TV
Channel 4 return to the school that tried to end racism
Telly Today, highlights for July 2nd 2020.
The School That Tried To End Racism
The ground-breaking two-part series concludes tonight on Channel 4.
Cameras have followed a pioneering British school as it tries to help its students uncover and eradicate hidden racial biases. Led by experts and inspired by similar programmes from American schools, an ordinary class of 11 to 12-year-olds take part in a series of activities designed to challenge everything they thought they knew about race.
The students must overcome awkwardness and embarrassment, as they open up about their own and others’ attitudes and confront difficult truths. After being tested for racial bias at both the beginning and the end of the course, will the students be changed by the experience? And is it a programme that all schools should consider rolling out? This revelatory series explores how unconscious racial bias can affect us all, and what we can all do to tackle it.
In this episode, the students explore the notion of white privilege. A 12-year-old white British student is shocked to hear her black classmates’ experiences of racism, while an 11-year-old girl is keen to create an Asian and bi-racial workgroup. And all the students are tested again for racial bias, to see if it has changed.
9pm on Channel 4
Billion Pound Cruises: All At Sea
This one-off documentary tells the story of how the biggest global crisis in living memory brought the £120 billion-pound lucrative cruise industry to its knees and 100s of ships around the world to a standstill across six extraordinary weeks.
The programme will explore the role of cruise ships and in the spread of the virus and ask if the well-being of passengers and crew was always put first. With personal insights from passengers onboard ships living through the unfolding crisis along with renowned experts, the film forensically unpacks the events across six critical weeks that led to dream cruise holidays turning into floating horror stories with thousands of passengers in quarantine and crew members finding themselves stuck out at sea on infected ships.
The cruising industry has sky-rocketed to a more than £100 billion business in the last few years with 30 million people taking to the seas in 2019. Now, in a short space of time, this travel industry heavyweight has been brought to its knees. For the first time in history, the whole of the cruising industry has ground to a halt with ships and passengers stranded at sea, rows of liners moored in ports with nowhere to go and routes cancelled.
9pm on ITV, UTV and STV
The Directors: Francis Ford Coppola
The Directors returns to Sky Arts for its fifth series, beginning with an examination of the career of Francis Ford Coppola.
Perhaps best known for his cinematic masterpiece The Godfather and it’s two sequels, Coppola is also known for projects that would initially seem to be outside of his wheelhouse, such as his dark adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the children’s film Jack starring Robin Williams.
He has also courted controversy as of late with his criticism of the modern Hollywood blockbuster, in particular, the dominant superhero genre.
9pm on Sky Arts
Ambulance
The fourth episode in this six-part series begins with an unusual job for advanced paramedic Kirsten. A call has come in from the police for a burglar who’s injured himself while trying to escape from a house he was burgling. As Kirsten arrives to support the crews already at scene, she finds he is in agony with a nasty open fracture on his leg.
It’s an hour into the shift when a call for a patient, who is 27 weeks pregnant and in a lot of pain, takes priority, as she could be in early labour. Kelsey and Dave are immediately dispatched. On arrival, the patient explains she’s a survivor of spine cancer and her baby is something of a miracle.
Two hours into the shift, the crews have already attended 96 patients. A category two call comes in for a patient struggling to breathe. Gareth and Gabby are the closest crew and are immediately dispatched. The patient suffers from pneumonia and COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and is struggling with her breathing. Whilst on way to the hospital, Gabby hears about the patient’s late husband. This brings up memories of Gabby losing her dad at young age.
Also tonight it’s a busy shift for high-priority calls as Kirsten’s dispatched to another road traffic collision – this time involving three cars. It’s another busy scene for Kirsten to manage. While she’s checking how many injured passengers are at the scene a colleague alerts her to a previously overlooked car that may have someone trapped and injured inside. She investigates the vehicle and finds a patient in cardiac arrest with a suspected collapsed lung.
9pm on BBC One
