Wireless Nights

Jarvis Cocker hosts a special festive edition, telling stories of a shepherdess and a miracle birth, whilst a wise man looks out for bright lights in the Christmas skies.

On a cold and frosty Christmas night, a baby is set to enter the world in the most inauspicious circumstances, a pair of shepherds keep watch over their flocks and a star gazer scans the heavens for unusual signs.

Producer: Laurence Grissell

Jarvis Cocker’s series exploring the human condition after dark boards the Wireless Nights Express to hear tales of night people on sleeper - or sleepless - trains. He begins on the Caledonian Sleeper, leaving the noise and crowds of London Euston to make a night-time journey across the country to the Scottish Highlands. In the dining car and corridors he meets fellow passengers and stewards. And as he starts to drift off in his cabin, the train makes some unscheduled stops.

Geoff MacCormack recalls taking the Trans-Siberian express with his childhood friend David Bowie and a sobering stop at the East German border. Tessa Smit boards a twenty-four hour party train; and travel writer Colin Thubron on the time he got off his train, in the middle of Siberia.

Producer: Georgia Catt

Jarvis Cocker's series exploring the human condition after dark returns with a night wander around Dungeness.

Sometimes referred to as Britain's only desert, it's a shingle headland in Kent jutting into the English Channel. Sparsely populated, with wooden shack cottages and star filled night skies, a lighthouse sweeping its beam out to sea and a nuclear power station glowing with electric light like a city suspended in the darkness.

But Jarvis isn't alone as he explores this untamed landscape, torch in hand. Also on the move are Paddy Hamilton and Bridget Wilkins who leave the cosiness of their old railway carriage home for a night walk on the beach, bumping into a Chinese fishing party along the way. At the Bird Observatory, moth trappers Sean Clancy and David Walker keep vigil as they wait for a specimen to fly into the light and recall other things that went bump in the night. Doreen Thomas, the matriarch of a Dungeness fishing family, reflects on nights gone by. And Mark Daniels is out there somewhere, swimming in the cold black inky waters.

Producer Neil McCarthy

Jarvis Cocker's nocturnal exploration of the human condition leads him to Berlin. Walking in the shadowlands of the Wall he reflects on a once divided city and hears stories of thenacht.

Between East and West, he encounters a 1930s musical salon run by a cabaret diva; a ballroom dancing escapee from East Berlin; an underground den of iniquity and vice; and Iggy Pop, held prisoner.

Amid the street-lit ruins of the Berlin Wall, he considers the scar left behind.

Jarvis goes into hospital for a routine procedure, and the anaesthetic gives him some very strange nocturnal visions.

As Dr Ed Patrick administers the anaesthetic, Jarvis is transported far, far away. One moment he's on a Scottish lighthouse at midnight with artist and writer Peter Hill, who spent time as a lighthouse keeper in the 1970s.

Then, in the blink of an eye, he's in a blizzard in the far north of Norway with Sunniva Sorby and Hilde Fålun Strøm, who became the first women in history to overwinter solo in the Arctic.

The visions just keep coming as ice turns to fire, and Jarvis finds himself on the top of a mountain watching forest fires burn through the night with author Philip Connors who spends half of every year as a fire lookout high up in the mountains of New Mexico.

In a night of vivid encounters, everyone Jarvis meets has stepped away from their every day lives, to live life on the edge.

Doctor and comedian Ed Patrick is the author of 'Catch Your Breath: The Secret Life of a Sleepless Anaesthetist' Peter Hill is the author of 'Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper' Philip Connors is the author of 'Fire Season: Field notes from a wilderness lookout'. Details of the work of Sunniva Sorby and Hilde Fålun Strøm are at heartsintheice.com

Producer: Laurence Grissell