999: What’s Your Emergency? (Channel 4/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Monday 21st October 2013)
The series that reveals modern Britain through the eyes of our ambulance staff continues. Paramedics and call handlers speak powerfully and frankly about the challenges they face, and the Britain they see, while patients and their loved ones reveal the stories behind their calls for help. This episode follows paramedics as they do their best to help patients with mental health problems. With one in four of us facing such issues at some point in our lives, it’s become the job of the emergency services to pick up the pieces, often facing complex and difficult situations for which they have little training. Paramedic Maria Stanley is called to a multi-storey car park where she is first on the scene and has to talk a suicidal man away from the edge, while Kirsten Harper and Amy Siddall race to help a man who’s having suicidal thoughts and whose daughter can’t cope.
The Great British Year (BBC1/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Wednesday 23rd October 2013)
Documentary series showing Britain’s changing look over the course of a year. The fading sun brings an energy change to Britain: a time of storms and unpredictable weather. The trees go dormant, but not before a final fling of colour. For animals, the shortening days are a cue to prepare, hibernating and hoarding for the dark times ahead. For some, its still a time to breed; deer rut, seals give birth and the Atlantic salmon leaps waterfalls in order to lay its eggs. Beneath the fallen leaves, slime moulds, earthworms and fungi take advantage of autumn’s spoils.
Grand Designs (Channel 4 | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Wednesday 23rd October 2013)
Kevin meets a master craftsman whose dream is to build a castle made entirely of mud. Kevin McCabe is the leading living exponent of the ancient art of cob building – wrestling houses out of mud using his bare hands. Kevin has almost single-handedly kept alive this traditional way of building in rural Devon. But now he doesn’t just want to build another cob house, he wants to build a cob castle. Not only that, Kevin also wants their gigantic new cob house to meet the highest environmental performance targets ever set. It is truly an almighty challenge. The house will be formed of two vast curved cob roundhouses – the largest of which is inspired by the natural geometry of a snail shell – connected by glazing and topped with undulating wild-flower meadow roofs to mirror the surrounding Devon countryside.
Waterloo Road (BBC1/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 24th October 2013)
School-based drama. The staff and pupils of Waterloo Road get all dressed up for living history week. Christine is looking to impress a visiting Robert Bain, but Simon is on a mission to prove what a bad headteacher she is – and with all the problems that occur, his task is not a difficult one.
George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (Channel 4/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 24th October 2013)
Across Britain people are finding inventive ways of creating beautiful small spaces that don’t blow the budget and can transform lives. Architect George Clarke celebrates the extraordinary world of small design spaces as he gets back on the road for the second series of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces to marvel at breathtaking designs and fantastical architecture. George looks at secret hideaways, space-saving retreats, eco-friendly bolt holes and re-conditioned vehicles. He shows that with careful planning, cunning design and a masses of imagination, the unachievable is conceivable. George also develops his own small space build – together with master craftsman William Hardie, he plans to build a fantasy tree house set in the grounds of the Kielder National Park. In the first episode of the new series, George meets a couple who bought a tiny 60s ambulance, planning to transform it into a campervan where the family of six can cook, eat and sleep.
All TV guide information taken from DigiGuide — www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=15119.