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ITV - Britain's Best Back Gardens (2015)

ITV - Britain's Best Back Gardens (2015)

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Britain’s Best Back Gardens
Alan Titchmarsh has been on a year long search for the best back gardens in Britain. In this brand new series he travels across Britain taking us over the hedges and through the gates of his 30 favourites.

To celebrate his 50 years as a gardener, Alan has appealed to the nation to nominate their gardens. Over the past twelve months, he has received more than 600 applicants from which he has chosen his top 30. Many of them are gardens that have never been filmed and Alan’s search has taken him from the northernmost point of the UK to the heart of Britain’s biggest cities, discovering people from all walks of life doing amazing things with their outdoor spaces at every turn. Alan takes us behind the nation’s ordinary properties, into a world of jaw dropping sights and sounds.

Alan has always said that if you really want to understand Britain’s obsession with its backyards you have to go beyond the stately homes and national trust properties, and instead look at the suburban gardens, inner city spaces and country village plots of the average Brit. No matter what size, shape or location of our gardens, or size of our budget, we go to extraordinary lengths to make the most of them.

Each episode counts down 10 gardens from 10 to 1 and Alan has divided up his choices into three categories.

Part 1: Challenging Plots
In this episode, Alan reveals his 10 favourite challenging plots – amazing gardens that have been created despite restrictions in size, location or circumstances. From the tiniest pub garden to gardens that survive the harsh conditions of the UK’s most Northerly coast, these are the backyards of the most determined and obsessive British gardeners. He visits a magical Victorian grotto and a tropical paradise, and then sees vegetables grown in skips, a city pub smothered in magnificent hanging baskets and an entire garden that’s been transplanted lock, stock and begonia onto a roof terrace. They’re all glorious.

Part 2: Working Gardens
Alan Titchmarsh reveals his 10 favourite working gardens, which he defines as those that not only look pleasant but enhance the lives of their owners in other ways. From a vegetable plot grown to aid in the recovery of a cancer patient to a Japanese garden built for meditation, the horticulturist hears stories of outdoor spaces that amount to more than merely a place where attractive flowers are cultivated..

Part 3: Top 10 Favourites
In this final programme, he presents his 10 favourite flights of fancy - the most creative outdoor spaces he has seen during the nationwide search, from the brash and the bonkers to the brilliantly over the top.

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ITV Exposure - Britains Secret Slaves (2015)

ITV Exposure - Britains Secret Slaves (2015)

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Exposure: Britains Secret Slaves
“It was like a hell. She treat me as a slave. Not like a human being, I was treated like an animal. It was hard. But I stayed for my son.” - Elizabeth, domestic worker

Exposure delves into the world of modern slavery - and finds it alive and well in some of London’s most exclusive streets.

Featuring testimony from women who are forced to work up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week for as little as 50 pence an hour, this programme provides a close insight into the conditions of domestic workers brought into the country by their wealthy foreign employers.

Reporter Julie Etchingham finds that many of the women report physical and psychological abuse, despite the fact they are meant to be protected by British law while working here.

Because of recent changes in visa laws, the women have no legal status if they leave the families who employ them. The programme discovers how those who escape from abusive employers are exploited by criminals who draw them into a murky underworld of fake passports, false visas, and illegal employment.

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ITV - Churchill: 100 Days that Saved Britain (2014)

ITV - Churchill: 100 Days that Saved Britain (2014)

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Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain
Fifty years after the death of Winston Churchill, this drama-documentary draws on private letters, diaries and the testimony of his personal physician to reveal how he turned his own failings into victory during his first three months as prime minister in 1940. This was a period when France was collapsing, the Nazis had the Allies on the run, the British Army was being defeated at Dunkirk, and Britain faced invasion by Hitler's troops. The story is brought to life by Robert Hardy as Churchill, Jemma Redgrave as his wife Clementine, Phil Davis as physician Charles McMoran Wilson, and Edwin Thomas as civil servant John Colville. Nigel Anthony narrates.

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