Week 21 highlights 2012

9 May 2012

Below are the best programmes on Channel 4 for week 20, Saturday 19th - Friday 25th May.

Here is some extra information on this week's blockbuster, Titanic:

Titanic is a niche independent film about a little-known shipping accident that was barely reported on at the time or since.

Titanic was directed by Prime Minister James Cameron, before he became a deep sea diving enthusiast.

Titanic is officially the second-most gross film of all time (it's all that King of the World mush).

Fastidious perfectionist David Cameron rebuilt the entire Titanic, to scale, before sinking it in the frozen north Atlantic, and insisting on 1514 extras dying, for absolute authenticity.

 

 

Saturday 19/05/2012
6:05pm
Titanic
James Cameron's Oscar-laden epic - currently the world's second highest grossing film -tells of the first and final voyage of the 'unsinkable' luxury liner through the love story of two very different passengers. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jack Dawson, a brash chancer who talks his way up to the staterooms and fancy restaurants where he meets - and falls for - Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet).

 

Sunday, 20/05/2012
7:05pm
Four Rooms 8/8
The final episode of the series features Winston Churchill's gold dentures; a chastity belt that the seller believes dates back to the 16th century; an enormous modern rocking library; prison artwork by Britain's most notorious prisoner Charles Bronson; three 19th-century Viennese erotic bronzes; and artwork made from US dollar bills by tattooist Scott Campbell.

 

Sunday, 20/05/2012
9pm
Channel 4's Comedy Gala
Channel 4's Comedy Gala returns for a third year as some of the nation's best-known and most-loved comedy and music stars share the stage for this iconic charity event in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Jessie J opens the show with an exclusive live performance. The all-star line-up also includes Lee Evans, Michael McIntyre, Jonathan Ross, Micky Flanagan, Sean Lock, Kevin Bridges, Jo Brand, Jack Whitehall, Jack Dee, Jon Richardson, Seann Walsh, Lee Nelson, Josh Widdicombe, Paul Chowdhry, Andi Osho, Keith Lemon and Alan Carr.

 

Monday, 21/05/2012
8pm
Beating the Recession - Cash vs Cards: Channel 4 Dispatches
News that we are back in recession won't have been a surprise to many hard-pressed families across the country. So is it time to rethink how we use our money? Personal finance expert Harry Wallop investigates whether cutting up our credit cards and paying for everything in cash could leave us with more money in our pockets. Families are now drawing out more from cash machines than at any time in the last five years. But that's not what the banks and credit card companies want us to do. So is the move towards a cashless society more about the banks' profits than the convenience of financially-stretched consumers?

 

Monday, 21/05/2012
8:30pm
Gok Cooks Chinese
Gok Wan is firing up his wok to showcase his other great passion in life: Chinese cooking. Growing up with a Chinese restaurateur and chef for a father, Gok loves nothing more than home-cooked Chinese food, and over the years has perfected many dishes of his own. Now he is joined by his dad, known as Poppa Wan, for this brand new cookery. In this first programme Gok demonstrates the basics of Chinese cooking, from the 'holy trinity' of ingredients - garlic, ginger and spring onion - to the 'love box' of condiments.
An interview with Gok is available here:
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/gok-wan-interview-for-gok-cooks-chinese

 

Tuesday 22/05/2012
8pm
Embarrassing Bodies Live from the Clinic 2/8
Dr Christian Jessen and Dr Dawn Harper are joined by a team of GPs and specialists to provide live consultations to as many viewers as possible via Skype. In this edition, a group of men dedicated to promoting early detection of testicular cancer join the doctors in the studio for a live testicle check. And Dr James Logan from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine shows viewers how a bed bug epidemic can easily spread.

 

Tuesday 22/05/2012
10pm
My Big Fat Fetish
This is a film about a group of big women who are happy with their weight and of some who want to get even fatter. Fat girls eating food is becoming an underground internet activity. Magazines and online websites featuring 'Big Beautiful Women' have become more and more popular. These women love their bodies and there are millions of men around the world who admire them. This fascinating documentary follows the lives of four 'Big' models in the USA and UK, exploring the relationship these women have with their food and bodies, and also with their fans, and reveals what motivates them to this bizarre sexual lifestyle.

 

Wednesday 23/05/2012
8pm
Secret Eaters 2/6
Britain's got a big, fat secret - we are a nation of Secret Eaters. Each year, we're getting fatter, but many of us just don't seem to know why. In this new series Anna Richardson exposes the country's secret eating habits. Each episode helps people who are mystified as to why they're piling on the pounds by uncovering what they're really eating. In this edition the Castle family from Welwyn Garden City come under surveillance.

 

Wednesday 23/05/2012
9pm
24 Hours in A&E 2/14
The RTS award-winning series continues a brand new 14-part run, offering a dramatic and revelatory insight into love, life and loss on the frontline of the NHS. Filmed around the clock for six weeks at King's College Hospital in south London, one of Britain's busiest A&E departments, each programme focuses on people treated within the same 24-hour period. A quarter of all patients treated in King's A&E are children. This episode follows some of their stories for the first time, as well as one of A&E's youngest recruits; 27-year-old emergency medicine trainee Matt.

 

Thursday, 24/05/2012
8pm
Phil Spencer: Secret Agent 3/5
Phil's mission takes him to commuter-belt Kent where two properties get some secret agent assistance after being on the market for almost two years between them. Nigel and Gina's four-bed semi has been used and abused by both parents and kids, not to mention the pets, while over in Bromley's Old Town Phil meets hoarder Julie and tries to recover the beautiful two-bed terrace hidden underneath her stash.

 

Thursday, 24/05/2012
9pm
The Hoarder Next Door 4/4
Forty-four-year-old Tina Vaughan is an aspiring artist with no room to work as she is a compulsive hoarder of all things 1960s. An avid collector since she was a child, Tina lives in a cramped flat with her two cats. Stelios Kiosses pairs Tina with one of the most extreme hoarders he has ever met - 71-year-old Joanne Gill - in a bid to change her hoarding habit.

 

Friday, 25/05/2012
7:30pm
Unreported World 6/8: Cameroon
Reporter Evan Williams and director James Brabazon travel to the Central African country of Cameroon to investigate the practice of eating 'bushmeat' - wild meat hunted in the rainforest. They talk to the medical experts warning that butchering and eating primates including critically endangered gorillas and chimpanzees could trigger a new global pandemic - a new HIV or SARS - by unleashing as-yet unknown viruses. And they meet the British woman battling the trade and looking after the animals orphaned by the slaughter.

 

Friday, 25/05/2012
9pm
Eight Out of Ten Cats 5/11
Channel 4's cracking line-up of Friday night entertainment continues, kicking off with the Jimmy Carr-hosted panel show. Then Morgana Robinson and Terry Mynott make an impression in Very Important People; Alan Carr is joined by guests John Bishop, Cuba Gooding Jr and Plan B in Chatty Man; Jon Richardson hosts another edition of Stand Up for the Week; and you can catch Rhod Gilbert and the Award-Winning Mince Pie.