Throng

The South Bank Show - Tim Burton
Sunday 20 January 2008 10:40pm - 11:40pm on ITV1.

The new season of The South Bank Show starts on Sunday 20 January with a profile of Tim Burton, a modern-day visionary of cinema and a director who has created a delightfully nightmarish universe all of his own.

Melvyn Bragg joins Tim Burton at Pinewood Studios, as he makes his latest film - the Sondheim musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.

The South Bank Show has exclusive interviews with the film’s stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (also Tim’s partner), as well as Stephen Sondheim (composer of Sweeney Todd), and clips from the film.

Burton’s first screen idol Christopher Lee discusses his work with Tim. As one of Tim’s classic horror actor icons, Burton went on to make Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. Another horror icon was Vincent Price, who voiced Tim’s first animation Vincent and appeared in Edward Scissorhands.

Also interviewed are Danny DeVito, (Penguin in Batman Returns, Big Fish and Mars Attacks) plus interviews with his closest friends and collaborators including Danny Elfman (composer on almost all of Tim’s films) and Rick Heinrichs (Production Designer on many of Tim’s films – Rick won an Oscar for Art Direction on Sleepy Hollow - and Tim’s friend and colleague of almost 30 years). With film clips from all of Tim’s classic films this is a South Bank Show to savour.

Tim Burton has also given The South Bank Show exclusive footage of the early movies he made at home as a child, and at college, not to mention exclusive sketches and drawings of his work from his private collection. Also included in this extraordinary profile is exclusive footage of Tim as a young animator at Disney in the early 1980s, talking about his first stop-motion project, Vincent – never seen before in public.

Still leading the way, The South Bank Show is the first ITV1 programme to be available on the internet in both podcast (audio) and vodcast (video) format at www.itv.com/southbank .