Look what's coming to Blue Ridge PBS!
Independent Lens
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Thursdays at 10:00pm
This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers. INDEPENDENT LENS features unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history. The series is supported by interactive companion Web sites and national publicity and community engagement campaigns. Actress Mary-Louise Parker hosts the series.
Visit the companion website at pbs.org/independentlens/
May 3 - “Circo”
The Ponce family’s hardscrabble circus has lived and performed on the back roads of Mexico since the 19th century, but can their way of life survive into the 21st? “Circo” (Circus) intimately portrays the Ponce family circus as it struggles to make a living from 
its artistry, sweat and wit against the backdrop of Mexico’s collapsing rural economy.
May 10 – “Summer Pasture”
“Summer Pasture” is the story of a young nomadic couple living with their infant daughter in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet. The film offers a rare window into a highly insular community seldom seen by outsiders. In the collective imagination of Tibet, nomads have traditionally occupied a dual role — romanticized as embodying the purest form of Tibetan identity and mocked as being backwards, uncivilized and inferior.
May 17 – “Precious Knowledge”
Tucson High School’s Mexican American Studies Program has become a national model of educational success, with 100 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to college. “Precious Knowledge” filmmakers spent an entire year in the classroom filming this innovative social-justice curriculum, documenting the transformative impact on students who become engaged, informed and active in their communities. Arizona lawmakers recently passed a bill giving unilateral power to the state superintendent to abolish ethnic studies classes. This documentary provides an insider’s perspective as student leaders fight to save their classes, mobilizing rapidly with texts, Facebook, optimism and a megaphone. Lawmakers and politicians mount a public relations campaign to discredit the passionate students, claiming that Paulo Freire’s textbook The Pedagogy of the Oppressed teaches victimization and sedition.
May 24 – “Left By The Ship”
JR, Charlene, Margarita and Robert are half American; they are among the many children born to U.S. servicemen who were stationed on military bases in the Philippines until 1992. Like most Filipino Amerasians, they were left behind by their biological fathers and largely forgotten. Over the course of two years, they delve into the psychological and social consequences of the U.S. military presence and its legacy.
May 31 – “Hell and Back Again”
What does it mean to lead men in war? What does it mean to come home — injured physically and psychologically — and build a life anew? In “Hell and Back Again,” two overlapping narratives are intercut — the life of a Marine at war on the front and the life of the same Marine in recovery at home — creating both a dreamlike quality and a strikingly realistic depiction of how Marines experience this war.
Nature
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Wednesdays at 8:00pm
NATURE has been the benchmark of natural history programs on television, capturing the splendors of the natural world from the African plains to the Antarctic ice. The series has won more than 600 honors from the television industry, parent groups, the international wildlife film community and environmental organizations, including 10 Emmys, three Peabodys and the first award given to a television program by the Sierra Club. Find out more about NATURE at pbs.org/wnet/nature/
May 2 – “Born Wild, First Days of Life”
The most important moment of an animal’s life is its birth. The newborn emerges from dark safety to find anxious parents clucking or mewing. The first hours are some of the most dangerous. This film follows the birth and first day of several species, from marmoset to moose to elephant and gorilla. It is a film of miniature drama and huge spectacle, and comes to some 
surprising conclusions about human beings.
May 9 – “The White Lions”
This is the story of two remarkable and extremely rare white lion cubs on their journey to adulthood. Both are female, sisters born as white as snow in May 2009 in South Africa’s Kruger Park. Growing up on the savanna, they must overcome not only the same survival challenges that all young lion cubs must 
face, they must also overcome the threats their high visibility brings.
May 16 – “Cracking the Koala Code”
Follow individual koalas from a small social group on an Australian island to learn just how a koala manages to survive and thrive on a diet poisonous to almost all other herbivorous mammals. From the miracle of marsupial birth to tender moments of discovery between mother and newborn joey, encounters with threatening forest creatures, battles between rival males and the complex chorus of bellows and grunts that have become so important to science — join leading scientists as they unravel just what a forest needs to support a healthy population of koalas by listening to these marsupials themselves and 
cracking the koala code.
May 23 – “Salmon: Running the Gauntlet”
Examine a wildly creative, hopelessly complex and stunningly expensive approach to managing salmon.
May 30 – “Black Mamba”
See how a team of herpetologists tries to change public perception of a misunderstood snake, the black mamba.
Finding Your Roots
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Sundays at 8:00pm
This 10-part series, with renowned cultural critic and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., journeys deep into the ancestry of a group of remarkable individuals and provides new understanding of personal identity and American history. Featuring Kevin Bacon, Cory Booker, Angela Buchdal, Geoffrey Canada, Margaret Cho, Harry Connick Jr., Robert Downey Jr., Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Samuel L. Jackson, John Legend, John Lewis, Branford Marsalis, Yasir Qadhi, Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Rodriguez, Kyra Sedgwick, Wanda Sykes, Ruth Simmons, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and Rick Warren.
April 29 - Samuel L. Jackson, Condoleezza Rice and Brown University president, Ruth Simmons, have each climbed to the pinnacle of their profession, yet each started life as a second-class citizen in the Jim Crow south. DNA is used to investigate family mysteries: Where in Africa do they come from and who are the white men in their family trees?
May 6 – The three guests in this episode are all children of first- or second-generation immigrants and share the peculiar burdens of that heritage. In an episode that crisscrosses the planet, from India to Korea to Poland, catch a glimpse of three distinct yet oddly overlapping experiences of families leaving their homes and becoming American.
May 13 – Most African Americans struggle to trace their ancestors beyond Emancipation; slavery erased names and family ties with brutal efficiency. But what about the descendants of the handful of free black people who evaded bondage during that terrible time? Musician John Legend and comedian Wanda Sykes discover the extraordinary stories of the free black ancestors they never knew about, while Professor Gates himself and his 98-year-old friend Margarett Cooper delve into the mysteries shrouding the free people of color in their family trees.
May 20 - Michelle Rodriguez, Adrian Grenier and Linda Chavez all share Spanish colonial roots, yet each views their own identity very differently. In this episode we ask what it means to be Hispanic-and find that the answer lies in the tangled histories of European, Native American and African peoples. Crisscrossing Mexico, Spain, the Caribbean, and the Southwest, Professor Gates reveals stories of ancestral Conquistadors, Indian rebels, and "Crypto-Jews" (Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism to survive the Inquisition, yet continued to practice their religion in secret)-showing that the American experience has been shaped by people who were in the New World long before the Mayflower.
Masterpiece Mystery! Sherlock
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Sundays at 9:00pm
The struggle goes on in 21st-century London as the updated team of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson battle the worst that modern criminality has to offer, including a computer-savvy arch-villain who wants to rule the world. Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) returns as the world’s foremost consulting detective, with Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, "The Office" UK) as the stalwart, if edgy, Dr. John Watson, and Andrew Scott ("Lennon Naked") as the unassuming mastermind of evil, Jim Moriarty.
May 6 – A Scandal in Belgravia”
Sherlock and Watson are plunged into a case of blackmail involving crafty dominatrix Irene Adler, whose motto is "know when you are beaten." It seems she has incriminating photos of a session with a British royal. Can she outsmart Sherlock at his own game? And at a battle he is ill prepared to wage — love?
May 13 – The Hounds of Baskerville”
Sherlock and Watson pursue the trail of the Baskerville experiments — top-secret government research on genetically engineered gigantic animals for military use. Or so it is rumored. Whatever the truth, something big is up on the moors.
May 20 – The Reichenbach Fall”
In what may be the climatic case of his career, Sherlock faces Moriarty’s diabolical plot to “get Sherlock,” which begins innocently enough when the criminal mastermind breaks into the Crown Jewels. As the scheme unfolds, Moriarty poses the “final problem,” and a tabloid reporter reveals the “shocking truth” about the great detective.
Great Performances at the Met: The Enchanted Island
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Friday, May 18 at 9:00pm
This extraordinary new work combines the world’s best singers, the glorious music of the Baroque masters, and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In “The Enchanted Island,” the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on the other-worldly island of The Tempest.
Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the work showcases arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and others, and a new libretto by Jeremy Sams. Eminent conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast featuring David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo, with special guest star Plácido Domingo.
