BBC Four Set to Commemorate the Fall of the Berlin Wall

To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, BBC Four has unveiled four new films that address and discuss the circumstances that led to the end of the Cold War and the fall of the wall.

The films will be broadcast around the 30th anniversary and include a trio from BBC Arts, Rich Hall’s Red Menace, London Calling: Cold War Letters and A British Guide To The End Of The World, alongside Reporting History: The Fall Of The Berlin Wall with John Simpson from BBC Factual.

In Rich Hall’s Red Menace, Hall embarks on an examination of the relationship between the West and the East, weaving bizarre, extraordinary and untold stories through the narrative. He looks at the Cold War from an American perspective and delves into the psyche of those living in the Soviet Union; those who took part in the machinations, the plots and the conspiracies and the ordinary citizens who, like Hall, lived through this most tense of times.

Reporting History: The Fall of the Berlin Wall sees Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, go back in time to examine his reports on one of the most defining moments of the 20th century on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As he examines the BBC’s extensive archive, he will consider why history has not turned out quite the way he hoped, and why global politics now is in fact even more complex and worrying now than it was then.

London Calling: Cold War Letters is the story of the BBC’s World service broadcast “Letters Without Signature,” which, between 1955 and 1975, broadcast letters that gave voice to the silenced people of East Germany by inviting them to secretly write in to a radio program. The film looks at the impact of the program on both the letter writers in East Germany.

Framed by Britain’s mission to have its own nuclear force, A British Guide To The End Of The World uses unseen archives and exclusive testimonies from people directly involved in and affected by Britain’s nuclear ambitions as the country prepared itself for nuclear attack during the Cold War.

Cassian Harrison, channel editor at BBC Four, said: “Only BBC Four would approach such an important date with such a distinctive, eclectic and unexpectedly entertaining range of content. From Rich Hall’s brilliantly dyspeptic take on the absurdities of mutually assured destruction to shocking footage of the UK’s desperate attempts to prepare for Armageddon, BBC Four’s Cold War season will offer a singular perspective on an extraordinary era.”