2nd House

The first programme in a new series of 2nd House examines The Who phenomenon. In 1964 a rock group made their first public appearance at a pub in Harrow. Ten years later the same band hold an undisputed position among rock giants.

An exhibition of painter Paul Klee's later works opened last week at the Bristol Art Gallery. Randy Newman talks to Charlie Gillett and sings from his album The Good Old Boys. In his New York home, author Isaac Bashevis Singer talks the Polish Jewish community he was brought up in.

A documentary celebrating different aspects of our national sport in music, verse and drama.

Willy Russell's hit musical at the Lyric Theatre charts the rise and fall of The Beatles. At the Royal Academy, the largest collection of J. M. W. Turner's work ever to be shown publicly opens today. To coincide with their current season at Sadler's Wells, the artistic directors of London's two leading modern dance companies were each invited to create an original work for television.

On his recent visit to London, Athol Fugard was interviewed by Melvyn Bragg and tonight's programme brings together extracts from South Africa's finest playwright's most important plays to give a portrait of this formidable man of the theatre.

A new selection of stories by the Brothers Grimm, translated and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, restores to these fairy tales their original strength and complexity. Interviewed in his New York studio, 40-year-old pop painter James Rosenquist talks about the current exhibition of his work at the Mayor Gallery in London. Poet Peter Redgrove and young author Penelope Shuttle talk about the ideas behind their book. At the Mermaid Theatre in London, Benny Green and Alan Strachan celebrates the spirit of Cole Porter.

A documentary entertainment in England's forgotten language dialect performed in the accent of those for whom Barth will always be Bath and Coventry will never be Cuventry.

This month, the Victoria and Albert Museum celebrates the great Vincent Van Gogh's years in England. 2nd House filmed Thorn Gunn, poet-hero of the British beat generation who now lives in San Francisco, reading from his latest collection in the Californian landscape which inspires his poetry.

In January 1885 John Lee, a young servant, was condemned to death in Exeter for the murder of his employer. For reasons that have remained mysterious to this day he could not be hanged. The only recorded failure in the history of the drop system made Lee, convicted murderer, a popular hero, known all over the country.

Melvyn Bragg talks to James Toback, the New York College lecturer and occasional sports-writer who has written the story and the script of Karel Reisz's new film The Gambler. This month, an exhibition of Swiss artist Henry Fuseli's work opens at the Tate Gallery. An adaptation of controversial R. D. Laing's book, Knots.

A personal documentary written and presented by Michael Frayn.

Trevor Griffiths's new play opened to rave notices at the Nottingham Play-house at the end of February. An exhibition devoted to the history and re-discovery of British photography opens at the Hayward Gallery. Tonight's film looks at a session unique to traditional Irish music.

2nd House explores in verse, drama, cartoon, documentary and song how our views of wedlock have shifted in recent times from the Victorian belief in a life-long union entailing absolute fidelity and in which sex was primarily for begetting children.

The first part of tonight's programme is devoted to artists and craftsmen who are brightening up our environment. Extracts from some of Julian Symons's award-winning crime novels are enacted.

Tonight's programme takes an affectionate look at radio comedy from the earliest days of the British Broadcasting Company right up to the present day.

Composer Gordon Crosse and Alan Garner have taken the Cheshire legend of Potter Thompson as the starting point for their children's opera. Edwin Mullins takes a look at the early years of Arthur Lasenby Liberty's famous store in Regent Street, London. Sonny Rollins, one of the great jazz saxophonists of all times, released his latest disc. As an experiment, 2nd House invited three dancers from the Ballet Rambert and three from the London Contemporary Dance Theatre to work together to see if they can create something different.

Exactly 30 years ago today, nuclear physicist Philip Morrison supervised the loading of the A-bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki. In conversation with Melvyn Bragg, he recalls for viewers how scientists like himself came to be involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and the campaign some of them have waged to limit the arms race.