Art that Made Us Season 1

Lights in the Darkness transports viewers to the turbulent centuries after the fall of Roman Britain — an age long dismissed as ‘dark,’ yet illuminated by astonishing art and cultural fusion. Sculptor Antony Gormley encounters the haunting clay figure of Spong Man, while Michael Sheen gives voice to the defiant Welsh poem Y Gododdin. Scottish duo Dalziel & Scullion reflect on the mysterious Pictish Aberlemno Stones, and Cornelia Parker examines the shattered beauty of the Staffordshire Hoard — gold treasures twisted by faith and violence. The birth of the English language unfolds through the Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf, and a new feminist translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. With insights from artists, historians, and curators, the episode reveals how, amid invasion and upheaval, art became a beacon — mapping identity, faith, and imagination across the first millennium of the Isles.

A New Light After the Plague reimagines the aftermath of the Black Death - not as an ending, but as a fierce new beginning. Out of devastation came rebellion, reinvention, and the birth of English as a literary voice. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage revisits the haunting elegy Pearl, revealing grief transformed into art, while Sarah Maple uncovers the sly wit carved into Lincoln Cathedral’s misericords -medieval satire hidden in plain sight. Writer Maria Fusco explores the enduring faith of Julian of Norwich, the visionary mystic who found hope amid despair.

As the Peasants’ Revolt shakes a fragile kingdom, royal photographer Chris Levine examines the world’s first living royal portrait, and artist Marc Quinn decodes Richard II’s divine self-image in the luminous Wilton Diptych. In the cities, a new creative energy takes hold: stained glass master Sarah Brown reveals York Minster’s breathtaking Great East Window, and musician Rory McCleery leads the Marian Consort in John Dunstaple’s Veni Sancte Spiritus — a revolutionary sound for a changing world.

From plague to poetry, rebellion to renewal, this episode shows how art became humanity’s defiant answer to darkness — transforming suffering into light.

Queens, Feuds and Faith delves into the turbulent 16th century, when the Reformation tore through Britain and art became a weapon in a war of belief and power. Author Stephanie Merritt and actress Morfydd Clark uncover John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs — a vivid blend of history, propaganda, and national myth — while William Morgan’s monumental Welsh Bible translation unites a language and a people.

At Elizabeth I’s court, art and image are everything. Textile artist James Merry unravels the secrets of the Bacton Altar Cloth — a surviving piece of the Queen’s own wardrobe — while the Ora Singers perform William Byrd’s daring Mass for Four Voices, a Catholic act of defiance written under Protestant rule. North of the border, Mary Queen of Scots wages her own campaign through coded embroidery and lavish jewels, examined by artist Alice Kettle and jeweller Shaun Leane.

As empire expands and theatre explodes, artist Phoebe Boswell revisits Shakespeare’s Othello with actor Martins Imhangbe, exploring how Elizabethan drama reflected a new world wrestling with race, faith, and identity. In a century of rivalry and rebellion, art becomes both battlefield and bridge — shaping the soul of a divided nation.

To Kill a King captures Britain on the brink of chaos — a nation torn between crown and conscience. Architect Amanda Levete ascends Inigo Jones’ revolutionary Tulip Stairs at Greenwich’s Queen’s House, uncovering how classical order and modern vision collided in a fragile age. Portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg studies Van Dyck’s grand depiction of the Earl of Pembroke’s family, reading in its splendour the fractures that would soon erupt into civil war.

Artist Rita Duffy exposes the brutal propaganda of Wenceslas Hollar’s Teares of Ireland woodcuts, while photographer Platon interprets the stark honesty of Samuel Cooper’s “warts and all” Cromwell — the face of Puritan defiance. Actor Anton Lesser breathes life into Milton’s Paradise Lost, a daring reflection on rebellion, power, and the cost of freedom.

As monarchy collapses and returns, creativity reshapes the nation: Aphra Behn’s bold plays give women a new voice, Grinling Gibbons transforms wood into baroque splendour, and artists Angela Palmer and Thomas Heatherwick celebrate the scientific imagination — from Robert Hooke’s microscopic wonders to Wren’s illusory dome at St Paul’s. In revolution’s wake, art becomes a mirror — reflecting both the fragility and the brilliance of a kingdom remade.

Consumers and Conscience dives into the glittering yet conflicted 18th century — an age of art, affluence, and awakening morality. Sculptor Thomas J Price explores Harewood House, where Robert Adam’s grandeur, Reynolds’ portraits, and Chippendale’s furniture conceal the profits of slavery and empire. Artist Lubaina Himid revisits William Hogarth’s savage satire of upper-class vice, while comedian Stewart Lee and actor Jason Isaacs unpick Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, a darkly comic indictment of exploitation.

As wealth and wit collide, a moral reckoning begins. Potter Josiah Wedgwood turns porcelain into protest, campaigning against slavery with his now-iconic medallions. Cartoonist Martin Rowson traces James Gillray’s birth of political satire, where art became a weapon against hypocrisy. Meanwhile, writers from Olaudah Equiano to Jane Austen capture the human cost of privilege, and sculptor Douglas Gordon reflects on Robert Burns’ enduring voice for ordinary lives.

This episode reveals a nation at a crossroads — torn between indulgence and integrity, profit and progress — as art and conscience begin their uneasy dialogue in the heart of Georgian Britain.

Rise of the City explores how the Industrial Revolution reshaped Britain and how art fought to make sense of a world in flux. As smoke rose over once-rural landscapes, artists turned their gaze to the tension between nature, progress, and poverty. Olafur Eliasson reflects on J.M.W. Turner’s visionary power, finding in his turbulent skies the birth of environmental art. Penry Williams’ glowing Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night captures the strange beauty of industry at full blaze.

But progress came at a cost. Maxine Peake gives voice to Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, a searing portrait of class conflict and compassion amid Manchester’s mills. Architect Fiona Sinclair studies Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’s democratic designs for Glasgow, while Jeremy Deller celebrates William Morris’s mission to restore craftsmanship and nature to urban life.

As the 19th century closes, art itself becomes a battlefield. Writer and drag performer Amrou Al-Kadhi reclaims Oscar Wilde’s wit and rebellion as radical acts of self-expression, and Shani Rhys James uncovers the quiet fury in Walter Sickert’s Camden Town Nudes — raw, intimate scenes of working-class existence. This episode captures a century of upheaval, where art became the conscience, the mirror, and the protest of an industrial age.

A Terrible Beauty Is Born chronicles the first half of the 20th century, when art itself went to war — against empire, conformity, and the limits of humanity. Actress Michelle Fairley delivers W.B. Yeats’s haunting Easter 1916, capturing a rebellion that reshaped Irish identity and the British Empire’s fate. War photographer Oliver Chanarin uncovers William Orpen’s audacious To the Unknown British Soldier in France, a lone coffin defiantly laid amid Versailles’ splendour.

In the uneasy peace that followed, artists sought escape in beauty and progress. Lachlan Goudie explores the creation of the Queen Mary, a triumph of Glaswegian industry and Art Deco design. Eddie Izzard celebrates the utopian modernism of the De La Warr Pavilion — a bold statement of hope by émigré architects fleeing fascism — while photographer Hannah Starkey examines Bill Brandt’s haunting images of 1930s Britain, where poverty and resilience coexisted in stark relief.

As war returns, film director Andrew Macdonald revisits The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the daring anti-war vision of his grandfather Emeric Pressburger. Artist Ryan Gander traces Barbara Hepworth’s search for harmony through abstract form, and Denzil Forrester confronts FN Souza’s anguished Crucifixion, foretelling a postcolonial world wrestling with guilt, loss, and renewal. In an age of devastation, the artists of the Isles turned destruction into defiance — and from chaos, remade meaning itself.