 |  Powerhouse - Wednesday 10 March - 11.15pm - BBC One
updated 08/03/04 | | |
|  | | Gill Mills welcomes you to Powerhouse, the new arts and entertainment show for the North West.
What's on next week? | | | | | Gill Mills - presenter | | |
On the first programme:
Craig Cash settles down with a bacon butty to watch Powerhouse |
BEHIND EARLY DOORS
Craig Cash and Phil Mealey take us behind the scenes of the acclaimed sit-com which they write and in which they star. Says Craig: "I asked Phil to be in it because he's a mate and because it's about a pub and we have plenty of experience of pubs."
Early Doors follows suit, although we are given access to goings-on in the back room and upstairs of the fictional pub called The Grapes. Phil Mealey gave up his job as an engineer to partner Craig as writer and actor - series one of Early Doors was his screen debut, carried off with great aplomb.
Both express their surprise that the popular policemen characters, Phil and Nige, while seen to be on a different level of reality from the other, invented characters, are actually based on real officers they once knew. "We changed the names to protect them," observes Craig. "They're not called Phil and Nige in real life. They're actually called Phillip and Nigel." |
Finished work of art |
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Alex Williams is an artist and art teacher with a mission to demystify modern art and bring it into people's homes. Give him a call and he'll be round in a flash with bright ideas to brighten up a bare wall or garden or empty space with an abstract painting, sculpture or maybe a mural.
This week Leslie Brand and her mum Regina, from Wirral, turn out an abstract picture in the style of the great Wassily Kandinsky. Now it hangs proudly on the lounge wall. Says Alex: "Kandinsky was a Russian who spent a lot of time in Germany and helped give birth to the Bauhaus movement which aimed to create a unified sense of design that could be applied to almost everything, small or large, from crockery to buildings.
The Nazis banned it, which in a sense was the best thing they could have done, because it promptly spread all over the world. Leslie and Regina really got stuck in - and now there's a little piece of Bauhaus in their house." |
Maine Road by Len Grant |
THE END OF MAINE ROAD
Though Manchester City FC has a brand new home there are those who say the spirits of the present squad members still hover over Maine Road.
That once imposing stadium is now in its death throes as the demolition teams complete their work, a process photographed in detail by photographer Len Grant.
Commissioned by the City Council, Len has turned his camera on the destruction of Maine Road, and on the impact upon local residents of its disappearance. |
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot |
GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND PLOT
Liverpool writer Jimmy McGovern talks passionately about his new television drama, his faith, five hundred years of treason, and how history has a habit of repeating itself.
The lessons are there to be learned, he says - but do we pay attention? In the light of recent outrages and military actions, Jimmy argues that the answer is no.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot airs on BBC TWO, Sunday the 14th and 21st of March at 9pm |
Also this week:
BUT IS IT ART?
Find out why Blackpool is having a ball with sculpture. |
Tolkien |
And next week?
Mapping Middle-earth with Steve Raw, the official Lord of the Rings mapmaker. We also examine the claim that the reality of the Ribble Valley helped inspire the fantastic terrain of Middle-earth. J.R.R. Tolkien frequently stayed at Stonyhurst College when visiting his son who studied for the priesthood there. Was he inspired? You decide.
Click here for full details of next week's programme |
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