BBC Four Today Thursday 26 January 2023

Michael Portillo falls into line with the University of Glasgow’s Officer Training Corps, where he joins students for drill. The political pundit then heads west along the Firth of Clyde to Helensburgh, where he discovers a pioneering group of artists known as the Glasgow Boys. The idyllic West Highland Line takes Michael deep into the Highlands to Inveraray and the ancestral home of the Clan Campbell and Dukes of Argyll. Michael’s final stop is Connel Ferry, near Oban, where, on the Achnacloich Estate, he discovers a Highland calf whose breed has become an icon of the Highlands

Elizabeth is dead and James VI of Scotland travels south to take the throne at the invitation of Robert Cecil, but the new king has his own ideas and has little time for the late queen’s spymaster. Soon Cecil’s problems worsen when learns that his arch enemy John Gerard has escaped detention and made contact with a splinter cell in the Catholic underground with a plan to blow-up Parliament. Cecil must negotiate between warring factions to bring down what would become known as the Gunpowder Plot

In German-occupied Poland during the Second World War, businessman and Nazi Party member Oskar Schindler is deeply affected when he witnesses the clearing of the Krakow Ghetto. He decides to try to save Jews destined for the concentration camps by employing them in his factory – an act of mercy made possible by a deal struck with a sadistic German commandant. Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning drama, starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes

Thuringen, East Germany in 1979, and like many of the country’s citizens, the Strelzyk family are desperate to escape to the west. Under the watchful eye of the Stasi and the fearsome lieutenant colonel Seidel, they try to cross the border in a homemade hot-air balloon. Drama, starring Friedrich Mucke and Alicia von Rittberg. In German with English subtitles

Dan Cruickshank’s journey takes him through Uzbekistan, Iran and Syria, where he finds the local people far more welcoming to Western travellers than expected. Among the locations he visits are the Fire Temple of Azerbaijan, the Trading Domes of Uzbekistan, the Bisitun carvings at the top of a cliff face in Iran, and the ancient city of Persepolis