Attenborough The Controller
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00:00["Memories You Gave to Me"]
00:14["Memories You Gave to Me"]
00:22["Memories You Gave to Me"]
00:44The BBC Two of the late 60s has come to be seen as one of the benchmarks of public service broadcasting
00:50with the richness and invention of its programs.
00:54But in 1964, BBC Two was launched with more of a whimper than a bang.
00:58For the first few months, it struggled to make an impression.
01:02The man who turned it round had been more famous for his trips to the jungle than running a television channel.
01:07He was David Attenborough.
01:10He's a bit of a boy scout, David, you know, and he really likes being in with the troops.
01:15He likes pitching tents on hillsides and saying,
01:19let's put the camera here, or how can we fix it, or where can we get some food for the next 24 hours?
01:25He likes solving those kind of problems.
01:27If you put a man who likes doing that in charge of a television channel, you're going to have fun.
01:33David made certain that BBC Two would be different.
01:37Not only different in terms of news, different in terms of arts programs,
01:41different in terms of documentary, different in terms of entertainment programs.
01:47This is the story of how the channel David Attenborough created in his own image would change television forever.
02:03In 1962, the Conservative government gave the go-ahead to create a third channel, BBC Two,
02:09based on the new technology of UHF television sets with 625 lines.
02:15It promised better programs and a boost in sales to the retailers of the new sets.
02:28BBC Two had staggered onto the air in April 1964 with Michael Peacock as its controller.
02:34The opening night flopped when a fire at Battersea Power Station blacked out sections of the BBC.
02:42All over town, traffic lights went out, tubes stopped, and even the windmill theatre closed.
02:48But the biggest disappointment was at BBC Television Centre,
02:51where the curtain failed to go up on the opening night of a brand new channel, BBC Two.
02:56Initially, there was a flickering of the lights in Lime Grove and in Television Centre,
03:02and people in the bar said, ho, ho, ho, it's too many people switching on,
03:06they're putting the system under strain. But then all the lights went.
03:12And, of course, the next day there was no other story on the front page
03:14other than the blacking out of BBC Two's first night,
03:19and pictures of the international press who'd gathered for this great event,
03:24eating their smoked salmon sandwiches by candlelight in the hospitality rooms.
03:33The night after the blackout disaster, we decided that we would tease people into the evening,
03:40the new opening night, with a visual reminder of the previous night.
03:45And the device chosen was a candle.
03:48BBC Two. Programme start in five minutes.
03:52And when the appropriate time came, I would come in, pick up the candle,
03:57blow it out as all the studio lights came on, and introduce the new channel.
04:02Good evening. This is BBC Two.
04:08My name is Dennis Toohey, and this is the line-up studio from which, all being well,
04:13BBC programmes, BBC Two programmes, will start each evening from now on.
04:18The opening night's schedule, which could only be watched by a small audience in the London regions,
04:23included a comedy, The Alberts Channel Two, an all-star production of Kiss Me Kate,
04:28the Russian comedian Arkady Raikin, fireworks from Southend, and the jazz of Duke Ellington.
04:43The channel's weekly line-up featured programmes to move the body and the soul.
04:51The hit of the first year was The Great War, a 26-part history narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave.
04:58Trenches were mere ditches. For days you never saw the enemy, just endless shells.
05:07You ate beside the dead. You drank beside the dead.
05:12You relieved yourself beside the dead. You slept beside the dead.
05:19But despite individual successes, Michael Peacock's channel failed to capture the public's imagination.
05:25Michael had to get new studios on new line systems, newly engineered, new production staff and so on,
05:32and he simply couldn't get enough in the time to provide a full schedule.
05:39Peacock struck on the plan of calling his new schedule The Seven Faces.
05:43Each evening would have its own character. One evening would be entirely about hobbies.
05:48Another would carry nothing but educational programmes.
05:51And there was one evening devoted entirely to repeats.
05:57Within a year, Michael Peacock had moved to be controller of BBC One,
06:01and Huw Weldon, then managing director, decided to appoint a new face at BBC Two.
06:07Huw Weldon rang me up and said,
06:09Dibach, he being a Welshman, can you come round and see me?
06:14And I went round and he said,
06:16I've offered this programme, The Network, to a chap called Donald Bavistock,
06:20who's a very bright man. He doesn't want to do it. Will you do it?
06:24And I thought about it for a night and decided I would do it, but not forever.
06:30I said, I can promise to do it for three years, but I think it's unlikely I'll do it for more than five.
06:36David was drafted in to be the controller of BBC Two.
06:41Again, he had a blank sheet of paper. It had been tried but hadn't worked.
06:45So what to do?
06:47Well, of course, it's a marvellous opportunity,
06:49because there were all kinds of people in television anxious to put forward new ideas
06:54for which there wasn't room on BBC One.
06:57And he was able to commission right across the board.
07:01Attenborough had the qualities to adapt to a new environment.
07:04From the outset, he found himself having to defend the channel.
07:08Now, your avowed ambition to be different on BBC Two,
07:11have you got past the moment when a lot of people were saying,
07:16not with necessarily any truth in it, that BBC Two was a failure?
07:22I think we have, actually, because, quite honestly,
07:24the only people who've been going around saying that BBC Two is a failure,
07:27as far as I've discovered, are the people who've never seen it.
07:31He simply has an enormous amount of charm. Everybody knows that.
07:37But behind the charm, there's also steel.
07:41And there's a real determination to get things done
07:44and to get the things done the way he wants to do them.
07:49Behind all the charm, there's a very, very intelligent, razor-sharp mind
07:54that knew the business, knew what he wanted, and could get it.
08:00One of Attenborough's first actions as the new controller
08:02was an attack on two defenceless animals.
08:06BBC Two had an emblem for its launch.
08:09It was a kangaroo, or rather, it was a baby kangaroo.
08:13Hullabaloo and Custard were the two names of the kangaroo,
08:17and BBC Two was seen as the small baby kangaroo
08:20in the pouch of the bigger BBC One.
08:23Some demented public relations chap who pretended to know things
08:28which they'd have no idea about suddenly thought,
08:31you've got to have an identity.
08:33We've got to somehow invent some kind of human figure,
08:36something that has a human appeal,
08:38that Mother BBC is giving off an offspring
08:43and it's going to be wonderful and exciting and quirky and ha-ha.
08:48I know we'll say that Mother BBC is a kangaroo
08:53and then we'll have this little thing in it
08:55which is going to be the new network in its pouch.
08:58We'll have to personalise it, of course.
09:00What shall we call it?
09:01Well, what about Hullabaloo?
09:04Because we're going to cause a hullabaloo.
09:08Well, why do you call a baby Custard?
09:10Well, that's just it. Why not?
09:13I mean, absolutely wet.
09:16And when I arrived in my office as the new controller of BBC Two,
09:21I dictated some letter or memorandum
09:24and it turned up with a little yellow kangaroo
09:28with a little thing in its pouch outlined in black.
09:31I can see it now.
09:32I said, well, it looked like children's notepaper, you know.
09:35I said, what on earth is this?
09:37They said, all our BBC Two,
09:39it gives corporate identity or some such cliché phrase.
09:44And I said, well, I never, ever want to see it again.
09:47They said, well, we've got thousands of sheets.
09:49I said, well, I know all about sort of conservationism
09:52but I am not going to have letters put on that.
09:54And that was then the last we heard of Hullabaloo and Custard.
09:59The infant BBC Two had come in for heavy criticism
10:02from the viewers and from the television trade
10:05who wanted to sell the new sets.
10:07The programme makers felt beleaguered.
10:10These people had had it rather tough for the past year.
10:14It seemed really as though everybody's hand was against them.
10:18The television trade, the retailers, were certainly against them.
10:23They thought, and understandably,
10:26that BBC Two should be used to sell UHF sets
10:31and that, therefore, it should put on, without any question,
10:34quite simply, the most popular programmes.
10:37One of them actually said to me,
10:39what you should do is to stop Z cars on BBC One,
10:42put it on BBC Two and so force people to buy BBC Two.
10:46BBC One viewers, actually, BBC One-only viewers,
10:50were also against it because if we did anything that was worthwhile,
10:54they said, how dare we actually put it on BBC Two
10:58when the country wanted to see it?
11:00And you might say, well, why weren't the viewers in favour of it,
11:05BBC Two viewers?
11:06And the answer was that there were hardly any of them.
11:09Which meant, of course, that some very remarkable programmes
11:12were missed by a lot of people.
11:14In Conversations for Tomorrow,
11:16JB Priestley entertains two distinguished guests to dinner.
11:20I think what Freddie says comes to the same,
11:22which is a question of freedom.
11:26You want to feel free to make mistakes.
11:28With a new controller in the hot seat,
11:30the channel needed a new schedule and a new identity.
11:34Late-night line-up soon came to be seen
11:36as the quintessential BBC Two programme.
11:40There have been renewed accusations in Parliament
11:43about left-wing bias on the part of BBC Television.
11:46When this series originally opened,
11:48it received rather mixed reviews
11:50from television critics of the national press.
11:53But by the time the series ended, this had changed to national acclaim.
11:57It became a nightly programme, and I mean seven nights a week,
12:0112 months in the year,
12:03in which it discussed primarily television programmes
12:06of that night or the next night,
12:08so that during the evening you would see a programme
12:11and afterwards the announcer would say,
12:13this programme will be discussed on late-night line-up.
12:16And then the next day we would perhaps review
12:19the programme we'd seen the previous night.
12:21It became enormously contentious, of course,
12:23because there was the BBC putting out on BBC Two regularly
12:27criticisms of its own programmes,
12:30and quite a lot of the programme makers didn't like it.
12:33Part of its great joy was, frankly, Joan Bakewell,
12:38in very short skirts.
12:41And it also brought, occasionally,
12:46people who you had never seen on screen to television.
12:50So you could see really considerable artists
12:54who would come and be interviewed,
12:56and no-one had ever seen what they looked like.
12:58Well, there's nobody in the world now
13:00we have never seen what they look like on TV.
13:02Everybody's been on TV all the time.
13:04They had the widest of briefs.
13:06They didn't even have, really, a time brief,
13:08because it was the end of the evening's schedules.
13:11Nothing was to follow, so if they overran by ten minutes,
13:14what the heck, and so on.
13:16So it had a wonderful sort of freewheeling kind of free and easy thing.
13:20It met with an awful lot of opposition within the corporation.
13:23I mean, my job as network controller was to defend it all the time.
13:29Line-up was a nightly show and late at night.
13:32Often the guests would have spent many happy hours
13:35beforehand in the BBC bar.
13:38One of the best-remembered shows was Comedy Writers' Night,
13:41when a group of comedy writers, including Marty Feldman and Johnny Spate,
13:44were invited to discuss comedy on television.
13:47I have to live by myself, you know.
13:50If I'm writing rubbish, I can't live by myself.
13:52If I'm getting great-time writings, it means nothing.
13:54I have to watch myself, you know.
13:56But one comedy writer, John Antrobus, who'd also been in the bar,
13:59hadn't been invited.
14:01He wasn't amused.
14:03Cue lights, cue action.
14:05Well, we have an extra guest with us who's just leaving.
14:10Would you be kind enough to leave, please?
14:12Please mind leaving the studio.
14:13Oh, John, come on.
14:15I would like to talk about comedy.
14:17I am a comedy writer, one of the best in the world.
14:19John, call it, for God's sake.
14:21Aren't you even on the screen yet?
14:23Is he on?
14:24Well, er...
14:25We on?
14:26As we'll be saying, er...
14:28As we'll be pointing out later on, comedy...
14:31Comedy's a serious business.
14:33I thought it was quite as serious as all that.
14:36Johnny Spate, for years after this,
14:39used to apologise to me when he's on that night.
14:42But he always apologised by buying me a drink.
14:45So I did all right in the end.
14:47But at the time, I didn't think it was funny at all.
14:50One of the things that Liner did
14:52was it simply refused to acknowledge
14:54the division between high art and popular entertainment.
14:59We simply didn't draw any lines.
15:01We would have jazz next to politics.
15:03We would have pop groups next to philosophy.
15:06We mixed all these people up.
15:08They were very pleased to meet each other.
15:10It so happened.
15:11And we didn't make any value judgments.
15:13We just said,
15:14here's some sport or here's a set of jokes
15:17or here's some jazz.
15:19We had a whole array of jazz musicians
15:22coming over from America.
15:24We had lots of film stars coming on.
15:26But we also had stories about window cleaners
15:29and people in ordinary jobs.
15:32We would get them in to review programmes about their own lives.
15:36We've all been having a say.
15:38Now, you're a person that does this regular.
15:40And straightaway, the text went on what you were thinking.
15:44Now, let's get back to my old argument.
15:47We've got trained people that can outdo a working-class man
15:51that's trying to give his point of view.
15:53He's bamboozled and made me look a fool.
15:55I'm bamboozling you? No, no, no, no.
15:57We're talking about straight interviews.
15:59I'm talking about the way you brought out the Monty Python.
16:02Monty Python, yeah.
16:04Well, the way it all came to what you were thinking.
16:07You were trying to interview us,
16:09but straightaway it came to what you were thinking.
16:11You're dead right.
16:12And everybody was what you were thinking.
16:14And that's the way every programme goes on telly
16:16regarding every interview,
16:18regarding the government, wages, union disputes.
16:22Now, I'll take this up with you.
16:25Because, in fact, generally speaking,
16:27I try quite deliberately to sit on the fence.
16:30Are you going to marry up with BBC One even more closely
16:34in organising alternative programmes?
16:37We can do things in sport that have been neglected so far,
16:41largely by other networks.
16:43One of the things that we have planned,
16:45and particularly tied up with our spread to the north,
16:48is Rugby League.
16:50Don't bother. Early bath, as they say.
16:53He didn't neglect sport,
16:55even though he was not a great sports follower.
16:58He ensured that there was Rugby League,
17:02floodlit Rugby League, on BBC Two.
17:05And, of course, let's not forget,
17:07Match of the Day began on BBC Two.
17:14With hours to fill on BBC Two,
17:16it was a golden opportunity to show more sport.
17:19The World Cup was coming to Britain in 1966
17:22and BBC Two used Match of the Day to train the camera crews.
17:30Welcome to Match of the Day,
17:32the first of a weekly series coming to you every Saturday on BBC Two.
17:36As you can hear, we're in Beatleville
17:38for this Liverpool versus Arsenal match.
17:40Liverpool's trying to have ten men back at defence.
17:45In other areas, in light entertainment,
17:47we shall continue to look for the new stars,
17:49the experimental stars,
17:51the people who try new lines in comedy,
17:53like, in fact, the two successes, obviously,
17:56with the Likely Lads,
17:57and not only, but also with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
18:00I'll tell you what, mate, I'll compromise.
18:02I'll have a beer with a cherry in it.
18:05I come in about half-past 11 at night.
18:08We've been having a couple of drinks, I remember.
18:12I come in, I get into bed, you see,
18:15feeling quite sleepy.
18:18I could feel the lids of me eyes beginning to droop, you see.
18:21Bit of a droop in the eyes.
18:23I was just about to drop off when suddenly...
18:26Tap, tap, tap at the bloody windowpane.
18:31I looked out. You know who it was?
18:34Who?
18:35Bloody Greta Garbo.
18:41Bloody Greta Garbo.
18:43Stop naked.
18:48Save for a shorty nightie.
18:50She'd be hanging on to the window sill.
18:56There weren't many makeover or gardening programmes
18:59in those pre-Bertian days, but there was plenty of digging.
19:02Chronicle was a new popular archaeology show
19:05that aimed to reveal the secrets of the past.
19:08Uncovering the mysteries of Silbury Hill
19:10was its most famous challenge.
19:13Most of the secrets of Silbury remained uncovered,
19:16but chair archaeologists seemed to like it.
19:19Two weeks ago, a team of archaeologists and Welsh miners,
19:22working in shifts,
19:24started driving a tunnel into the heart of this vast mound.
19:28An archaeological dig with a vengeance, you might say,
19:31and sponsored, as you probably know, by BBC Two.
19:36Attenborough was quick to spot other areas of programming
19:39not covered by the mainstream of BBC and ITV.
19:42Man Alive covered important social issues
19:45that were rapidly changing post-war Britain.
19:47Issues such as homosexuality, then still illegal.
19:52When you got married, were you consciously aware
19:55of the fact that you were marrying somebody with homosexual tendencies?
19:59No. I was marrying somebody I loved, and that was it.
20:04There's no question of somebody being different because they're homosexual.
20:08I mean, a homosexual man is the same as any other man,
20:12except this one particular thing is slightly different.
20:17Later that night, viewers would then be able to see issues
20:20raised by the broadcast debated live in the studio.
20:23Public attitudes to homosexuality in this country have changed
20:27and are changing.
20:29It's still a crime in Britain for male homosexuals to make love,
20:33but with a reform bill waiting to be given a third reading
20:36in the House of Commons, prosecutions now are rare.
20:39Do you think this kind of programme, the way it was presented,
20:42has achieved anything to solve what is a very real social problem?
20:45Well, I think any kind of discussion, any presentation
20:49of real live people in situations must do some good, however minimal.
20:55I think that this is dealing with a twilight area of abnormal people
21:00and it's something that I don't think is out for public discussion.
21:04If we accept the statistics of one in 20,
21:08all the children are going to be in contact with people
21:11who have these problems, even for their own protection.
21:15They must know about these things.
21:18A strand that made a different impact was one pair of eyes.
21:22It combined journalism and television production of the highest order.
21:26Mr Cameron, have you come to India for the first time?
21:29No, I've been here before.
21:31And here we are again, walking round and round
21:34in these endless corridors of power, looking for what, I wonder?
21:38Where to start, I suppose.
21:41That's the trouble, Mr Baradwaj. I have been here before.
21:52Do we start here? Surely not.
21:55It's sometimes so hard in India to remember which generation you're in.
22:05One of the bitter things about Asian poverty
22:09is that it can be quite awfully beautiful.
22:13Poverty composes itself into appallingly satisfying visual images.
22:26With what charm and grace do these images come to life?
22:31With what charm and grace do these melancholy slum-dwellers
22:35dispose their empty bodies in their hungry propitiation of the dawn?
22:43How picturesque it is to be poor.
22:50One doesn't have to go very far to escape from the picture-book felicities
22:54of the more acceptable poor.
22:56Not in Bengal, where there are still refugees from Pakistan,
23:00the flotsam of partition,
23:02who in ten years have never found a home, and never, never will.
23:27VIOLIN PLAYS
23:40When Attenborough took it over,
23:43it seemed to get more of a programme-maker's verve.
23:49You know, having been perhaps a bit chalky,
23:54it seemed to be actually coming into itself as television.
23:59It's a television!
24:02It's in colour!
24:05Oh, God, it's a coming-home present.
24:08Oh, and that's smashing.
24:11Here. It's only a 21-inch screen, they're coming 23.
24:16And then, in 1967, the grass was decidedly greener on BBC Two.
24:24First in colour was Wimbledon,
24:26and as there were hardly any new colour cameras,
24:29the action was centre-court only.
24:31But on Attenborough's Two, the sporting action didn't stop there.
24:39Pot Black was the surprise runaway success,
24:42providing you had colour, of course.
24:44For those of you in black and white,
24:46it's the green over that bottom bucket that he's looking at.
24:49There, biting her fingernails, is the wife of Grandma's, Heather.
24:58Soon, everyone was snooker-mad.
25:00LAUGHTER
25:11Throw it away!
25:14With a shortage of cameras, most productions were still in black and white.
25:18The big hit of 67 was a drama.
25:29The Foresight Saga gripped the nation for 26 consecutive weeks.
25:40Kill me if you like, but...
25:42I'd rather you killed me!
25:44There's no need to kill you!
25:46Anybody can have you, can't they?!
25:49Can't they?! Can't they?!
25:51Well, I can too!
25:53You're my wife!
25:55You're my wife!
25:57You're my wife!
26:03This episode, with a rape scene, sent shockwaves through the viewing public.
26:09SHE SOBS
26:16SHE SOBS
26:36David Attenborough was quickly assembling a portfolio of programmes
26:39that would define the character of BBC Two for decades to come.
26:47BBC Two's brief, as far as I was concerned,
26:50was to cover all those aspects of human activity,
26:55which BBC One didn't.
26:57And when you looked at it, to one's amazement, one saw
27:01that there was not actually a regular weekly slot
27:06in which scientific matters were.
27:08No, we are a scientific society. I mean, that's absurd.
27:13And so Horizon dealt with that.
27:17Equally, business.
27:20I mean, the Chancellor's checker is coming on to tell you all the time
27:24about what you're going to do about budgets and one thing or another,
27:27and yet there was nothing that dealt with business affairs.
27:30So, right, we had to do that.
27:32Equally, I should say, there wasn't actually
27:35a regular natural history programme on BBC One
27:39when I went to BBC Two.
27:41There was not a regular one at all.
27:44And there certainly wasn't a 50-minute one.
27:47And so I thought...
27:49Well, I knew that, what was there, what was available,
27:53so we started The World About Us,
27:55which still survives as The Natural World.
27:5825 miles an hour.
28:01Rarely had we ventured so far beyond the human realm.
28:12APPLAUSE
28:15Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
28:18and welcome to BBC Two's game of words and wit.
28:21Call my bluff.
28:23The one thing that I was absolutely sure would be a mistake
28:28would be to suppose that people are all the same all the way through,
28:34like Brighton Rock, I mean, with the name written all the way through.
28:38I am a highbrow, I am a highbrow, all the way through.
28:41Or indeed, I am a lowbrow, I am a lowbrow.
28:43People aren't like that.
28:45People have a great range of tastes, just as a network should.
28:50And it so happened that, for example,
28:53the great music critic and intellectual at the time,
28:58Hans Keller, was also a passionate Arsenal supporter, you know.
29:04It was not at all foolish to suppose that people who liked
29:11unaccompanied cello suites by Bach
29:14didn't like watching the cup final.
29:16Of course they did.
29:18And so that intellectual brow was of no consequence.
29:25The only thing that was, as I say,
29:27was that I would not put on mindless programmes,
29:30fatuous programmes, fatuous quizzes.
29:34If you're going to do a quiz, let's do a quiz.
29:37OK, let's do a quiz where, in fact, invention is at a premium,
29:42like Call My Broth,
29:44where you had to invent false definitions of words.
29:52So, as I say, the wider the brow, the wider the spectrum,
29:57the better we would be.
29:59Bloat.
30:00Cocky.
30:01Mauritius.
30:02Hans.
30:03Mongoloid.
30:04Prout.
30:05Shermer.
30:06Scodgy.
30:07Dagger.
30:08Waddle.
30:09Quinkle.
30:10It's done by shepherds that approach sheep with enormous shears
30:17for the purpose of cutting the wool
30:22off from underneath the sheep's tail and all around it.
30:27This is not wholly unconnected with the multiplication of the flock.
30:35If you want any more of that, I'll see you in the dressing room.
30:39A balanced evening's viewing is a little bit like when you used to go
30:44to the cinema and see full supporting programme.
30:47You get a comedy, you get a serious wreathian programme,
30:51you get high-quality sports coverage, and that's a good evening's view.
30:55You're in greys and maybe, and this is the dream,
30:58the football audience come with you to civilisation
31:01or the late-night line-up audience come with you to pop black.
31:04That's the dream, you know, that you're not segmenting the audience
31:07into interest groups and ghettoising all these different activities.
31:11You have a radically interdisciplinary approach to television.
31:14I think that's part of the legacy of David Attenborough on television.
31:18There were things that I didn't care for.
31:20I mean, we did a programme called The Old Grey Whistle Test.
31:25Now, I've never been able to deal with that kind of music,
31:28but I knew enough of people who I respected,
31:31who thought that it was good and innovative and so on,
31:34to go along with that and say, fine.
31:41Hello and welcome to this week's whistle test.
31:45Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
31:48Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
31:51Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
31:54Yeah, yeah, yeah
31:56Don't you feel a change a-coming
31:59From another side of time
32:02Breaking down the walls of silence
32:05Lifting shadows from your mind
32:07Placing back the missing mirrors
32:10That before you couldn't find
32:13Filling mysteries of emptiness
32:16That yesterday left behind
32:20And we all know it's better
32:23Than yesterday in his past
32:25Now let's all start a-living
32:28For the one that's going to last
32:31A creative starburst during Attenborough's controllership
32:34has often led to this being described as a golden age.
32:38If it wasn't a golden age, it's as near as you're likely to get.
32:42It's a benchmark. It does, unfortunately, encourage nostalgia.
32:45You know, the good old days, they don't make them like that.
32:48Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
32:50It does encourage that thought.
32:52But, no, I think that mentally one has to compare
32:55what happens on an average evening on BBC Two today
32:58with what happened on an average evening in the late 60s.
33:03And the story tells itself.
33:07If anything symbolises the Attenborough era,
33:10it's the authored documentary.
33:18This is a personal memoir of what I found in America
33:22and of the institutions, the landscape,
33:24the people that I came to admire most.
33:27In a word, what gave me the impulse to stay
33:31and look into the origins and the history of the United States.
33:40I sailed into New York late on a fall evening.
33:43It was at once magical and sinister
33:46and better than anything that the movies had promised.
33:58I was very close to Civilisation. It was made by my father.
34:01I grew up with it. I remember him making it.
34:03And I know very much that he felt that he was inventing some sort of wheel.
34:08I mean, he didn't... Nobody had really ever done what he was doing.
34:12I mean, he had to do things like...
34:14I think he was one of the first people to ever take an autocue out on location
34:18because Kenneth Clark was such a stiff university-type lecturer
34:25that it was very difficult for him to talk and walk at the same time.
34:32But they were...
34:35They were landmark television in a sense
34:38because the audience had not grown sophisticated about television
34:43in the way that it now has.
34:45An audience was much more willing to be lectured at and talked to
34:50by someone that is accepted as being a clever person.
34:56St Francis died in 1226 at the age of 43,
35:00worn out by his austerities.
35:04On his deathbed, he had asked forgiveness of poor brother Donkey, my body,
35:10for the hardships he had made him suffer.
35:13He had seen his order go from a group of humble companions
35:19and become a great institution, a power in church politics.
35:23And at a certain point, he had quite naturally and simply relinquished control.
35:29He knew that he was no administrator.
35:33Within two years, only two years of his death,
35:37he was canonised and his companions began to build
35:42this great church to his memory,
35:45a masterpiece of Gothic architecture,
35:48also an incredible piece of engineering.
35:52When it was at its peak, from about three or four programmes in,
35:56with everybody saying, you know,
35:58this is a new kind of television, revolutionary and wonderful and exciting,
36:02Aubrey Singer, who was the head of science features, came up enraged.
36:07He's a very boisterous chap.
36:10He came into my office and said, I think it's an absolute scandal.
36:13He said, you are supposed to be a scientist,
36:15you're supposed to be a zoologist,
36:17He said, you are supposed to be a scientist, you're supposed to be a zoologist,
36:20then you've given them all this great stuff.
36:22I said, the arts! What's happened to science?
36:25I said, don't worry, Aubrey, don't worry, we'll do science next.
36:27Because by then I knew that we were on a winner.
36:30So Aubrey said, Bronowski, he's the man who's got to do it.
36:33I said, right, OK. So we did a sentimental.
36:37Some of the Bronowski soliloquies, and that's what they are,
36:42Some of the Bronowski soliloquies, and that's what they are,
36:47what he said outside Buchenwald, one of the concentration camps anyway,
36:53were the ashes of some of the survivors that came from the furnaces.
37:01And he knelt beside them and looked at what was left of a whole population of Jews and spoke.
37:13It was not rehearsed.
37:15And it was devastating.
37:17I mean, it was the most moving time.
37:21I mean, it affected vast numbers of people.
37:31It's said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers.
37:40It's said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers.
37:53That's false, tragically false.
37:57Look for yourself.
37:59This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz.
38:03This is where people were turned into numbers.
38:07Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people.
38:14And that was not done by gas.
38:16It was done by arrogance.
38:18It was done by dogma.
38:20It was done by ignorance.
38:23When people believe that they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality,
38:29this is how they behave.
38:31This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
38:38Science is a very human form of knowledge.
38:41We are always at the brink of the known.
38:45At the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped.
38:53Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal.
39:02Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible.
39:11In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell.
39:14I beseech you in the bowels of Christ.
39:18Think it possible you may be mistaken.
39:24I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard.
39:28I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here.
39:34To stand here as a survivor and a witness.
39:39We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power.
39:46We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.
39:58We have to touch people.
40:09We have to touch people.
40:15Attenborough seemed ever destined to rise to the top.
40:19In 1968, he was promoted to be the BBC's director of programmes.
40:24For a year or two, his commission still flowed onto our screens.
40:28But then the music stopped.
40:30When it seemed that he would be the next director-general,
40:33he decided to quit and return to programme-making.
40:38WHOOPING
40:48Sandstone cliffs run in lines for 100 miles
40:51and huddled at their foot the villages of the Dogon people.
40:57The television centre and shepherd's bush
40:59were exchanged readily for remote regions and tribal huts.
41:03Attenborough, the controller, had returned from whence he came,
41:06leaving behind one of the most golden periods on BBC Two and television history.
41:12It was a golden age for those of us making programmes
41:16because it was our kingdom.
41:18We were asked, what can you deliver?
41:20What can you show the public?
41:22Come on in and have a go.
41:24So it was expanding and it was for the programme-makers
41:27to determine what could be done.
41:29David was their great defender.
41:31He was on the side of the programme-makers
41:34and so he made it happen for them
41:37and that's why there is a legacy of such high creative work.
41:41I really mind this thing about the golden age of television.
41:44I mean, there just wasn't a golden age of television.
41:46A, television isn't old enough to have had a golden age.
41:50I mean, television in terms of a medium is barely potty-trained.
41:54It's really only been going for one generation.
41:57And the idea that there was this magic 5, 10, 15 years
42:01and that it was everything it should be,
42:03that it was having its renaissance
42:05and that now it's just run by the vandals and the Visigoths
42:08is utter nonsense.
42:10Today, most of the mid-evening slots on BBC Two
42:14are occupied by lifestyle programmes, gardening programmes,
42:17design programmes, interior design programmes, car programmes,
42:20the sole function of which is to locate the viewer as a consumer.
42:24You know, go out and buy this and you can do up your home.
42:27Go out and cook this and you can have this in the kitchen.
42:30They're about the viewer as consumer, the viewer as purchaser.
42:35There's nothing of that in 65 to 68 or 65 to 70.
42:39It's the viewer as thinking, sentient being
42:42who wants to be challenged, wants to have a laugh,
42:44wants to be excited by sport, but wants also to be challenged.
42:48And I think that's a wonderful broadcasting idea.
42:51Now, television, in my view, its future is more like a publishing house
42:57where you just select a volume that you happen to like from a library
43:04than it was the universal theatre to which everybody went as spectators
43:11and which most interests were able to contribute.
43:13That is gone.
43:15Good night.
43:22Stay with us as David Attenborough talks about his career,
43:25the animals, the people and the broadcasting then and now.
43:28To Mark Lawson, next.
43:38That's the close of transmission. Thank you very much, studio. Good night.