John Davies selects from the broadcasting menu (all times pm unless stated).
Pick of the week A lot gets packed into the 90 minutes of The Holocaust on Trial (Saturday 7.15 C4). Not only does it reconstruct (using actors) some key moments in the David Irving-Deborah Lipstadt libel case, it also uses documentary evidence and the comments of historians (Jeremy Noakes, Raul Hilberg, David Cesarani, Richard Breitman) to counter some of Irving's assertions. Powerfully directed by Leslie Woodhead, who made BBC2's Srebrenica documentary A Cry from the Grave last autumn, the documentary offers a useful outline history of the Nazis' treatment of Jews, from Kristallnacht to the "final solution" of Auschwitz.
FRIDAY April 28 The Brain (8.05 World Service, repeated Monday 3.05). Start of four-part series on the latest brain research.
Twenty Minutes: Voices of the Ancient World (8.10 R3). Second of two talks by Birkbeck classicist James Davidson explores the Greek obsession with physical exercise.
saturDAY April 29 Correspondent Europe (6.50 BBC2). Three reports - from Portugal, Norway and France - on children and responsibility.
The Holocaust on Trial (7.15 C4). See pick of the week.
History Zone Films: Brazil - An Inconvenient History (8.05 BBC2). The past 500 years of the world's largest slave-owning country.
sunDAY April 30 Sunday Feature: John Dryden, the Inventor of England (5.45 R3). Valentine Cunningham on the Poet Laureate of the Restoration. Further opinions from Peter Porter, Claude Rawson, Christine Gerrard and others.
Tate Modern (6.55 BBC2). Series on some of the work to be shown at the new gallery opens with Mark Rothko - his life, his ideas and how his Seagram murals came to be in the Tate. More on London's new gallery in Twenty Minutes - The Building of Bankside (Thursday 8.10 R3).
Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness (7.00 C4). What Socrates had to say about self-confidence, according to Alain de Botton.
The Sunday Play: Richard II (7.30 R3).
monDAY May 1 Night Waves (9.30 R3). Poets and the natural world, with Liverpool University's Jonathan Bate and geographer Stephen Daniels. Plus the first in a series on little-known museums.
tuesDAY May 2 University Challenge (8.00 BBC2). Second semifinal: UMIST v Durham.
WEDNESDAY May 3 Tomorrow's World (7.00 BBC1). Including a report on a new anti-cancer vaccine.
The Reith Lectures (8.00 R4). Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general of the World Health Organisation, on "Health and Population".
THURSDAY May 4 Melvyn Bragg - In Our Time (9.00am R4). Jonathan Dollimore and Thomas Lynch on death and its cultural rituals.
Great Excavations (8.00 C4). How Nazis, fascists and democrats have used archaeology for their own ends.
Predators (8.30 BBC1). Wildlife series using the latest technology begins by following cheetahs, crocodiles and eagles.
Elizabeth (9.00 C4). Historian and broadcaster David Starkey presents his new four-parter on the life of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
Coma (10.00 National Geographic). Treating a coma victim, with New York neurosurgeon Jam Ghajar.
More programmes at: www.thesis.co.uk Email: Davieses@aol.com