The South Bank Show

This show follows Mike Skinner, the man behind The Streets, as he records his fourth album in Prague, Everything is Borrowed. Skinner's one man band has successfully portrayed a picture of urban life for today's youth in the UK. He came to prominence in 2001 with his influential debut album Original Pirate Material, which was recorded in his bedroom. He still records this way, but in Prague he's filmed with a symphony orchestra, displaying a relaxed attitude to working with classical musicians. With contributions from Pete Doherty, and critics Chris Salmon and Alexis Petridis.

The One Ronnie, is a ‘true insight into the delightful world’ of the performer, as cameras follow him and his wife Anne in their day-to-day lives. It features archive material as well as specially written new material. It also features Corbett talking about contemporary comedy and discussing why he is still in demand to work with younger comedians. Contributors include David Frost and Michael Palin.

Bond – James Bond, that is – is almost upon us. The new film, Quantum of Solace, opens in cinemas in the UK next Friday. In one of its midweek appearances reserved for special occasions, The South Bank Show has garnered exclusive footage from the new movie ahead of its launch, and collected numerous big names to reflect, alongside stalwart Melvyn Bragg, on a franchise that has lasted 45 years. Daniel Craig, present 007 incumbent, Sean Connery, Judi Dench (who plays the character M) and a host of people from the new film including Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, villain Mathieu Amalric, director Marc Forster and composer David Arnold all feature.

This South Bank Show follows Brazil’s leading contemporary artist, Cildo Meireles on his personal journey, as he prepares for a major retrospective which opened at the Tate Modern. The film is seen uniquely through the eyes of the artist himself. Meireles is a 60-year-old artist of brilliant ideas who creates powerful political works and enormous, all-enveloping installations which are made from domestic objects like balls, fences, gates, glass and furniture, and offers audience participation and involvement like no other working art today. Gerald Fox’s South Bank Show films Meireles in his studio in his hometown Rio, as he goes about making a huge tower full of old, rewired radios called Babel, and sticks protest messages on coke bottles and banknotes which are then reintroduced into society as a form of political statement.