What's On - TV & Radio Listings
Dr Watson's weekly selection of relevant, or just interesting, programmes on TV and Radio.
- << Week starting 05/05/12
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Sunday 13 May
- Living World
6:35am
Joanna Pinnock visits a nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, developed from a former ancient quarry, to view pasqueflowers, wild blooms that spring to life during the Easter period. The flowers were once found on most chalk and limestone grasslands in Britain, but declined in the late 18th century as their habitats were ploughed for agricultural land. She learns how these distinctive purple flowers now only grow at 19 sites in the country and that populations are becoming ever more isolated.
- Countryfile
6:25pm
Matt Baker searches for discarded deer antlers in the hills and valleys of Exmoor, where Ellie Harrison tries her hand at falconry. Tom Heap investigates the growing problem of neglected and abandoned horses in the north of England and Adam Henson meets a farmer who has lost a significant number of longhorn cattle to tuberculosis.
Tuesday 15 May
- Extinct!
11:00am
1/3. New series. Adam Rutherford presents the first of three programmes exploring four mass extinctions in Earth's pre-history, meeting experts to discover the causes of these events. He visits an unassuming suburb in Pennsylvania, where geologist Paul Olsen has found a thin layer of rock that contains evidence of a global catastrophe that wiped out at least three quarters of the world's species approximately 202 million years ago.
- Costing the Earth
3:30pm
As droughts hit many parts of England, Tom Heap asks why water companies seem so reluctant to trade resources. He investigates claims that some firms do not pay a realistic price for the water they take from rivers, and suggestions that shortages have as much to do with the economics of the industry as with the lack of rain.