Programme Information

EastEnders

Friday 25 March

8.00-8.30pm BBC ONE and BBC ONE HD

• www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders

It's the grand opening of the boxing club, but Michael finds himself in a tricky situation, in the week's final visit to the London Borough of Walford.

Meanwhile, Jane makes Ian jealous when she gets dressed up for a girls' night out.

Roxy also dresses to impress, and causes a stir at the boxing club.

Elsewhere, Alfie and Kat have a heart to heart and discuss whether their relationship can ever again be like it was.

Michael is played by Steve John Shepherd, Jane by Laurie Brett, Ian by Adam Woodyatt, Roxy by Rita Simons, Alfie by Shane Richie and Kat by Jessie Wallace.

EastEnders is simulcast in HD on BBC One HD on Freesat channel 108, Freeview channel 50, Sky channel 143 and Virgin Media channel 108.

AB3

Just what goes on behind the scenes of a Royal visit? Tim Wonnacott and Rosemary Shrager continue their journey through the stately homes, castles and palaces visited by Queen Victoria during her lengthy lifetime and reign. Today, following in her footsteps, they arrive in Warwickshire at the imposing Warwick Castle, which the Queen and Prince Albert visited for a single day in June 1858.

The Castle had been a popular tourist attraction for some 30 years prior to the Royal couple's arrival as part of their tour of Warwickshire. The Queen had been on the throne for 21 years at the time of the visit. She and Albert were originally intended to stay at the Castle but, due to building work taking place, they stayed instead with the Leigh family at nearby Stoneleigh Abbey – which Tim and Rosemary visited in yesterday's programme.

Upstairs, Tim explores the vast castle and, with special insight from Queen Victoria's own diaries, guides viewers through the stay from her unique perspective. He recalls how, when the Royal couple were greeted by their hosts, the Grevilles and their three young children, the youngest child recoiled and cried out when the Queen leant in to speak to them.

Although it was just a short visit, there was time for a well-planned and prepared lunch – which is what Rosemary revisits downstairs. She recreates a traditional 19th-century dish that was served during the lunch – an ornate lobster mayonnaise salad.

Rosemary also meets Jane Edmonds, a period floristry expert who talks about the Victorians' love of flowers, as accessories and as decorations, and discovers the fascinating background of the Yeoman band that played for the Royal couple and whose descendants play for Rosemary today.

EB

Anna Nicole, premièred at the Royal Opera house last month, is the most controversial and successful new opera in years. Based on the life story of Anna Nicole Smith, the young Playboy model who was catapulted to international fame in the Nineties when she married an oil tycoon 60 years her senior, the opera has divided the critics and wowed the public.

Antonio Pappano, the Music Director of the Royal Opera House and the conductor of the new work, delves into the world of opera's fallen women and demonstrates that Anna Nicole forms part of a long operatic tradition. For centuries, composers and librettists have used female characters in opera to explore and challenge society's attitudes and prejudices. Bizet's Carmen, Puccini's Madame Butterfly and Verdi's Violetta have become some of the most famous and powerful roles in operatic history and they are all, in different ways, fallen women.

The very first opera written for the commercial theatre – The Coronation Of Poppea by Monteverdi premièred in Venice in 1647 – has, at the heart of its shocking, amoral story, Poppea, a woman of easy virtue, who will stop at nothing to get her man, the emperor Nero, and claw her way to the imperial throne.

Pappano delves into these individual stories and, gradually, through the music and the characters, reveals why these women lie at the heart of great opera and what their stories tell us about ourselves.

The creators of Anna Nicole, composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas, talk about their new work and its place in opera's roll-call of tragic heroines. The programme also hears from the singers who create these characters on stage: Eva-Maria Westbroek on Anna Nicole, Danielle Di Niesse on Poppea and Agneta Eichenholz on one of the most complex characters of all, Lulu in Alban Berg's great opera.

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Continuing the BBC's longstanding partnership with the Royal Opera House and its tradition of supporting new work by British composers, BBC Four screens the world première of Anna Nicole, a new opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas, from the Royal Opera House in London.

Anna Nicole tells the story of the turbulent and dramatic life of glamour model Anna Nicole Smith who infamously married a billionaire more than 60 years her senior. The critically acclaimed production ("flamboyantly vulgar and fabulously entertaining" according to The Telegraph) is directed by Richard Jones with Antonio Pappano at the podium. The title role is sung by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, with Gerald Finley as Howard Stern and Alan Oke as Howard Marshall.

Former Playboy model, sex symbol and TV personality Anna Nicole hit the headlines in 1994 when she married oil tycoon J Howard Marshall. From the high school drop-out to lap dancer and TV personality to the bereaved wife who died of an overdose of prescription drugs aged just 39, Anna Nicole’s life became a parable of celebrity culture in our time.

The BBC has a long record of broadcasting new works and, in recent years, has brought audiences The Tempest (Thomas Ades), Sophie's Choice (Nicholas Maw) and The Minotaur (Harrison Birtwistle) as well as Mark-Anthony Turnage’s previous opera world première, The Silver Tassie, direct from ENO in 2000.

Clemency Burton-Hill presents for BBC Four.

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Tracy Beaker (Dani Harmer) has a panic attack

Tracy Beaker reveals that she has more in common with Dumping Ground residents than they thought when she breaks down in the last of this series of Tracy Beaker Returns.

With Cam in New York, Tracy tries pretending she loves being alone. However, in reality she's working late at the Dumping Ground, having recurring nightmares to do with her real mother and having panic attacks.

When Lily returns for some respite care, Tracy is further dejected when she discovers Lily wants to spend her time at the Dumping Ground, and not with her. After discovering Cam may be in New York for another six months and that Seth has a new girlfriend, she suffers a massive panic attack in front of everyone.

Can some good advice, an unexpected visitor and a surprise from the Dumping Ground get Tracy back on track?

Dani Harmer plays Tracy, Jessie Williams is Lily, Amy-Leigh Hickman is Carmen, Noah Marullo is Gus, Lisa Coleman is Cam and Ashley Taylor-Rhys is Seth.

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