The Untold

After meeting in prison, two men want to make a fresh start as barbers in a Welsh village. Grace Dent follows them as they strive to make life outside a success in a small community.

Tom and Leon met on a prison barbering course in the middle of their prison sentences. They had always shared 'jail talk' of opening a shop together but after being released they decided to make it a reality. Together they invested their money in a barber shop nestled in the Welsh Valleys, new arrivals in small village.

Can they convince potential customers to give them a chance - and make a return on their investment?

Produced by Sam Peach.

Ruth Bowie returns home to Ireland to witness the Irish Abortion Referendum and the result of the vote up close.

Nine years ago, she travelled to the UK to have a termination of a much-wanted baby for medical reasons. She felt guilty but she also felt abandoned by her country, where the abortion would have been illegal. Since then, she has campaigned so that other women in her position would not to have to 'travel', the euphemistic term for women who come to mainland UK like she did. She settled in England a few years later.

Now she's about to return home to the land that she left and find out if the Irish people will vote to change the law. Tensions are high, and the result of the referendum could go either way. There are strong feelings on both sides of the debate, and the lead up to the referendum has brought this divide in Ireland to the fore.

Producer: Sara Conkey.

Grace Dent follows Alan, the postman who dreams of making it as a professional actor. He has landed a role in a hit stage play, but he will have to overcome his dyslexia in order to succeed.

Alan has worked as a postman in Liverpool for years, but he's now ready to pursue his true passion of a career in acting. Things have gotten off to a promising start as he has been cast in a leading role in a professional stage play. The play follows the story of the band Joy Division and is a celebrated production with a huge fan base. This could be Alan's chance to establish himself in the world he has always wanted to join.

A winning performance could be Alan's chance to make it, but it won't be easy. Alan's dyslexia presents a challenge to his day job of delivering letters. It makes memorising an entire script a difficult task, and Alan has just a few weeks to do so. It's the performance of a lifetime, and the pressure is on to be ready for opening night. Will he be able to impress an audience of critics and industry figures who could turn his dream into a reality?

Producer: Sam Peach

Grace Dent presents the story of Leisa Taylor: a feminist politician with purple hair and piercings who wants to make waves in Worcester.

Worcester is a traditional place. It markets itself through Edward Elgar, the Cathedral and its 'Faithful City' status during the Civil War. The local political scene is almost entirely male dominated and - at the moment - Conservative. Leisa is standing for the Women's Equality Party in May's local elections - when the odds are stacked against her, what's driving her on, and can she make her mark?

The moniker 'Worcester Woman' was coined because the city's female vote is regarded as having the potential to change the political scene. However this particular Worcester Woman is pushing for a 'feminist lens' to be applied to everything that the city council does. Is it a step too far in a ward where the issues that exercise voters appear to be potholes, parking, and pavement-cyclers?

Produced by Karen Gregor.

Anna Hursey has been playing table tennis for as long as she can remember and has managed to combine her school work with extended trips to train in China, where her mother is from and across Europe, where she can challenge herself against the top players. Her success has been remarkable and as her family prepare for the Commonwealth Games they reflect on what it means longer term and how Anna might continue to straddle the world in her quest to compete at the 2020 Olympics.

The nephew of an elderly brother and sister fights to save their home, a thatched cottage near the shores of Lough Foyle that has belonged to their family for over 300 years. Grace Dent tells their story.

The Quigley Cottage in Magilligan lies near the shores of Lough Foyle in Northern Ireland. It has belonged to the same family for over 300 years and has listed heritage status. Edward was born in it, and lives there with his elderly sister Eileen, without electricity or an indoor toilet. They cook with gas, and use gas lights. It is thought to the only cottage thatched with marram grass on the island of Ireland and dates from an age when local people scavenged the grass from nearby sand dunes to roof their homes.

In 2014, when a severe winter storm badly damaged a rear wall and caused part of the roof to collapse on top of Edward's bed, he was lucky to escape with his life. Now the cottage is almost too dangerous to live in. The rest of the roof and the rear wall could collapse at any time, and with winter storms approaching, they are desperate to find the money to their family home.

Their nephew Mark, an IT consultant who lives in Coleraine, has driven the campaign to save the cottage, but so far they haven't been able to secure the necessary funds. As winter draws in, Edward and Eileen must decide if they should leave their beloved cottage, and Mark makes one last attempt to raise the money for much-needed repairs.

Producer: Conor McKay.

Grace Dent tells the story of Yeovil Town Ladies, a team of part time players who must raise £350,000 in order to turn professional and stay in the top tier of women's football.

In November 2016 Yeovil Town Ladies Football Club hit the headlines with a fairy tale story. They were the part time team who had won their way to Women's Super League 1, the highest level of football in the country. A team of students, nurses and firefighters would rub shoulders with Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

Yet just a few weeks into their first season in WSL 1, the club was hit with devastating news. In order to remain in the league next season, they need to apply as a fully professional club and raise £350,000 to pay their players.

With just a few weeks before the application must be submitted, Grace Dent follows the club as they raise funds while facing gruelling matches against the best players in the world.

Producers: Mohini Patel and Sam Peach.

Fourteen year old Mohammed was excluded from school over a year ago: his poor behaviour culminating in an incident involving a firework in a classroom corridor. His Mum has been trying to get him back into education for many months now and as time passes she sees little hope of success. At first she opted to home school him, but with her work and family responsibilities she found this too difficult. She wants him to get a school place but worries about how he will settle and whether he can catch up the months of education that he's missed. Grace Dent follows what happens.

Mohammed is being helped by staff at Raising Explorers, an inspirational after school club in Bradford, which provides input on the academic side, along with Islamic study. Abu Mustafa, who oversees the team, says that however much work they do at the centre it will not be enough to compensate for the loss of a school education. He is supporting the family with efforts to get Mohammed back into lessons, whilst also addressing the behavioural issues which have seen him excluded in the past.

Teachers at Raising Explorers know that Mohammed and his family are not alone in the challenges they face and they see particular challenges for teenagers wrestling with competing priorities. They feel that schools properly resourced to get to the bottom of problems once they arise and parents are not involved in putting things right. The after school club tries to close this gap, particularly for youngsters who are balancing community and family expectations alongside finding their own path in life. Abu Mustafa is pleased with how Mohammed is responding to this input and hopes that he will be able to make a real go of things once a school place is found.

One man's bitter battle over his freedom to use a washing machine.

Steve Norman - Stormin' Norman to anyone who knows him - is a big, loud, gruff, heavy smoker who's made it his mission to hold the authorities to account. "Facetious, obstinate, difficult - yeah I am. But I think I've got every right to be".

At 59, he lives in a council block in the shadow of the M5. The flats are too small for washing machines so the block uses a shared facility, but in 2017 the council began to restrict usage to Monday to Friday 8am-8pm. Steve's retaliation? He took them to court for failing to consult the residents on the changes - and a baffled judge concluded that there was a case to answer, and gave the council two weeks to reach an agreement, or else it would go to trial.

Stormin' Norman left school at 16, with no qualifications. Through 30 years in the merchant navy, he learned to love to read, and subsequently, he taught himself how to understand the law, and how to use it. Now every councillor in Bristol knows his name - he's the guy at every protest cursing at them through a loud hailer.

The laundry is his opportunity to get the council in to the court room and to say his piece, publicly, in a court of law. "It's a circus... You can have all the fancy lawyers in the world, but if you're in breach of an agreement and I can prove it, you lose... simple as."

The laundry is the fight he wants. But, as the year progresses, the fight he faces is very different.

This programme is broadcast on Steve's 60th birthday.

Produced by Polly Weston.

Jackie Harrison has a 50-50 chance of developing Huntington's disease. Her grandfather, mother and uncle all died young with this devastating, neuro-degenerative disease and she cares for her younger brother who has it too.

In December 2017 it seemed that there might have been a breakthrough and there's been a surge of people at risk asking for a predictive test. It's a blood test which simply tells you if you will develop the disease - but currently there is no cure.

Jackie has previously shied away from the test, but is now considering it. The test is a gamble. A bad result can be devastating.

Having lived all her life thinking she has Huntington's, Jackie hasn't learnt to drive for fear she will have her license taken away. She hasn't had children, for fear that any child would have to look after her when she became ill.

"There are very few days you're not thinking about it," she admits, checking herself for symptoms, "I twitch my shoulder and I know I do. Sometimes I've a twitchy eye or one time my thumb was shaking or shivering for no reason. I'm being bad tempered and I'm shouting at people - so you think is this the start of it?"

As Jackie approaches 50, she is increasingly persuaded to have the test. Her partner Tony describes it as a horrendous Catch 22, "Do you want to live the rest of your life in the hope that you may be free of the disease or do you want to toss the coin, with the negative of that being you find you're not free of it and you then you have no hope left?"

Should she have the test and could she cope with the result?

Narrated by Grace Dent and produced by Sarah Bowen.