Picture This (BBC)

Kevin Taylor 's 14-year search for his natural mother took him on a journey he could never have anticipated and led him to one of Britain's most notorious haunted houses.

David, Clarice and June have all had members of their families take their own lives. This documentary directed by Daniel Percival - whose motivation for making the film was his own mother's suicide - allows the three to talk candidly about suicide's devastating effects on those left behind and the guilt, shame, taboo and confusion that can make this a secret grief.

Parental fears of danger are combining with the lure of centrally heated bedrooms packed with computer games to stop children playing together on the streets. But this bleak picture of growing isolation doesn't square with tonight's film which follows five young boys from West Yorkshire as they run and climb, slip and slide to school and back.

Most people find that certain pieces of music bring memories flooding back. In this evening's film, five songs unlock the doors to five very different and very personal memories, from the birth of Sarah and Matthew Marsh's son, Monica Smallwood's childhood and Helen Turner's marriage, to the divorce which divided Donna Arnold's family and the death of Betty Steen's beloved husband.

By the time Chris Wilkinson received her first degree from the University of North London she was 56 years old and had spent 40 of those years on the street. This film follows the story of those 40 years, a saga of abuse, addiction and misery lightened by rare friendships and occasional kindness, until Chris took the fateful decision to rehabilitate herself and restart her education.

Derek is white, middle class, late 50s. Pass him on the street and you could mistake him for what he used to be - an accountant in a chocolate firm. You'd never suspect that his job now ensures a roaring trade over the bar at The Star and Garter pub in Bristol, whose regulars include many from the first generation of black immigrants to the city. He identifies completely with the cultural life brought into this country by West Indians, can't imagine living differently now and would love to follow his friends when they retire to the islands. In the meantime he's happy to be their DJ, to spin the records they like, and to go to London on expeditions to find the music his favourite generation all enjoy, but the best moment of his week is always that first pint back in The Star and Garter with his friends.

Set in Prague, this is a story of bugged bedrooms, secret assignations, smuggled bodies in car boots, and sexual blackmail reaching into the highest echelons of the British Embassy. When the Iron Curtain came down, Michael Weigall decided to travel to Prague to see if he could track down the dossier kept on him by the secret police. As Reuters correspondent to Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s, he was subjected to continual police harrassment and was eventually forced to leave. Over 30 years later, he begins to piece together the story, meeting again the woman he loved who had been subjected to secret police interrogations because of her contact with a westerner. He discovers that virtually everyone he knew informed on him, and that the secret policemen's real weapon was their ability to pressure his girlfriends.

A beautiful Cornish estate, a strange love story, a missing squire - all the ingredients for a classic tale of mystery and intrigue. The programme pieces together this extraordinary jigsaw and follows ex-superintendent Derek Fowkes with Devon and Cornwall Police on his mission to find a man he has not seen for 20 years, the missing Lord of Fir Hill Manor.

Why are some people prepared to do, and enjoy doing, work the majority would hate? From undertaker to maggot farmer, toilet cleaner to miner, these silent heroes maintain a rich sense of humour in the face of danger and dirt, and a powerful pride in what they do.

When he was 10 years old, Thomas's speech was unintelligible and his phone calls to his grandfather needed an interpreter. Now, thanks to a revolutionary technique, he can speak clearly. By following the progress of his treatment, some of the mysteries and magic of that centre of sensuality are revealed - from taste, touch and song to its vital importance as a tool for entertainment in the hands (quite literally) of mime artist Kevin Brooking.

The story, played out against a backdrop of larger-than-life characters, of Pat and George Peach 's final year as retainers at Corsham Court in Wiltshire to the unconventional Lord Methuen.

A film about the work of PC Peter Clements , the Thames Division Identification Officer, whose job is to investigate all the corpses found in the River Thames. On a cold January morning in 1995, a man's body is fished out of the river by a patrol. His pockets contain no documents at all and so the search for his identity begins.

Deep in the Gulf of Suez lies the wreck of the SS Thistlegorm. A merchant ship, it was on its way to North Africa when it was sunk by German bombers in 1941. Nine of the crew died on that moonlit night. This film tells the story of the death of the ship, tracks down the remaining survivors, returns to the site of the wreck, and dives to the seabed to discover an underwater world full of ghosts and the wreckage of a fantastic military cargo.

As a fostered black boy in a totally white community, it was not until his teens that Manchester-based poet Lemn Sissay started to ask questions about his background. This film follows his search as he travels from the North of England to the beautiful Simien Mountains of Ethiopia to try to find the father he has never seen. Once there, he makes some surprising and emotional discoveries.

Twice a day Holy Island is cut off from the Northumbrian mainland by the tide, and its inhabitants find themselves marooned. For one year, Pcture This followed five of them, and this programme, using timelapse photography, conjures up images of a life lived at a tranquil pace.

Brendan Wilson is a photographer with schizophrenia. His experiences, and those of three others with the illness, are recorded in frank interviews inter cut with an animation sequence - made with the help of Oscar-winning Aardman Animations - representing a psychotic experience.

Terry Major-Ball , elder brother of the Prime Minister, travels around Europe sending postcards from points of interest, beginning with the Channel Tunnel.

A look at the struggles and rituals that exist around the washing up bowl, from a five-year-old's attempt to avoid her turn at the sink to the daily grind of professional George, 69, who works methodically through the piles of dishes in a busy transport cafe.