

or what you feel doesn't work, and we'll keep working with it.

We're the longest-running show in the world! Good night.

APPLAUSE

Another one-off was the comedian Dave Allen.

This week, a BBC Two documentary looked back on his life and career

and showed us that the man whom we knew for sitting in a chair

and telling jokes, had lot of other strings to his bow.

'Welcome, Dave Allen!' APPLAUSE

An elephant going across a road.

Every time he puts his foot on it,

it's like - eeee! Cars. Eeeee! Cars.

Fellow goes up and he says, "There's a zebra crossing up there."

He says, "I hope he's having better luck than me."

Sir Patrick Moore and Dave Allen,

it's like a flashback to the 1970s here this week!

But this next one goes back far further,

to a time when mighty castles were scattered all over England.

Or is that Scotland?

I'm in the Northumberland National Park.

The area has more castles than any other county in England.

But Northumberland's claim to be home to more castles

than any other county in England is not really the point here.

It's that the castle Countryfile chose to represent the county

was, in fact, Scottish.

Tantallon Castle in East Lothian, definitely not English.

Well, we pointed out the mistake.

This is what the team had to say.

That's almost it for this week but just before I sign off,

we promised that we would address to your complaints over how

Points Of View has been moving about the schedules

since we returned for our new series at the start of April.

In just five weeks, our time slot has jumped across three hours

on the Sunday afternoon schedule.

It has been a bit of a game of hide-and-seek for our loyal viewers.

So, why is Points Of View not being given a fixed point

at which it can be viewed?

Here is the man who does the scheduling again.

There have been a couple of changes to the BBC One schedule

over the last year or so. EastEnders omnibus has moved

and we have a different Grand Prix deal now,

which means BBC One takes Grand Prix highlights quite often

around Sunday teatime. So, we are moving the schedule around a bit.

We've considered playing Points Of View next to The Politics Show

at Sunday lunchtimes which we thought would be a good thing for viewers,

that people would enjoy both those shows,

and we tried different things with this run.

We'll look at the end of the run,

see what's worked, what's worked for viewers,

and decide how best to schedule for the next run in the autumn.

It sounds like, in the short-term,

there won't be a fixed Points Of View slot.

It is changed again for next week

because we are on at the later time of 3.15,

to make way for Formula 1 coverage.

But one thing doesn't change - our desire to hear your views.

You can get them to us in the following ways. By post...

By phone, the number is charged as a local rate call from any landline.

You can join the messageboarders...

or finally, write an e-mail.

That's it from us. Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd