CTVA
The Classic TV Archive - UK Documentary Series
People's Century (1999)
  Episode Guide compiled by The Classic TV Archive
with contributions by:
references:
BBC Radio Times
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PEOPLE'S CENTURY
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BBC Television

UK Documentary Series circa 1999 22 episodes x 50 min?

Premise:
Series chronicling the turbulent changes of the 20th century
told through archive film and the vivid recollections of
ordinary people who lived through them.

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[01] People's Century: 1900: AGE OF HOPE
This first programme features rare film and first-hand accounts from
the first decade of the century, including reminiscences from visitors
to the Paris Exhibition of 1900 and European emigrants who sailed to
the United States.

[02] People's Century: 1914: KILLING FIELDS
The story of the Great War, when 70 million men
were called up to fight for their countries and more soldiers were
slaughtered more quickly and for less gain than in any previous war.
Survivors tell of their hopes at the start, their training, and the
privations they endured.

[03] People's Century: 1917: RED FLAG
The story of the Russian Revolution and the powerful appeal of Communism,
looking at the impact it had on people's lives as the new Soviet Union
was constructed in the first 20 years after 1917.

[04] People's Century: 1919: LOST PEACE
Interviews with survivors of World War I who recall their joy
at news of the Armistice in 1918. Millions believed the Paris peace
settlement and the new League of Nations could prevent another war.
But Germany, initially aggrieved at the imposed reparations, was
getting ever more powerful.

[05] People's Century: 1920s-30s: SPORTING FEVER
The growing mass appeal of sport and how it became more than just a game.
Hundreds of thousands of people with more money and leisure began going
to soccer and baseball matches, and new stadiums were built to meet the
growing demand. Baseball and boxing fans of the 1920s and 30s recall
the passions their sports aroused.

[06] People's Century: 1924: ON THE LINE
Henry Ford's moving assembly line, introduced in Detroit, brought one
of the greatest social and economic changes of the century, transforming
the lives of millions. American and European workers describe the new pace
in the factories and the benefits of higher wages. But with this new-found
prosperity, many old skills were lost.

[07] People's Century: 1927: GREAT ESCAPE
The turn of the century saw cinema change from a novelty to the greatest
mass entertainment in the world. This programme hears from the audiences
of the 1920s and 30s and how they were influenced by the film stars of
the day - and governments too saw how film could influence the masses.
Cinema audiences in Britain reached their peak in 1946, but dropped in
the 1950s with the coming of TV

[08] People's Century: 1929: BREADLINE
The story of `the hungry thirties' told by men and women who suffered in
the worldwide depression that followed the Wall Street Crash. In Chicago,
the unemployed ripped wooden paving blocks from the city streets; and in
Belgium, laid-off miners broke into their own pits to scavenge for waste
coal. Sweden was the first democracy to fight the depression actively and
America's President Roosevelt offered a New Deal to his countrymen.

[09] People's Century: 1933: MASTER RACE
This edition of the documentary series depicts the horror of Adolf Hitler's
extermination of those who did not fit into his plan of a master race.
Archive film shows how the Nazis put across their message in the 30s,
and how millions welcomed it. Germans describe the early days of National
Socialism, and Jews and gypsies tell how they were progressively excluded
and humiliated.

[10] People's Century: 1939: TOTAL WAR
The story of the Second World War told from the perspective of the civilian
experience, rather than a military one. With archive film and moving
testimony from the men and women of Britain, Germany, France, the Soviet
Union, Japan, China and Korea, who tell how non-combatants became the
targets in a war different from any before. Altogether 55 million lives
were lost, the majority of whom were civilians.

[11] People's Century: 1945: BRAVE NEW WORLD
Postwar optimism soon evaporated as the Cold War took hold. US and Soviet
propaganda films show how each side was taught to demonise the other;
and people who lived through the McCarthy witch-hunts, the Hungarian
uprising and the building of the Berlin Wall tell how their lives changed.

[12] People's Century: 1948: BOOM TIME
The story of postwar recovery is told by families who managed to forget
the struggles of 1945 and look forward to a new, previously unimaginable
prosperity.

[13] People's Century: 1947: FREEDOM NOW
This programme looks at the implications of independence for millions in
Africa and Asia after Europe's colonial empires were blown away.

[14] People's Century: 1945: FALL OUT
Witnesses of the first American atomic tests, scientists who built the Soviet
bomb, and survivors of Hiroshima and Chernobyl all offer their views on the
nuclear age.

[15] People's Century: 1951: ASIA RISING
In this programme, the stories of Japanese and Korean people who made the ships,
motorbikes, cars and televisions that began to beat the Europeans and
Americans at their own game.

[16] People's Century: 1957: SKIN DEEP
This programme recounts the story of the fight against official racism in South
Africa and the southern United States, where black men and women faced racial
segregation that was backed by force.

[17] People's Century: 1959 ENDANGERED PLANET
This edition focuses on the effects of non-stop population growth: polluted
rivers, dirty air, dying forests, disappearing wildlife and mystery illnesses.
Including a focus on the victims of the Minamata Bay poisoning in Japan,
and a look at how environmental issues entered day-to-day politics.

[18] People's Century: 1963: (surely 1953?) PICTURE POWER
This programme looks at the early days of TV in the home, taking over from
cinema and the radio in just a few years, and becoming the principle source
of entertainment and news for hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
Some of the very first viewers recall the programmes they watched and the
sets they watched them on.

[19] People's Century: 1954: LIVING LONGER
This edition focuses on medical advances during the 1950s, when better public
hygiene and new medicines overcame epidemic diseases that had been man's oldest
enemies. Doctors and sufferers relate how old fears disappeared. But as the
world's population grew, new threats arose.

[20] People's Century: 1954: GREAT LEAP
Chinese citizens recall their experiences of the revolution.

[21] People's Century: 1968: NEW RELEASE
This edition focuses on youth rebellion, 60s-style, when new music, styles
and ideas defied the older generation. Students demonstrated against the
Vietnam war and challenged the way universities were run, culminating in
the 1968 worldwide street demonstrations. By the 1970s, their ideas had
permeated the mainstream

[22] People's Century: 1970: HALF THE PEOPLE (final episode)
Chronicling the changes of the 20th century from the point of view of the
people who lived through them. In this edition, archive film reveals the
prejudices women had to overcome in the 50s and 60s, when many men still
believed a woman's place was in the home. But the programme also points
out that many women in the developing world still remain second-class citizens.

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