Actor: Peter Lord

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

The luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain is a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side, and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy and Cutlass Liz to the much coveted Pirate of the Year Award. It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they battle a diabolical queen and team up with a haplessly smitten young scientist, but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!

Claydream

A modern day Walt Disney, Will Vinton picked up a ball of clay and saw a world of potential. Known as the “Father of Claymation,” Vinton revolutionized the animation business during the 80s and 90s. But after 30 years of being the unheralded king of clay, Will Vinton’s carefully sculpted American dream came crumbling down. Structured around interviews with this charismatic pioneer and his close collaborators, the film charts the rise and fall of the Academy Award and Emmy winning Will Vinton Studios.

Animation Outlaws

Walt Disney said “We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.” Outside of Walt himself there are few people who have brought together and united more animators in the history of the genre than Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble, known to all as Spike & Mike. They created an animation festival that helped launch the careers of John Lasseter, Peter Lord, Will Vinton, Bill Plympton and Mike Judge to name just a few. Their Spike & Mike festival had an enormous impact on animation that was felt the world over. The festival was known as much for the breakthrough animation it presented as the outrageous antics of the founders.

A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman

Julie Walters tells the story of how Morph, Shaun the Sheep and that cheese-loving man Wallace and his dog Gromit first came to life.

The Making of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

Lights, camera... chickens! Go behind the scenes with the Aardman team and director Sam Fell during the making of this finely crafted stop-motion sequel.

Classic Albums: Peter Gabriel - So

This addition to the acclaimed & award winning Classic Albums series tells the story behind the making of Peter Gabriel's 1986 album "So". It was Gabriel's fifth solo album and the first one to have a title (the others all having just been called "Peter Gabriel" ). The album spawned a number of hit singles on both sides of the Atlantic including "Sledgehammer", "Big Time", "Don't Give Up" (a duet with Kate Bush) and "In Your Eyes" which drove "So" to multi-platinum sales, the No.1 spot in the UK and No.2 in the US. So was very much an album of the MTV generation and the distinctive videos for tracks like "Sledgehammer", "Red Rain", "Big Time" and "Don't Give Up" were key factors in the album's success.

Kids' TV: The Surprising Story

Konnie Huq celebrates the very best of British children’s television, with a dazzling array of clips from some of the most treasured programmes ever made and revealing chats with some of TV’s most beloved stars. But Konnie also tells a perhaps more surprising story: of how kids’ TV has frequently been at the forefront of social change, in terms of the stories it tells and the people who get to tell them.