First Humans: Cave Discovery

This documentary for  Channel 4 Secret History shows the amazing discovery of ancient hominid remains deep in a cave in South Africa. The bones are from a species that may have lived 2 million years ago. Paleoanthropologists have called the creature Homo Naledi, and they believe it gives us unique insights into the path of human evolution.

Quickfire re-edited and rescripted the film, which was originally made by National Geographic and PBS in America.

Just completed an amazing project for the University of York. They invited us to film a performance by Caius College Choir of music by by the Tudor composer Nicholas Ludford, in the chapel of St Mary Undercroft in Westminster Palace. Cameras are not usually allowed inside the chapel, which is one of the few original 13th century sections of the Palace. Although Ludford sung in the chapel during his lifetime, his  music has not been heard there for almost 500 years. We were able to film it in  a three-camera shoot, to provide a record of this remarkable event.

Richard E Grant in Secrets of the Arabian Nights

Richard E Grant discovers how three hundred years ago the Arabian Nights first exploded into the West. Ever since then its stories have entranced generations of children, and seduced us with a vision of an exotic, magical Middle East. Richard meets writers and poets in Cairo’s old city to learn why  the fantasy, strange humour and the wild, wily women of the Nights are key to understanding the real Arab world

Critics: Richard E Grant had a brilliant time travelling the Middle East uncovering the history and dissemination of Scheherazade’s stories in Secrets of the Arabian Nights and gave the viewer a brilliant time right back. Lucy Mangan, The Guardian 

The Great Falklands Gamble

Thirty years ago Britain took an extraordinary military gamble to liberate the Falkland Islands. This documentary reveals the enormous risks we took, and  how a remarkable victory could have become a bloody defeat.

On April 2nd 1982 the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands, a tiny British outpost in the South Atlantic, 8,000 miles from the UK. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided to send a naval taskforce to liberate the islands.   Senior officers who served in the campaign, such as Major-General Julian Thompson, reveal how appalling weather, overstretched British air defences, poor communications and even  incompetence sometimes stacked the odds heavily against the British.  But their very personal accounts also reveal how professionalism and sheer courage overcame these problems.  By explaining the hair-raising realities of individual battles, it sheds new light on the victory that we all remember.

Critics: “A cracking documentary, combining vivid archive footage, excellent interviews with square-jawed former soldiers and some worrying insights into the future of the islands.

The story will be familiar to many and yet there were still plenty of fresh details….The programme’s thesis that Britain came remarkably close to defeat in the Falklands was powerfully made. Six ships were hit by bombs which did not detonate. Had they done so, the campaign might have been stopped in its tracks.” Ian Hollingshead, Daily Telegraph