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Education for all was introduced in the late Victorian era. In the years since, as Back in Time for School (BBC Two, January) explores by sending three teachers and 15 teenagers on a time-travelling odyssey, schooling has changed – a lot. Presented by Sara Cox and Polly Russell, the series sees how its subjects react, for example, to the strict discipline of a 1950s grammar school or the rather more relaxed environment of a progressive comprehensive. Along the way, school dinners are compulsory.
Over on Radio 4, highlights include The Battles That Won Our Freedom (7 January), a series that explores the origins of liberties we now take for granted. Meanwhile, Curtain Down at Her Majesty’s:
A Play in Five Acts (Radio 4, New Year’s Eve) looks back at the final days of Queen Victoria’s life, and the chaos and confusion that surrounded her funeral. New editions of In Our Time (Radio 4) deal with papal infallibility ( Thursday 10 January) and Samuel Beckett ( Thursday 17 January).
Over the holiday period, PBS America offers viewers the chance to go into box set mode. On Friday 28 December, there’s the seven-part
The War, directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, which tells the story of the Second World War via the personal accounts of men and women from four quintessentially American towns. Then, on New Year’s Eve,
The Vietnam War, also from Burns and Novick, looks back at a conflict that cost the lives of more than a million combatants.