The Best TV Shows on Sky Arts

Elbow frontman and broadcaster Guy Garvey lifts the lid on two decades of TV gold – with era-defining musical performances, long lost studio appearances and revealing interviews that have remained on the shelves for decades. The series is centred around shows which were made by ITV companies around the country – from Tony Wilson and Granada TV’s So It Goes to Tyne Tees’ ground-breaking Channel 4 series The Tube and LWT’s The London Weekend Show - chronicling not just changing musical tastes but evolution in the UK’s social and cultural history too. The series travels from Punk and New Wave to the birth of ‘Madchester’.

Music journalists take a closer look at the work of some of the biggest recording artists in the world, past and present.

Ian Nathan explores the many layers of the world of filmmaking, discussing each episode with filmmakers, cultural commentators, historians, authors and critics; what defines these stories, how they came to be, and who were the creative forces behind them.

One of rock music’s iconic and tour-hardened frontmen, Brian Johnson, gives us a brand new and exclusive take on one aspect of the rock and roll life: live performance, touring and being ‘on the road’.

A documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.

Our Urban Myths are stories that have been passed down over time and have now become part of urban folklore. But are they true? We take a slightly tongue in cheek, mischievous – and deliberately ambiguous – look at what might have happened...

The death of a matriarch brings forgotten secrets out into the open and causes a prolonged battle for the family inheritance.

Movie critic Ian Nathan goes in search of the cinematically sublime and explores the ingredients that went into making a classic. With each episode devoted to a single film, their story will be told with detail, affection, looking for the truth behind the myth, and all the trials and triumphs that went into forging the classic.

A young doctor who has graduated at the top of his class from the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry is thrust out into an isolated and impoverished country side as the village's only doctor. As he learns to adapt to his new lifestyle, he develops a morphine addiction to stay his sanity while realizing what being a doctor in the real world means.

Sky Arts takes famous females from history and puts them in the psychiatrist's chair.

It is a nationwide search to find the best landscape artist. Filmed at picturesque locations around the UK, contestants paint National Trust properties for a chance to win a £10,000 commission for a British institution's permanent collection. Through several rounds, winners are selected to advance to the semifinal, and then to the final. Judging the competition are British art historian Kate Bryan, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and award-winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

Artists from the UK and Ireland compete by creating portraits of famous people.

A unique collection of extraordinary fantastical short stories from the pen of Neil Gaiman, directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard. With a score by Jarvis Cocker and starring a host of British acting talent led by Tom Hughes, Johnny Vegas, George MacKay, Rita Tushingham and Kenneth Cranham.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

Sky Arts hosts a competition like no other to find the best European amateur or professional photographic talent. An eight-week, eight-episode trial in which finalists must convince a jury of world-famous photographers and experts of their creativity, instinct and versatility,to become the first Master of Photography. The winner will receive €150,000; a show; and a catalogue.

What the Dickens is a television panel game hosted by Sandi Toksvig. Team captains were Dave Gorman and Tim Brooke-Taylor for the first series and Sue Perkins and Chris Addison for the second and third. It is recorded at Sky Studios in West London.

From Australia to Argentina via Mexico and Maastricht, viewers join André and the members of the famous Johann Strauss Orchestra in a spectacular journey celebrating music, waltzes and his spellbinding showmanship. Each episode documents an exhilarating part of the maestro’s life, as well as showcasing new concert performances.

Danny Baker, Simon Callow, Richard E Grant, Cerys Matthews, Miriam Margolyes and Michael Sheen follow in the footsteps of their favourite British artists.

This series looks at the 20th century’s iconic film directors; the real innovators whose breakthrough direction made film into the movies. Their early lives, often escaping war or poverty found expression in theatre, then film, forming the fundamental art that is cinema. Each episode brought to life by Derek Malcolm, Neil Norman, Stephen Armstrong, Dr. Bonnie Greer OBE and Ian Nathan along with classic moments from each film career.