Higher channels

John Davies scans the schedules. (All times pm unless stated.) Pick of the week

Channel 4's Deaf Century series reaches the 1940s and 1950s. Interviewees include John Harmsworth, the first deaf student to go to Aston University, who is bitter that he grew up being taught to lip-read but not to use sign language - a legacy of the dominant doctrine of "oralism" in deaf education in the immediate postwar years. Also being shown for Deaf Awareness Week (October 11-17) is the US-made Sound and Fury (Tuesday 10.00 C4), which examines the conflict between oralists and "manualists" (sign-language users) over cochlear implants: do they offer a "cure" for deafness, or are they a threat to the culture of manualism?

FRIDAY October 8

Shaping the Century (8.00 Discovery Channel). Research on Antarctica's ice sheets and the possibility of their melting.

SATURDAY October 9

Correspondent (6.50 BBC2). Reports from India, Palestine, Italy and Georgia (US) on the problems of population growth.

Deaf Century (7.00 C4). Pick of the week.

Sounding the Century Lecture (8.55 R3). Architect Rem Koolhaas on the future of urban development.

SUNDAY October 10

Student Choice - What and Where (1.00 BBC2). Guide to choosing a university.

The Boer War (4.00 History Channel). The war's centenary gets one more programme: a straightforward account made in 1992, but fleshed out with comments from St Andrews' historian Gerard DeGroot.

Open Book (4.00 R4). About Seamus Heaney's new version of Beowulf, which is this week's Book at Bedtime (from Monday 10.45 R4).

Britain's Slave Trade (8.00 C4). Part two of series moves from Bristol to Liverpool, "the greatest slaving port in human history".

MONDAY October 11

University Challenge (8.00 BBC2). Salford versus the Royal Academy of Music.

Walking with Dinosaurs (8.30). The diplodocus.

Night Waves (9.50 R3). V. S. Naipaul.

The Major Years (10.00 BBC1). New series promises "frank interviews" with members of the last government.

TUESDAY October 12

Untold: Mutiny (9.00 C4). An unfamiliar view of the first world war in this documentary about the British West India Regiment, which mutinied, sowing the seeds of future demands for Caribbean independence.

War of the Century (9.00 BBC2). Part two of series on second world war's eastern front includes eyewitness testimony of Stalin's and the Nazis' ruthlessness.

Royal College of Art (9.50 BBC2). "Serious Fun" focuses on the RCA's industrial design and engineering course.

Sound and Fury (10.00 C4). See pick of the week.

WEDNESDAY October 13

Thinking Allowed (4.00 R4). Laurie Taylor talks with two sociologists researching drug abuse - Howard Parker (Manchester University) and Mike Hough (South Bank).

THURSDAY October 14

The Boer War (8.00 C4). Final part of series.

Echoes of Harlem (10.00 R2). George Melly starts a new series on jazz history.

Pornography: The Secret History of Civilisation (10.00 C4). Was pornography "an invention of Victorian science"? Three-part series begins with look at the erotic artefacts of antiquity.

Email: Davieses@aol.com. For an extended guide and web links to programmes, visit The THES website at: www.thesis.co.uk