Alan Yentob

Eccentric aliens give a man the power to do anything he wants to determine if Earth is worth saving.

Alan Yentob meets the five surviving members of Monty Python - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle - as they prepare to reunite on stage.

A drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role. Every word spoken by the actors in this film is sourced from the letters that Van Gogh sent to his younger brother Theo, and of those around him. What emerges is a complex portrait of a sophisticated, civilised and yet tormented man.

An intimate portrait of British sculptor Rachel Whiteread as she unpacks her life's work for a major retrospective at Tate Britain in London. Her work explores themes of memory and absence, casting sculptural forms from familiar domestic objects small and large, from sinks and hot water bottles to living rooms - and a terraced house.

Alan Yentob looks into the life of comedian Jo Brand, marking a diverse career which began in 1980s stand-up comedy and has moved through writing, performing and presenting.

In this documentary, host Alan Yentob visits enigmatic British singer-songwriter Labi Siffre at his home in Spain for a rare, intimate interview. Siffre reflects on a life shaped by his twin passions: music and love. He details navigating mid-century Britain as an openly gay Black man, facing racism and homophobia while building a career across nine studio albums. A central pillar of the film is Siffre’s profound journey through love and grief. He honors his 48-year relationship with his late partner Peter Lloyd, alongside the unique 16-year ménage à trois they shared with their second husband, Ruud van Baardwijk. Siffre reflects on the immense heartbreak of losing both men within two years, a tragedy that prompted his move to Spain. Musically, the film tracks his hits "It Must Be Love" and "(Something Inside) So Strong", alongside his battles over hip-hop sampling. Breaking a 20-year TV hiatus, Siffre pairs archival footage with live performances from his home studio.

Famous for lines like 'It is better to be feared than loved', Machiavelli's notorious book, The Prince, has been a manual for tyrants from Napoleon to Stalin. But how relevant is The Prince today, and who are the 21st century Machiavellians?

For five decades the woman they call the Divine Miss M has forged a path which has taken her from a pineapple-canning factory in Honolulu to becoming a Hollywood legend. Alan Yentob joins Bette Midler on a journey through the chorus lines of Broadway and the bathhouses and nightclubs of the 1970s to the very top of the film industry. Her combination of a soulful voice and the raucous wit of Mae West has made her name as an outrageous, but always captivating, all-round entertainer.

Featuring exclusive access to their recent tour and their new album, this documentary reveals the fascinating world of Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe.

The incredible story of a mysterious nanny who died in 2009 leaving behind a secret hoard - thousands of stunning photographs. Never seen in her lifetime, they were found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply. Now Vivian Maier has gone viral and her magical pictures sell for thousands of dollars. Vivian was a tough street photographer, a secret poet of suburbia. In life she was a recluse, a hoarder, spinning tall tales about her French roots. Presented by Alan Yentob, the film includes stories from those who knew her and those who revealed her astonishing work.

Alan Yentob takes the artist Howard Hodgkin away from his Bloomsbury studio to India to discover more about his works and what inspires him.

imagine... follows celebrated British TV writer Russell T Davies as he prepares to return as the showrunner of Doctor Who – with two Doctors and bigger ambitions.

Artist Grayson Perry has been working behind the scenes at the British Museum to stage his most ambitious show yet: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. Given free rein to choose whatever he wants from the Museum's vast collections, Perry has also produced some 25 new works of art, from his trademark ceramics to a working motorbike. Imagine follows Perry for more than two years as he creates his own imaginary civilisation at the heart of the British Museum.

A look at Rio's cultural, political and technical revolutions since the 1970s to 2011

Alan Yentob profiles the stellar career of one of the great satirists of our age, Armando Iannucci, whose impressive body of work includes The Day Today, The Thick of It, Veep, The Death of Stalin and The Personal History of David Copperfield. With contributions from key collaborators such as Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Rebecca Front, Jesse Armstrong, Michael Palin and Peter Capaldi, imagine... sheds light on Iannucci’s unique creative process.

Writer and Director Mike Leigh discusses the techniques used to create his plays.

This documentary looks at executive producer Philip Segal’s seven-year quest to return Doctor Who to the screen, from his initial contact with the BBC shortly before its cancellation in 1989, through to the production and transmission of the movie in 1996. Featuring Philip Segal, BBC executive producer Jo Wright, BBC Head of Series Peter Cregeen, BBC1 controller Alan Yentob, writer Matthew Jacobs and Graeme Harper, the director of BBC Enterprises' abandoned Doctor Who movie. Narrated by Amanda Drew.

Twenty-something virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, singer and arranger Jacob Collier has managed to outdo The Beatles by winning Grammy Awards for each of his first four albums. Alan Yentob meets Jacob and musicians he has collaborated with, including Stormzy, Chris Martin and film composer Hans Zimmer. He also talks to music legends Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, who believe Jacob Collier is one of the most talented musicians on the planet today.

imagine... profiles the UK’s most successful double act of the last 40 years, French & Saunders, exploring a brand of comedy based on satire, silliness and, above all, friendship.

imagine... tells the story of Aviva Studios, Manchester’s colossal new cultural venue, and goes behind the scenes at the world premiere of its opening production, Free Your Mind.

There is no-one quite like Anselm Kiefer. Having achieved fame and notoriety in equal measure in the 1980s, he has become one of the world's most singular and successful artists. Working with themes of history, memory and mythology, Kiefer produces work that is consistently controversial, and monumental in its scale and ambition. In this imagine... Alan Yentob joins the artist at his studios in France and Germany as he prepares for a retrospective at the Royal Academy. In a series of frank interviews set against the backdrop of his awe-inspiring studios, Kiefer discusses the impact of his most significant pieces, installs a selection of new work, and explains why he is as excited and driven by his practice now, at the age of 69, as he was when he began.

Co-produced by Rogan Productions and BBC Studios. London. The Summer of 2012. As rehearsals take place in a rainy Dagenham car park, Director Danny Boyle reveals a glimpse of his Opening Ceremony to the press. Some denounce it as the “Tellytubby Olympics” - others fear that it can never compete with the spectacle of Beijing. Everything pointed to an embarrassing failure. So how did one night in 2012 become 'The Greatest Show on Earth'? This is the story of a unique night when the Brits began to believe in themselves again. A night which showed the country what it could achieve when extraordinary people pulled together. A night which went beyond everyone’s expectations. For the first time since that night, Danny Boyle and the creative team behind the ceremony reunite in the company of Alan Yentob to explain the thinking that went into creating one of the country’s finer moments.

Mel Brooks appears on stage with Alan Yentob, the creative director for the BBC, at the Geffen Theatre in California to review his extensive career as a writer, director, actor, producer, composer comedian, as well as his failed ballet dancing career. This special examines the early life of Mel Brooks, his show-business influences, early career and his showcases his ascension as one of Hollywood's most successful writers and directors.

At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical "Young Frankenstein" opening to great critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Hollywood, at work and at play.

Alan Yentob joins South African artist William Kentridge as he prepares an epic frieze along the banks of the river Tiber in Rome. Alan visits him in his hometown of Johannesburg, the inspiration for the magical hand-drawn animated films he calls 'drawings for projection'. Brought up under apartheid, Kentridge has witnessed the fragile transition to a multi-racial democracy, and his art continues to reflect South Africa's turbulent times.

Following the recent death of Ken Russell, Alan Yentob looks back over the career of the flamboyant film director responsible for Women In Love, Tommy and The Devils. Friends and admirers - including Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey - recall a pioneering documentary-maker, talented photographer and fearless film director.

Documentary about author Roald Dahl, produced for the British television series Imagine.

Crime writer Ian Rankin invites BBC to follow him as he writes his next novel, and as he ponders what to write about after retiring his most famous creation, Rebus.

A 69 year old man sits alone on his last birthday and listens to the past. Krapp's Last Tape is an extraordinary study of mortality, creativity and memory. A television relay of the 2006 Royal Court Theatre production of Samuel Beckett's critically acclaimed play, starring Harold Pinter.

Alan Yentob explores the work of Martin Parr, considered to be the most influential photographer of his generation

Dream city, Sin City, a mirage in the desert, Las Vegas is a film set in its own right, a piece of pop art, an outdoor museum of American culture. What is the story behind the neon lights and fantastical buildings? What will its future be in these tough times? Alan Yentob takes a mob tour and talks to producers and performers about the golden days when Sinatra and Dino held the stage, and the wise guys called the shots.

Pioneer photographer, forefather of cinema, showman, murderer - Eadweard Muybridge was a Victorian enigma. He was born and died in Kingston upon Thames, but did his most famous work in California - freezing time and starting it up again, so that for the first time people could see how a racing horse's legs moved. He went on to animate the movements of naked ladies, wrestlers, athletes, elephants, cockatoos and his own naked body, projecting his images publicly with a machine he invented and astounding audiences worldwide with the first flickerings of cinema. Alan Yentob follows in Muybridge's footsteps as he makes - and often changes - his name, and sets off to kill his young wife's lover. With Andy Serkis as Muybridge

As a part of a tribute night to broadcaster and television executive Alan Yentob, he interviews leading British artist Jenny Saville. One of the most successful figurative painters working today, she came to prominence as part of the YBA movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She has been reluctant to discuss her work for many years on television, until now. Alan Yentob was working with her on a film for Imagine and caught up with her in Vienna on the eve of two major 2025 exhibitions she is mounting. This was the last interview Alan Yentob conducted in a career spanning six decades at the BBC, bringing many of the world’s leading artists and creatives to the screen. Alan also persuaded Jenny to allow cameras into her painting studio for the first time in almost three decades.

2015 was a momentous year for novelist Marlon James. He became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker prize for his magisterial novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, about the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Bob Marley and their aftermath. He also chose to come out as gay in an article for the New York Times - a brave move for a man born in what has been called the world's most homophobic country. Alan Yentob accompanies the charismatic and provocative James back to Jamaica and finds in his three highly praised novels a complex portrait of the turbulent history of his native country.

Alan Yentob spends time with Philip Pullman in Oxford, discovering how the ex-teacher became an acclaimed author of fantasy fiction and an outspoken critic of organised religion.

A revealing profile of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, as he publishes his much-anticipated new book, Klara and the Sun.

Alan Yentob meets Ray Davies, the creative powerhouse behind The Kinks and author of some of the best-loved songs of the 60s, who candidly discusses the vicissitudes of his career.

After the success of recent shows in Venice, London and Paris, interest in `Outsider Art' has never been higher, but what exactly is it? How do we define it? And who are its gurus and luminaries? Alan Yentob explores this alternative art universe.

Alan Yentob immerses himself in the Art World visiting the 5th London Frieze Art Fair in October 2007, the centre of the British contemporary art calendar.

Scrabble is experiencing a renaissance. The younger generation have rediscovered the game online - through the copyright busting Scrabulous - and they're having night after night on the tiles. Alan Yentob sets out to discover why the word game leaves us spellbound, tracing its surprising history, meeting the American tournament Word Freaks, and paying a visit to the SAS-style training camp that the Nigerian government trains their players at.

Alan Yentob meets the Turner Prize winning artists Gilbert & George at home. Over the last 40 years, British artists Gilbert and George have fascinated, outraged, delighted and confounded the art establishment. Since their first appearance as 'living sculptures' in the late 1960s, their work has persistently taken a provocative, often uncomfortable look at both their own lives and the life of the city that continues to inspire their art - London.

A fascinating look at the colorful career of architect Frank Gehry who despite being well into his eighties remains one of the world's most celebrated and famously provocative creative forces. From the iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gehry's buildings both intrigue and ignite. For Frank, rules are there to be broken. Alan Yentob explores Gehry's remarkable journey from poor outsider in Toronto to global 'starchitect' and follows the construction of a characteristically audacious new Gehry building in Sydney - his first in Australia.

Miriam Margolyes is one of Britain’s best loved and most provocative actresses. Across her eclectic career, she has played scene-stealing turns in Blackadder, voiced some of our most well-known adverts and found fame internationally as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films.

Edna O’Brien is one of the greatest literary talents and rule breakers of her generation. In 1960, her revolutionary debut novel, The Country Girls, broke down social and sexual barriers for women and was subsequently banned in her native country of Ireland. The awrd-winning O’Brien continues to produce some of the most urgent work of her unparalleled career, with her eighteenth novel, Girl, a searing story inspired by the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, to be published later this year. In this honest and engaging documentary, Edna O’Brien reflects on her remarkable and ongoing writing life, interwoven with actors who perform extracts from her novels and rare family archive footage.

1975 documentary about 11-year-old serial arsonist Michael 'Mini' Cooper, followed by Cooper and the film's director Franc Roddam in conversation with Alan Yentob in 2013.

Tom Stoppard is perhaps the world’s leading, funniest and cleverest playwright. Ever since he hit the ground running in the 1960s with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, there has always been a streak of melancholy beneath the sparkling surface of his work. Now with his latest play, Leopoldstadt, he comes full circle and faces up to the pain and loss in his past. In this programme, he tells Alan Yentob his extraordinary story.

Salman Rushdie speaks to Alan Yentob about the devastating knife attack he was subjected to in 2022, losing his right eye and almost his ability to write.

Beautiful story about effervescent ninety-year-old children's book author and illustrator Judith Kerr - (a true delight) - recounting her childhood escape from Hitler and eventual return to Berlin.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic invites Alan Yentob into her home, opens her archive, travels to her birthplace in Belgrade and talks about turning her life into art.

On the brink of the Depression in 1929, Georgia O'Keeffe - America's first great modernist painter - headed west. In the bright light of the New Mexico desert, she forged an independent life and found the solitude she needed for her truly original art. The photographs taken of her by her older lover scandalized the public. Her flower forms were seen as a shocking and vibrant display of femininity, her bones and skulls as surreal and disturbing. Now, 30 years after her death, to coincide with a major Tate Modern show, imagine - tells the story of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most inspiring artists ever.

After 53 years Television Centre, the BBC's TV headquarters, is closing its doors and Michael Grade gathers together many of its best-loved faces to stroll down memory lane.

For decades, Margaret Atwood has been universally acclaimed as Canada's greatest living writer. Fearlessly outspoken in life and in her work, Atwood has always been an unrelenting provocateur. Now at the age of 77, her star shines brighter and bolder than ever with an explosive television adaptation of her best-known work The Handmaid's Tale, which was first published in 1985. It is a dystopian work of speculative fiction set in the future, which has drawn comparison with aspects of Donald Trump's leadership, in particular the charges of misogyny which have inflamed anti-Trump campaigners across America. Alan Yentob meets Margaret Atwood in Toronto and discovers how a childhood spent between the Canadian wilderness and the city helped shape her vision of herself and the world, set alight her imagination and set her forth on a path to literary success.

Alan Yentob talks to Dr. Oliver Sacks about his latest book 'Musicophila: Tales of Music and the Brain' which deals with the power of music and how it helps those with extreme neurological conditions, and meets some extraordinary people overcame their conditions with music.

Will the rise of electronic books mark the final chapter in the love story between traditional books and their readers? Alan Yentob discusses the subject with a host of writers.

David Hockney undertakes a commission to design and install a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the sixty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.

Olafur Eliasson has been pushing the limits of the sublime and the spectacular in his art for almost 30 years. From his monumental installation, The Weather Project, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2003 to his recent interventions in climate change and global migration, his is an art which strives to change the world every step of the way. In 2019, the Danish-Icelandic artist returns to Tate Modern with his landmark exhibition, In Real Life, surveying the breadth of his career from his beginnings as an art student in Copenhagen through to the latest pieces created in his vast studio laboratory in Berlin. Much of his work is shaped by his response to his parents' home country of Iceland and the interplay of water and light showcased in its natural phenomena.

One of the most provocative and elusive figures in contemporary art finds himself the subject of Maura Axelrod's film. Catapulted to worldwide notoriety in 1999 by The Ninth Hour, a sculpture of Pope John Paul II toppled by a meteorite, Maurizio Cattelan's work has bordered on criminal activity (breaking into a gallery and stealing another artist's work) and regularly defies good taste - Him features Hitler in prayer and sold earlier this year for a whopping £12,000,000. Building his career on evasion, trickery and subversion, Cattelan is perhaps not the most reliable of interviewees, but ex-girlfriends, family members, collectors and dealers build a compelling and intimate portrait of an enigmatic figure. Bold, witty and playful as a Cattelan work itself, is this film really all it seems?

Nearly 30 years after her debut novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson returns with Alan Yentob to the scenes of her extraordinary childhood in Lancashire.

Alan Yentob meets sculptor Antony Gormley, creator of the iconic Angel of the North, and uncovers the influences that have shaped his life and work. Across a career spanning more than 40 years, Gormley has used sculpture as a means to examine the human condition. He explains how his strict Catholic childhood and his subsequent search for enlightenment in India influenced his decision to become a sculptor. 'If you are brought up a Catholic you may lose your Catholicism but the fact is it has marked you for life. And the need to replace its belief system with something else becomes your life's work.' Imagine shows rare archive footage of the creation of Gormley's key works, including the sculptor being fully encased in plaster to create casts of his own body, as well as footage of the installation of the Angel of the North. We also follow exhibitions this year in Paris, Florence and on Lundy Island.

Alan Yentob meets one of Britain's most accomplished and popular sculptors, Anish Kapoor, known for his audacious works of staggering complexity and scale.

Alan Yentob talks to British architect David Chipperfield about his breakthrough in Berlin, his love of the city and the 11 years spent on the transformation of the Neues Museum.