Inside Story

Peter Taylor recalls Bloody Sunday twenty years after the events on 30 January 1972 through interviews with soldiers who were involved and testimony from eyewitnesses.

What are the true facts of the first Christmas? With expert help from two biblical scholars, Dr Geza Vermes and Professor Christopher Evans , critical analysis is brought to bear on the well-loved ingredients of the familiar story: the Magi, the Shepherds, the Star, the wicked King Herod, and the Virgin Birth.

Victor Cheiney is a farmworker, married with two children. He is under notice to quit his tied cottage. The bailiff is due in days, and Cheiney has nowhere to go. This true story of what happened is painful and shocking. The series of events that followed the eviction reached a point of tragedy that threatened to engulf the Cheineys, divide the family, and shatter the marriage.

The little bull calf Celia bore In winter 1974 was slaughtered so that human beings could drink her milk. But to keep that milk flowing it was crucial that she should calve again quickly. There was need for expert stockman-ship, the skill of the artificial inseminator and the services of Cliftonmill Olympus II.

Real police officers doing a real job. Catching villains and protecting the public

Marek Marek was one of many children who undergo a hole-in-the-heart operation. By now this operation is routine, and the vast majority of children make a full recovery. But Marek had a complication, called pulmonary atresia. Tragically the operation was not a success, and soon afterwards, he died. 'Marek' is a film about the courage of a family at a time of crisis, and it has already won the Asian Broadcasting Union prize for its portrayal of the basic humanity which is common to all people.

This is the story of a remarkable young English nurse who made her home in a Saigon slum. Before the city fell to the communists she was told officially to leave South Vietnam. But she stayed. Her reason for not going was that her home was also home for street girls, drug addicts and waifs and strays picked off the streets who, without her, would have no one to turn to. This is not a story about the Vietnam war but the story of a young woman drawn to a suffering country by the plight of its suffering people

Today The Archers is 25 years old - the world's longest-running radio serial. Ambridge people have spoken 57 million words, drunk 12,500 pints at The Bull, 20,833 cups of tea at Brookfield Farm.

At 8.0 am on New Year's Eve 1973, two ambulancemen called Jim Grummett and Colin Birch crossed the picket lines outside Sunderland Ambulance Depot and reported for work. From that day to January of this year the men were sent to Coventry' by their work-mates. Was it simply a case of obstinacy? Or bloody-mindedness? This Inside Story of a conflict of ideologies analyses the roots of the feud, and it portrays what happens in the hearts of ordinary men, when the unyielding force confronts the immovable spirit.

The true story of a valuable period piece, sold for a song by its owner, and for a lot of money by the time it reached its final resting place. The cupboard was spotted in the outhouse of a Welsh farm by an itinerant buyer, who recognised an antique under the cobwebs and layers of paint. It moved from dealer, to restorer, to dealer. After four months it has changed hands five times, travelled 3,500 miles, and risen in price well over six times the amount it made in a shed in Crug-y-Bar.

A year ago the Oxford Eight won the University Boat Race in the fastest time ever recorded. Highlights from the months of selection and preparation for the lung-bursting 17 minutes are assembled in this story, set in and around the River Thames at Oxford, Henley and London. Next Saturday, Oxford and Cambridge race again for the 123rd time from Putney to Mortlake. There will be some new faces in the boats, but the ordeal the crews have undergone, and the emotions that spur them on, will be the same as for the Crew of 76, and for crews since the event began.

Eileen is at the beginning. Her husband, John, is on remand inside Pentonville awaiting trial at the Old Bailey for robbery, possession of a firearm, and resisting arrest. If he pleads guilty, he could get seven years. If he fights the case and is convicted, he could go down for 15. In the days up to and during the trial, when she herself is called to give evidence, Eileen talks of her hopes and fears for herself, for her survival, and her children's survival. There is little doubt that John will pay his debt to society. But as an addendum to his sentence, will go the unspoken sentence on his innocent wife and three children - years of severance from a breadwinner, a father and a husband.

Lorraine 's waiting has begun. Her husband, Steve, is serving two-and-a-half years in Leeds Prison for rape. Four months after he left the dock, Lorraine's baby arrived. All her courage is now summoned to face the physical and emotional demands on a body and mind already drained by the ordeal of childbirth. From the maternity hospital where she bore the son his father could not see, the bungalow for which she has worked and must work to retain, and through the bleak misery of prison visits with her baby son and two teenage daughters, Lorraine pieces together her thoughts and priorities, her feelings of self-reproach and determination to stand by a husband who is already corroded by jealousy, self-pity and remorse.

On one day in October last year 7,000 policemen were on the streets of Greater Manchester at a cost of over a quarter of a million pounds to defend the Englishman's right to free speech. But these Englishmen were members of the National Front, and their speeches - avowedly racist - would be in direct contradiction to the very idea of freedom. In 'the story of that day, and in interviews with the leaders and rank-and-file members of the National Front, a portrait emerges of England's fourth largest political party.

When the union attempts to make the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph a closed shop, one man stands in its way-the paper's editor. While the pickets man the gates, Ron Hunt gathers the news, writes the news, subs the news and assembles the news. In a working day this one man has covered the work of 60 striking journalists. But to the pickets who are striving to achieve 100 per cent union membership, Hunt is no more than a blackleg and a scab. As the strike continues and tensions mount, a civilised difference of opinion hardens into anger, bitterness, and rancour, and finally boils over into hatred and violence.

This programme focuses on the day to day lives of the British troops guarding the Belize/Guatemala border and their celebrations on Christmas Day, 1977. It’s a very different life here than the squaddies are used to, but it’s not quite a ‘Caribbean holiday’. They struggle to come to terms with the daily routine, the boredom, missing their loved ones and meeting the basic needs of life such as ensuring there is enough fresh food to eat.

Every year, over 10,000 prisoners in jails all over the country anxiously await the result of their parole petitions. But no science governs the decision which can reduce the period of the sentence. For the first time four prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs have been allowed to talk of their crimes. their families, and their hopes and fears as they wait to hear whether they will be granted parole. They are: PETER: serving four years for arson: JOHN: six years for conspiracy to rob; AMIN: four years for his involvement in importing cannabis: DUNCAN: five years for a sexual assault on a 12-year-old boy.

24-year-old George Roberts feels that he is a woman, and he wants to have sex reassignment surgery. Before the National Health Service will approve the surgical procedures, they refer him to a psychiatrist in the Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital. The psychiatrist tells George that he must first live as a woman for one year. George throws away his men's clothing, informs his employer, and (per the hospital's requirements) finds a new flat nearer to the clinic.

The blizzard that engulfed the South West of England in February 1978 was the worst in living memory on parts of Exmoor. Marooned and alone hill-farmers searched frantically for their flocks buried under tons of snow. This film begins as farmer Tony Takle is digging his sheep from huge snowdrifts. Some are dead, some alive, and some moribund. Worse follows as his ewes, all of them in lamb, abort, or themselves die, enfeebled by their ordeal. But the cycle of the season brings relief. A flock that was all but destroyed is saved. But it has taken one year of unremitting toil to undo the work of one terrible night.

The Spaghetti House, Balcombe Street, the Iranian Embassy... three London incidents in recent Years in which police hostage negotiating teams have been in action. But the principles and Practices in use in London were pioneered by the New York Police, after the killings at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. Since that time, Captain Frank Bolz has been in charge of 70 New York cops - specially trained to handle hostage situations.

In June 1979, London played host to Gay Pride Week, which culminated in the Pride March through the capital. It was, at the time, the largest assembly of homosexuals Europe had ever seen. Frank language is used throughout as six gay people talk about their experiences of 'coming out' to family and friends. Some have faced pressure from their loved-ones not to appear in the programme, while others have a confrontational approach to their critics.

Stephen is one of 12,000 waiting to be adopted, but he is of a group of children deemed virtually un-adoptable. For when he was only nine days old, Stephen was struck down by meningitis. Nearly five years later he lives in an institution, unable to walk or to talk. The Dooleys of Haverhill in Suffolk are a conscientious and close-knit family. They earnestly wish to adopt the boy. To a lay eye the match seems inevitable and desirable. But there are complications, and as the weeks turn into months, what seemed a formality becomes a nightmare.

Do we have the right to involve animals in our own military destruction? Animal war heroes, such as Rob the parachuting dog, have achieved amazing feats. Animals still play an extraordinary role - the US Navy sent six dolphins to the Gulf War. But they are increasingly exploited on another front line; the military laboratory.

A 17-year-old tourist stabbed to death. A young woman taken hostage and raped. Just two of the 16,000 crimes that occurred last year on London's Underground. For the first time, a BBC film crew goes undercover with the 'Moles', a specialist. Underground police unit. Heavily outnumbered, the 'Moles' contend with an army of muggers, pickpockets, molesters, drunks and hooligans. As for the Guardian Angels: 'They've got to be a good idea,' says one detective.

'To know is to avert, if you know the future you can change it,' says Hollywood psychic Kebrina Kincade. All over America, from the psychic tearooms of Sunset Strip to the salons of Beverly Hills, more and more people are leaving their psychotherapists and heading for psychics. Some, like Catherine Oxenberg , won't make a move without consulting hers. In this film with the help of Dolphin Man, astrologer Jacqui Stallone , fat Bernice, and Mafu the 1,000-year-old man 'channelled' by Oregon housewife Penny Torres , we look at the 'seekers'; how they are helped or hindered by what the future holds ...

The last time they gazed on Japan they were watching the most horrific single event in the history of war - the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima. Forty-five years later the American airmen who dropped the bomb return to see the city they annihilated. This remarkable film tells their story as they retrace wartime steps across the Pacific and come face to face with survivors of their nuclear attack.

Investigates the fire inside Reactor One at Windscale in October 1957, and the previous emissions and leaks of radiation that occured there, contaminating the area, in spite of denials from the authorities. Workers from the site at the time corroborate this and the programme considers the secrecy surrounding the events.

As Gorbachev draws back the iron curtain, western ideas and lifestyles are changing the Soviet Union. Not all of them are positive: there is a growing vice industry in the country's major cities. Soviet police claim there are 10,000 prostitutes in Moscow alone. The shops are empty and most women's lives are unrelentingly drab; more and more young girls are drawn by the 'high life'. A foreign currency prostitute can earn 1,000 roubles for one 'trick' - five times the national monthly wage. Inside Story goes under cover with the police and the women themselves tell their story.

Deep in the forests of south east Asia, the shy and endangered orang-utan is the victim of a cruel and criminal trade. Mothers are slaughtered and their babies sold at great profit in an extensive international black market. Inside Story takes hidden cameras into the shadowy world of the ape traffickers; it unravels a plot to smuggle six of the protected apes to the Soviet Union and exposes a racket which sells wild-caught baby orang-utans through a bogus zoo.

For the first time, a documentary crew is allowed inside the South African police force. This film is the story of the Cape Town riot unit, the largest in the country. The local black township is in a state of unrest, and the riot unit is busy enforcing a curfew and 'taking action' against residents. Serving officers talk frankly about doing a job that sometimes means killing black people, and express their apprehensions about the dramatic political changes.

Aids is a disease which threatens every one of us. Heterosexuals are now becoming infected at a faster rate than gay men and many families will be devastated by its impact.

Last year, in America, 682 men were killed by their wives or girlfriends. That is the tip of an iceberg in which an estimated three or four million women are physically and psychologically battered and abused by their partners each year. Some kill to escape their predicament, but in many cases the courts will not let these women explain what motivated them. A life sentence is not unusual and some women are even sentenced to death. In this programme prisoners in Alabama and Texas reveal how they came to commit such acts.

The lives and times of British mercenaries fighting in the Yugoslavia Civil War, earning as little as £100 a month in the Yugoslavia army's only English speaking company.

Just when majority rule is in sight, South Africa's black townships are in despair. Murders, rapes, broken families and abandoned babies are at record levels, and nowhere is the crisis greater than in Soweto, where the rebellion against apartheid began. This film focuses on the sprawling township's hospital, which every night is packed with the broken, bleeding bodies from another day's violence. Against all the odds, the hospital staff struggle to save the victims of a community at war with itself. More than 100 victims of assault arrive in the casualty department every night. Bernard Rabinowitz , a surgeon at the vast Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, says: "We get 3,500 to 5,550 stabbed chests and 5,000 to 7,000 bad head injuries - every year." And now, adding to this suffering, is an increasing Aids problem.

Every day half a million commuters pour into London on British Rail trains and every day something goes wrong - trains run late and passengers crush into ancient carriages. "Operating difficulties", staff shortages, leaves on the line, even the wrong kind of snow count among the excuses. This film spends a week behind the scenes with Network SouthEast, the busiest railway in the world, to discover what lies behind the commuters' misery. "You'd think we make their trains late on purpose the way they talk to us," says one weary BR manager as he tells of the abuse he faces.

The first major investigation into Roland "Tiny" Rowland whose company, Lonrho, was 20 years ago unforgettably castigated by Edward Heath as "this unacceptable face of capitalism". At that time, surrounded by scandal and allegations of greed and deception, Rowland's ambitions seemed devastated. Ever since he has fought a bitter campaign to establish his respectability and importance. Few men in public life have so successfully concealed their activities and provoked such controversy. Robert Maxwell 's biographer Tom Bower has written and produced this film which attempts to discover the man behind the multimillionaire, merchant adventurer, political intriguer and accomplished powerbroker. He unravels Rowland's past and interviews those who have benefited and suffered from his ambition.

Documentary on Karlovac, a UN transit camp in Croatia that offers sanctuary to 3,000 broken people. It records the shattered lives of those for whom it has now become "home".

"You can close your eyes but you can't shut your ears off, "says John Wilkinson of Westminster Council's noise team. The first film in this new series follows the team as they try to make central London a quieter place. Barking dogs, blaring music, shouting neighbours and screeching burglar alarms can turn rational people into paranoid wrecks. So, although they now have extensive powers to break into cars or property where there is a noise nuisance, much of their work involves diplomacy as they diffuse explosive situations and soothe shattered nerves.

When the owner of Birmingham City Football Club, publisher David Sullivan, appointed 23-year-old Karren Brady as the club's managing director, she became the most powerful woman in football, in charge of a club with a macho reputation for hardness. She got the job because her track record proved that she had the hard-nosed business acumen that the club needed to re-establish itself as a major force in the game. Commercial common sense had to be brought to the fore. However, matters have gone far from smoothly. The film traces her tempestuous and controversial first season, during which manager Terry Cooper resigned to be replaced by Barry Fry, relegation loomed and the club reached its lowest point by being knocked out of the FA Cup by non-League Kidderminster Harriers.

Sean is 15 and well known to the Gateshead police as a juvenile car thief and burglar. He reckons he can break into a house with "good gear", grab the TV and video and get away in less than five minutes. Gladys Smith is 80 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When a man posing as a council officer burgled her home she couldn't remember anything about him or tell the police what had been stolen. Filmed on the streets of Gateshead, this Inside Story investigates breaking and entering by talking to the cops, the robbers and the victims. It includes footage of a police stake-out in which detectives watch a street they believe is a haven for the area's most prolific house-breakers. After many uncomfortable days, they finally move in. There is a break-in every 20 seconds in Britain - so in the time it takes to read about this documentary, another home will be burgled.

Documentary follows the BT Nuisance calls bureau in combatting nuisance callers and working with police to support the victims

The harrowing story of Caroline Beale, a woman from east London, charged with murdering her baby daughter in a New York hotel bathroom. The complex issues involved in her case will come before an American jury in June.

Tonight's programme looks at three victims of post traumatic stress disorder and the new treatment they are undertaking.

Left brain damaged after an operation, two-year-old Ian Stewart is in pain day and night and not expected to reach his teens. His parents, who have sacrificed their careers to care for Ian, feel his quality of life is negligible. This film records both their tragic situation and the moral dilemma they face: is euthanasia the answer?

This programme goes behind the scenes to show how pop industry bosses manufacture the latest teenage "boy band" sensation, Upside Down, from auditions for the band members through to their first performance.

Update on the story of a London Civil Servant who was arrested in New York in 1994 carrying her dead baby. After eight months on remand, Caroline awaits her trial date.

A new six-part series of the investigative programme begins with a look at the KGB and its recruitment of women to seduce information from foreign diplomats, businessmen and military personnel. The programme highlights one recruit, Violetta Seina, who targeted an American marine, while former KGB officers and "swallows" speak for the first time about their "bed espionage" duties.

The investigative series looks at the Royal Navy's arduous two-week survival course. The film follows a mixed group of marines, air crew, divers and a female flight observer, as they struggle to survive in the wild with few supplies, also avoiding mock enemy forces in the face of exhaustion, cold and hunger.

Following the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in a small New Jersey town three years ago, by a convicted paedophile, her mother Maureen successfully campaigned for a new law in the United States to make known convicted sex offenders. Tonight's programme highlights her campaign and asks if this is the answer to preventing future crimes of this nature.

People love to hate estate agents but they also need to use them. Inside Story examines the strange love-hate relationship between the agents, their clients and the buyers.

In 1974 Amy Billig was abducted by a biker gang passing through her small Florida community. Today Amy would be 40. Her mother is convinced she is still alive and has spent the intervening years searching for her. Inside Story joins the relentless search and reveals a dramatic ending.

Britain has the highest number of underage mothers in Europe. Tonight Inside Story takes a look at the different experiences of three young women who all became pregnant before they were 16.

First transmitted in 1999, a self-made multi-millionaire, a would-be rock star and a veteran fish trader are among the many dedicated traders wheeling and dealing at Billingsgate, the early morning seafood bazaar which is Britain's largest inland fish market.

The documentary series continues with this film about Corinne Landriscina and Mark Stebbings, who live together and also work together as bailiffs recovering unpaid council tax in Leeds.

On 7 December three members of the Essex drugs underworld were found executed in a Range Rover. Their killers were convicted solely on the basis of testimony by supergrass Darren Nicholls, who is interviewed in this film exposing the myths and realities of life as a supergrass.

A report on the struggle of an attractive young woman, Gail, whose little-understood condition of body dysmorphic disorder led her to believe herself to be ugly and to repeatedly mutilate herself.

In 1995 Len Carter shot his estranged wife Loraine Whiting and then killed himself. Although Loraine called the police, by the time they entered her house she was already dead. The police maintain they did everything possible, but Loraine's family are convinced more could have been done to save her life.