Jimmy Somerville

Musician Oliver Sim is the main guest of a talk-show that soon slides into a surreal journey of love, shame, and blood.

Charting the evolution of public and political attitudes to homosexuality over the last four decades, from decriminalisation in 1967 to today's advances in gay sexual freedom, How Gay Sex Changed the World examines how the gay sexual revolution gathered pace in the face of gradually changing legislation, from the first Gay Pride march to groundbreaking dramas such as Queer as Folk.

An LWT South Bank Show, presented by Melvyn Bragg, exploring the phenomenon of countertenor singing. With its unique, soaring beauty, the high male voice is today enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity. Heirs to the celebrated castrati of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, today's countertenors produce their voices by wholly natural means. In this programme international stars Michael Chance, Andreas Scholl and James Bowman, as well as popstar Jimmy Somerville, shed light on the appeal of the male falsetto. Meanwhile, experts such as Michael White place today's countertenors in their historical context. What emerges is a compelling portrayal of an unmistakable vocal style, rooted in church and operatic tradition, yet completely up-to-date, resonating louder today than at any time in the last two hundred years.

Memory mixes with desire as a museum attendant is caught up in sado-masochistic fantasies inspired by a 19th century painting of slaves in chains called Scene on the coast of Africa. The man remembers his past as a singer and delivers Dido's lament from Purcell's opera.

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

A 14-track video compilation featuring songs by the British singer/songwriter Marc Almond as a solo artist and with his partner Dave Ball as the synthpop duo Soft Cell.

Collection of music videos by Jimmy Somerville, both as solo artist as well as with the bands Bronski Beat and The Communards.

Collection of music videos by Jimmy Somerville, both as solo artist as well as with the bands Bronski Beat and The Communards.

A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually.

Gay and lesbian teenagers interview straight people on the streets of London about their views on homosexuality.

Gay and lesbian teenagers interview straight people on the streets of London about their views on homosexuality.