BBC Four 2005-2021
In September 2005, BBC Four saw its first relaunch to the channel's presentation package. Out went the simple 'reactive' idents, and in their place a series of much cleverer idents featuring scenes viewed from four different perspectives were introduced, with the BBC Four box logo sat in the centre rather than bottom left or right. Although initially these four quadrants featured clever camera tricks and optical illusions, later additions tended to just feature footage slightly offset to create the effect. Or, ever ones for consistency, would sometimes not feature the quadrant effect at all.
BBC Four (Gulls) - 2007
In 2005, a new presentation package was introduced featuring the screen split into 4 segments as an optical illusion, with the BBC Four box moved to the centre. An evening sky features in this ident with seagulls flying all around. For this 2007 example, they have also added the 'Channel of the Year' strapline to herald one of their industry award wins.
BBC Four (Library) - 2007
BBC Four - Christmas 2009
BBC Four (Promo) - Christmas 2009
A Christmas 2009 trailer for BBC Four, which for the most part retains the regular promotional style of the channel, just adding the 'floating' BBC blocks which were used on Christmas presentation across all of the BBC channels that year. Orson Welles has decided to pop in for Christmas this year, a mere 24 years after his death.
BBC Four (Gulls) - 2009
BBC Four (ECP) - 2009
BBC Four (Promo) - 2009
BBC Four (Lake) - 2010
A calm lake scene makes up the BBC Four optical illusion this time around. Whilst most of the original batch of idents were phased out of regular use from 2017 onwards and have popped up much less frequently since, the original lake one continues to make a regular appearance usually at startup and closedown as of 2019.
BBC Four - Christmas 2016
After 10 years of the same single Christmas ident with only minor tweaks to the centre logo, a second one was added to the BBC Four set for Christmas 2015 featuring reindeer walking through a snowy woodland, brought in to mark a special programme airing on the channel that year. This has similarly seen the centre logo tweaked in the years it's aired since with this example from 2016.
BBC Four (Flowers) - 2017
BBC Four (Houses) - 2017
BBC Four (Forest) - 2016
BBC Four (Space) - 2017
BBC Four (Promo) - 2017
BBC Four (ECP) - 2017
BBC Four (Gay Britannia Promo) - 2017
BBC Four (Gay Britannia) - 2017
BBC Four (Breakdown) - 2017
BBC Four (Snowy Landscape) - Christmas 2017
BBC 4.1 (AI TV Season) - 2018
BBC Four (Japanese Village) - 2019
One of three idents originally produced for a Japan Season in summer 2017 which were reintroduced in March 2019, with a slight re-edit to remove the Japanese numeral that had been present before. Whilst commonly being used into repeats of the Japanese season programming on the channel, the reintroduced idents have appeared before shows based in other countries in South East Asia. This one features traditional Japanese Minka Houses, and was filmed at the same time as 'The Art Of Japanese Life' documentary series which first aired during the season in June 2017.
BBC Four (Blossoms) - 2019
BBC Four (Mount Fuji) - 2019
BBC Four (Born Digital) - 2019
As part of a special short 'Born Digital' season in March 2019 to mark 30 years of the web, new idents were introduced to BBC Four showing things evoking 'satisfying' feelings - or some marketing spiel like that, as they attempted to latch on to an internet theme which had been seen on social media sites like Youtube. Here, a cake is decorated! Although initially promoted as being for the season, and thus possibly showing up on the books as part of the channel's promo budget rather than branding, the new idents continued to be used into other programmes well after the season had ended, alongside the existing four quadrant idents for the channel.
BBC Four (Born Digital) - 2019
BBC Four (Born Digital) - 2019
BBC Four (Born Digital) - 2019
BBC Four (Satisfying) - 2019
Although 5 'satisfying' idents were produced for the Born Digital season, only 4 actually aired during it. The fifth finally appeared a few weeks later at the start of April instead, with any references subsequently talking about it only describing them as 'satisfying' now. This one features another block of (presumably) sand being sliced. With the batch of idents being so generic in nature and making no real reference to the season they'd come with, it was little surprise that they were kept in the rotation from March onwards, providing BBC Four with with a mini-refresh on the cheap.
