31 Dec 2023
Michelle McManus: Talent Show Winners
Twenty years on from winning Pop Idol, Scottish singer Michelle McManus reflects on her roller coaster life and career, and revisits iconic TV talent show moments.
Affectionate observational shots of toddlers, school age girl and very new baby.
31 Dec 2023
Twenty years on from winning Pop Idol, Scottish singer Michelle McManus reflects on her roller coaster life and career, and revisits iconic TV talent show moments.

16 Nov 2018

The programme shows Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie's fascination with music from an early age, listening to the sounds of Elvis and Aretha Franklin before graduating to punk. He talks about his passion for music and how to keep creativity on the right track. In the early 90s the UK music scene was changing - with Oasis and Blur emerging, this alternative rock band was recording in Memphis but suddenly sounded out of step with the music scene.

01 Jan 1970

Explore the growth of Aberdeen’s sparkling streets.

03 Mar 1959

An array of brave 1950s water skiing girls and guys bring a bit of Hollywood glamour to the chilly waters of Loch Earn.

27 Jun 2012

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten the distance between two very different worlds.

24 Aug 2021

Best-selling author Graeme Armstrong reveals his passion for rave, meeting some of the superstar DJs and hardcore party people who created the vibrant and little-explored world of the Scottish rave scene.

09 Jun 2025

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong came back from the Moon in 1969 – but it wasn’t until three years later, when the people of a tiny Scottish town stepped in, that he finally got home. Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites is a film about the day one of the world’s most famous men visited the small ‘burgh’ of Langholm and the profound emotional effect the place, and its people, had on the normally stoic astronaut. From Industria Studios and Duncan Cowles, director of acclaimed 2024 feature Silent Men, comes a wry and beautiful slice of Scottish life and a unique, lesser-known tale about one of America’s most famous sons.

30 Nov 2021

Actor Mark Bonnar is on a mission to understand more about the Scottish new towns in which he grew up, exploring the street sculpture made by artists such as his dad in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He discovers why the new towns are there and how they enticed people out of the bigger cities, and uncovers the surprising ways in which public art changed the new towns and the new towns changed public art. Mark's father, Stan, made sculptures that stand to this day on the streets of Glenrothes, East Kilbride and the Scottish new town that never was, Stonehouse. These new towns employed town artists to make artworks in the very housing precincts the new residents were moving into.

29 Nov 1999

Exclusive two-disc film documenting the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa in the summer of 1997. The unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the team shows the preparations, the training, the fun, the team selection, the 'earthy' language, the bonding, the awesome task of playing and some shocking footage of injuries. Despite securing the series with wins in the first two tests, the Lions remained motivated by the prospect of a 3-0 whitewash, a feat never achieved against the Springboks throughout the century.

23 Dec 2013

Alex Norton discovers how showbusiness has handled the portrayal of the Scottish accent. For over 100 years audiences have struggled to understand our braw brogue: silent Harry Lauder films attempted an accent in the captions, and in Hollywood's golden era , everyone wanted to paint their tonsils tartan- but as examples from Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Richard Chamberlain show, they couldnae. Then Disney made Brave and proved that it disnae have to be all bad!

14 Jun 2017

Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.

23 Jan 2019

Ewan McGregor narrates a captivating portrait of wild Shetland and traces the course of a breeding season as the animals on these remote islands battle for survival.

04 Jun 2025

Charts the life and career of Scottish boxer Ken Buchanan, the 1970-71 undisputed lightweight world champion.

25 Jan 2017

Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.

08 Jun 2025

In 1994, a masked man shot a waiter in the only Indian restaurant in the Orkney Islands. The murder remained unsolved for years, until new evidence emerged. Delve into one of Scotland's most controversial cases, now with powerful new testimony.

11 May 2023

The definitive story of how Aberdeen FC went from the nearly men of Scottish football to winning both the European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup. Documentary telling the definitive story of how Aberdeen FC defied expectations and ruled European football.

13 Jan 1936

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow.

04 Apr 2020

Schooled in Fife, coming of age in a rock ’n’ roll band, then finding her forte was directing temperamental actors, Cora Bissett is no stranger to theatrical Scottish swearing. So who better to present a celebration of Caledonian cursing? This documentary sees Cora sing, swear and scrutinise why Scotland swears so well. Cora begins with the first hurdle – how does one discuss swear words on the BBC? Aunty Beeb is the institution that has been historically priggish about language - always bleeping words and apologising for those that slipped through. So Cora runs a list past BBC Scotland’s head of editorial standards to see what she can get away with.

16 Apr 2008

Multimillionaire landowner Paul Lister wants to turn his 23,000-acre estate north of Inverness into Europe's first wilderness reserve. Reinstating the old Caledonian pine forests is the first of his plans. He then wants to release long-lost animals, starting with moose and wild boar, and eventually predators such as brown bears, lynx and wolves. Some of the local people are far from convinced by Paul's vision. Will he even be allowed to let loose moose in the glen?

21 Nov 2014

Redemption: The James Pearson Story tells the controversial story of one of the World's best trad climbers, Englandʼs James Pearson. After a dramatic rise to become one of the top climbers in the UK, controversy surrounding the grading of his routes left him feeling ostracised from the climbing scene. The film tells James’ story and follows his return to the UK as he faces his demons and looks to redeem his place within the UK climbing community.