BEST OF THE REST
WINTERWATCH BBC2, 8pm
IT’S dark, it’s cold, it’s the end of January. The best place to be is holed up on the sofa watching telly with a cuppa.
So all hail the bravery of Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan, Gillian Burke and Iolo Williams who are hosting this annual event live from one of the most challenging and freezing cold locations in the UK.
They are in the Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands, using remote cameras, live expeditions and some science to reveal more about British birds and animals.
The cameras are poised to capture pine martens, red squirrels, golden eagles and crested tits. This wild winter wilderness is home to rare cold-adapted species, but as the climate changes they are especially sensitive to warming temperatures.
This makes them and the Cairngorm Mountains Britain’s early warning system for changing environments.
So what can the Cairngorms reveal about winter right now, and in the future?
BELSEN: OUR STORY
BBC2, 9pm
“IN Belsen, death was not an event. It ceased to be an event because death was everywhere.”
Peter Lantos was just five years old when he was at Bergen-Belsen, one of World War Two’s most horrific concentration camps.
He is one of a remarkable group of people in Britain who survived the Nazi atrocities of the German prison.
In this moving documentary, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, several survivors talk about their experiences and return to the Belsen site.
It’s a place that shocked BBC journalist Richard Dimbleby when he reported from there in April 1945. He said: “I found myself in the world of a nightmare.”
Conditions were so bad that troops burned it to the ground, destroying any evidence.
Mala Tribich, who was 14, says: “There were dead bodies everywhere. It was a horrific sight,” adding: “It’s not easy to come back. It’s hard to bear, even after all these years.”