Aims

BBC FOUR is what intelligent, mixed-genre television looks like in the 21st Century - lively, energised and full of ideas that will stimulate and challenge. The channel relishes big ideas and embraces thought-provoking television - especially programmes that are made with wit, creativity and verve. FOUR offers viewers greater depth, diversity and context that they would expect to find on most mainstream channels - but our programming mix also includes warmer, more accessible shows that are genuinely enjoyable to watch.

In the coming year, we plan to develop further our current strengths, nurture our most successful brands, and increase the impact, ambition and originality of our output. The channel will continue to schedule special seasons and theme nights. Typically, newly commissioned content (which may consist of distinctive factual programming or drama) will be the centrepiece of these events, but they will usually be supported by high-quality acquisitions and archive programming that will increase the scale and impact of our offer.

Programme Aspirations for BBC FOUR

Specialist Factual and Documentaries

BBC FOUR will always find space in its schedules for challenging subject-matter that will satisfy the intellectual curiosity of the most demanding audiences. Through our factual programming, we hope to make a significant contribution to the BBC's wider knowledge-building mission, by commissioning sophisticated, authored pieces that are rich in ideas. We are particularly interested in receiving more propositions that will deliver ambitious, thought-provoking (and occasionally provocative) specialist factual singles and series - definitive programmes such as Blood and Guts: The History of Surgery, Inside the Medieval Mind, Sacred Music, Art of Spain and Baroque! which have become 'category-killers' for the channel.

Observational documentaries have also performed well for the channel, as illustrated by The Department Store, an entertaining and enlightening series by the film-maker Richard Macer, which studied life in the world of retailing at an especially challenging time on the High Street.

BBC FOUR is a mixed-genre service that embraces the arts, science, history and all aspects of contemporary life in Britain and abroad. The channel has always had a strong international focus, and we want to retain the global scope that has been evident in so much of our constructed and observational documentary output (from Travellers' Century and The Thirties in Colour to A Year in Tibet, Chinese School and Storyville).

Drama

In recent years, BBC FOUR has consistently demonstrated its commitment to high-quality drama productions. We have commissioned a number of screenplays that have attracted some of Britain's finest actors who have delivered acclaimed performances in films of the calibre of Margaret Thatcher: The Long Road to Finchley, The Curse of Steptoe, Hughie Green: Most Sincerely, Walter's War and Heist. Although many of our originated dramas have been inspired by the lives of real people or actual events, we have been open to intelligent, imaginative works in any genre of drama: in 2008, we also commissioned Crooked House, a chilling ghost story by Mark Gatiss. In future, we will continue to commission high-quality factual dramas, but we hope to broaden the range of our drama portfolio still further by considering adaptations from a variety of literary genres.

Comedy and Entertainment

Having commissioned a number of acclaimed series including Lead Balloon, Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and The Thick of It, the channel has scored significant success with its comedy and entertainment formats in recent years. BBC FOUR remains receptive to ideas that promise to deliver genuinely intelligent, creative and enjoyable shows that are in tune with the values of the channel and our audience.

Music and Performance

From its inception, BBC FOUR has been a strong supporter of music and performing arts programming. Last year, we broadcast 17 concerts from the BBC Proms; two Mahler symphonies conducted by Valery Gergiev; the acclaimed documentary profile The Passions of Vaughan Williams; and Classical Legends, a series of documentaries on the lives of eight great classical musicians. Popular music documentaries also figure strongly in the BBC FOUR schedules, through such programmes as Legends, Classic Albums, Quincy Jones: The Many Lives of Q, the three-part series American Folk and our feature length documentary Prog Rock Britannia. We welcome in particular ideas for engaging and insightful documentaries on music or the performing arts that reveal the compelling life stories of great artists, and identify the experiences that inspired works of genius.

Recent programme highlights

As the curtain-raiser of BBC FOUR's Golden Age of Steam Season, Ian Hislop Goes Off the Rails was a witty and richly informative film that secured the channel's highest-ever audience for a factual programme.

In a bravura performance by one of Britain's most exciting young actors, Andrea Riseborough captured wonderfully the indomitable will and unfailing determination of an ambitious politician in Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley.

Presented by Michael Mosley, Blood and Guts: The History of Surgery was an invariably eye-opening, occasionally wince-making and always unflinchingly honest examination of the medical profession's development of surgical knowledge and methods.

The worn-out conventions and outright pretentions of today's news media were skewered mercilessly and hilariously in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe.

The two-part documentary Quincy Jones: The Many Lives of Q told the extraordinary life story of one of the most influential figures in pop music history.

The Tone of The Channel

Our programmes aspire to be unashamedly intelligent, lively, surprising, thoughtful, ambitious, original, international in outlook and connected by a wide-ranging interest in the world.

Our Audience

What unifies our audience is not age, wealth or place of origin, but attitude.

For them, television must compete with radio, books, print journalism, online and digital media, and a host of interests and passions.

For the BBC FOUR audience, watching TV must be time well spent. They have little time for the mediocre, the uninterrogated, or for easy generalisations or empty hyperbole. They are fascinated to see expertise and unfamiliar viewpoints expressed with passion, conviction and authority. Our viewers value powerful narratives, told with passion, intelligence and verve.

Page last updated 29 May 2009