Two becomes 40 for BBC

It has brought us everything from Monty Python and the Young Ones to This Life and the Office.

This month, BBC2 celebrates its 40th birthday - and it has come a long way from the night of April 20, 1964, when its launch was scuppered by a power failure.

The channel went live the next morning with Play School, which eventually ran for 24 years. The show is just one of 40 featured in a new Radio Times list of BBC2's best.

Some, such as Newsnight and Have I Got News For You, are still going strong. Others are consigned to TV history, such as Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way, from 1980, and The Old Grey Whistle Test, from 1971.

Comedy shows feature heavily on the list, but the channel which transmitted Britain's first colour broadcast in 1967 also made ground-breaking history shows such as Civilisation, from the 1960s, and dramas such as I, Claudius. The most recent list entry is comedy Little Britain.