7pm FILTHY CITIES: Revolutionary Paris - Science/History
Just 200 years ago, Paris was famously one of the foulest and smelliest cities in Europe. Historian Dan Snow sniffs out the rotten story of the French revolution. He reveals the stinking streets where ordinary people slaved in toxic industries and suffered grotesque poverty and disease. Dan immerses himself in their world, visiting a perfumer to recreate the stench of the 18th century city - Pong de Paris. He has a go at one of the worst jobs in history - tanning leather by 18th century methods using dog excrement and urine - to make exquisite luxury goods that only the filthy rich could afford. He gets a rare glimpse of the private rooms of infamous Queen Marie Antoinette at the glittering palace of Versailles and reveals some surprising facts about the royal court. Plus he comes face to face with the ultimate killing machine - the gruesome guillotine. Dan finds out what happened to the thousands of bodies that overflowed in the cemeteries of Paris during The Terror. Dan discovers how monumental filth and injustice drove Parisians to a bloody revolution which would transform their city and give birth to a new republic.
8pm NOVA: Great Cathedral Mystery - Science/History
The dome that crowns Florence’s great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—the Duomo—is a towering masterpiece of Renaissance ingenuity and an enduring source of mystery. Still the largest masonry dome on earth after more than six centuries, it is taller than the Statue of Liberty and weighs as much as an average cruise ship. Historians and engineers have long debated how its secretive architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, managed to keep the dome perfectly aligned and symmetrical as the sides rose and converged toward the center, 40 stories above the cathedral floor. His laborers toiled without safety nets, applying novel, untried methods. Over 4 million bricks might collapse at any moment—and we still don’t understand how Brunelleschi prevented it. To test the latest theories, a team of U.S. master bricklayers will help build a unique experimental model Duomo using period techniques. Will it stay intact during the final precarious stages of closing over the top of the dome?
9pm LINE OF DUTY - Crime/Suspense
Line of Duty is a cat-and-mouse thriller that takes a probing look into modern policing and corruption.
Tensions erupt between Hastings, Arnott, and Fleming as they decide on the next steps in the case. Increasingly desperate and unwilling to await his fate, Gates goes on the run, ready to play one last card.
10pm 1964: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE - History/Documentary
1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support or opposition to the civil rights movement, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.
