About this season
40 Minutes was a BBC TV documentary strand broadcast on BBC Two between 1981 and 1994. The documentaries could be on any possible subject, the only connection being that they last forty minutes. Some documentaries in the original series were revisited and updated in a 2006 version, Forty Minutes On.
Episodes (21)
1. Shattered Dreams
Aired 16 November 1993 • 40 min
2. War Artist
Aired 23 November 1993 • 40 min
3. Girl Friends
Aired 30 November 1993 • 40 min
4. Police Surgeon
Aired 7 December 1993 • 40 min
5. Moscow Gold
Aired 14 December 1993 • 40 min
6. Latin Nights
Aired 21 December 1993 • 40 min
7. The Making of Them
Aired 4 January 1994 • 40 min
Independence, self-reliance, confidence. These are some of the qualities that the traditional single-sex English boarding school gives the children in its care. 40 Minutes follows some 8-year-old boys off to different boarding schools for the first time. Their parents and headmasters are confident that they are doing the right thing. But some ex-boarders are not so sure. These men feel that the experience of boarding at a young age was damaging.
8. Caraline's Story
Aired 11 January 1994 • 40 min
9. Heads and Tales
Aired 18 January 1994 • 40 min
10. Behind the Mask
Aired 25 January 1994 • 40 min
This film looks at a theatre group who specialise in prison remedial work. By turning hardened criminals into actors, they challenge them to reveal human emotion from behind their masks of hardness.
11. Squeegies
Aired 1 February 1994 • 40 min
The engaging lives and intimate stories of Squeegies - people who wash car windows at traffic lights for small change - in South London. Del, living with the effects of having grown up in care up that stunted his promising career as a musician, Tony, struggling with abandonment and alcoholism and Leah, the mother figure of the group, who is pregnant, bringing new life and hope into the tough circumstances they inhabit.
12. Spent Forces
Aired 8 February 1994 • 40 min
13. Why Blame the Mother?
Aired 22 February 1994 • 40 min
14. Portrait of a Mid-Life Crisis
Aired 1 March 1994 • 40 min
15. Manila - The Real Thing
Aired 8 March 1994 • 40 min
16. A Case of Corporate Murder
Aired 15 March 1994 • 40 min
17. After the Bomb
Aired 22 March 1994 • 40 min
18. Wonderful Land
Aired 29 March 1994 • 40 min
19. Fay Presto - Illusions of Grandeur
Aired 5 April 1994 • 40 min
20. Living in a Boom Time
Aired 12 April 1994 • 40 min
21. Times Remembered
Aired 19 April 1994 • 40 min