A collection of ten 90-minute specials presented by Rich Hall on BBC Four, looking at US cultural history told through the lens of film, television and music.
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2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and, ostensibly, the end of the Cold War. In light of this, Rich Hall embarks on an examination of the relationship between the West and the East, America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In his unique way, Rich looks at the propaganda, ignorance, fear and secrecy, and the natural offspring of these, paranoia, and considers how a 40-year stand-off between the superpowers brought the US and Russia to the verge of nuclear war.
Award-winning comedian Rich Hall explores the American dream and the dictum that came over with the very first pilgrims who set foot on Plymouth Rock - work hard and you will succeed. With his sharp wit and acerbic insight, Rich looks at how Americans strive to achieve this dream and how it's been explored and perpetuated by politicians, industrialists, artists, writers and film-makers.
Award-winning comedian Rich Hall takes a country music journey from Tennessee to Texas to look at the movements and artists that don't get as much notoriety but have helped shape the genre over the years. With the help of prominent performers and producers including Michael Martin Murphey, Robbie Fulks and Ray Benson, Rich explores the early origins of country music in Nashville and Austin. He visits the rustic studios where this much-loved sound was born and discovers how the genre has reinvented itself with influences from bluegrass, western swing and Americana.
An examination of the sordid machinations involved in becoming president of the United States. Rich Hall looks back at some of the dirtiest and nastiest presidential campaigns of the past, proving that the 2016 race to the White House is not the first time the contest has got personal.
Rich Hall continues his cultural critique of American people and places. California has always been an empty sales pitch. Its first settlements were borne of missionary zeal. It promised a haven from marauders, banditos and mercenaries. Since then it has wiled us with unlimited gold, boundless harvests, silver-screen stardom, dotcom salvation and hi-tech silicon marvels. It has always been a place that promises a good chance of success - if you're youthful or white. And if you're Mexican, it at least promises a decent chance of survival.
Comedian Rich Hall goes to the Lone Star state in search of the real Texas and asks what it means to be a Texan. From the Alamo to the oil industry and everything in between, Rich explores the landscape, the people and the true heart of this historic state. With the help of scholars, ranchers and musicians, Rich explores every aspect of what it is to be a Texan. He not only seeks the truth behind so many myths and legends in history and on screen, but gets to the very soul and explores how this land and its people has made such an impact on the rest of the world.
Comedian Rich Hall goes in search of the real American Indian, a people who have too often been stereotyped. This image portrayed through cinema and literature is not a true representation of the Native American, giving Rich the opportunity to redress the balance. With the help of a Native American, Dallas Goldtooth, Rich explores a different idea of what the American Indian is and what life is like for them today. He not only questions the screen image of the 'savage Indian' in films such as Soldier Blue, Stagecoach and A Man Called Horse, but looks at the written one, through literature such as The Last of the Mohicans, Black Elk Speaks and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
Comedian Rich Hall hits the road as he takes us on his personal journey through the road movie, which, from the earliest days of American cinema has been synonymous with American culture. With his customary wit and intelligence, Rich takes us through films such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Grapes of Wrath, Thelma and Louise, Vanishing Point, Five Easy Pieces and even The Wizard of Oz. He explores what makes a road movie and how the American social, economic and political landscape has defined the genre. Filmed on location in South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, the film incorporates interviews, archive footage and clips of some of cinemas best-loved films as it gives us another of Rich Hall's unique insights into American culture.
Rich Hall sets his keen eye and acerbic wit on his homeland once again as he sifts truth from fiction in Hollywood's version of the southern states of the USA. Using specially shot interviews and featuring archive footage from classic movies such as Gone With the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire and Deliverance, Rich discovers a South that is about so much more than just rednecks, racism and hillbillies.
Comedian Rich Hall goes west to find out what killed off that most quintessentially American of all film genres, the western. Through films such as The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Little Big Man, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven, Rich charts the rise and fall of America's obsession with its own creation myth - the Wild West. He explores how the image of the cowboy as a moral, straight-talking heroic figure was created by Hollywood but appropriated by Washington, as one president after another sought to associate themselves with this potent symbol of strength and valour. From Tombstone to Texas, Montana to Wyoming, Rich travels across a landscape that is both actual and mythic in the minds of not just Americans, but all of us.
A collection of ten 90-minute specials presented by Rich Hall on BBC Four, looking at US cultural history told through the lens of film, television and music.
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