Getting get-iplayer working on your Raspberry Pi is now easier than ever. Assuming you are running Raspbian:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install get-iplayer ffmpeg atomicparsley libmp3-info-perl

Thanks to raspi.tv for this.

You can read the man page as well as I can, but for those unfamiliar with the command line interface of get-iplayer the following will get you started:

List all available programmes:
get-iplayer

List programmes in a specific category:
get-iplayer –category history

Search for programmes with a specific word in the title:
get-iplayer specific word

From the above you will see for each programme a number at the start of each line, use these numbers to download the programmes you want for offline viewing (please note the restrictions on what you can do with these files):

get-iplayer –modes best –output outputdirectory –get programme numbers separated by spaces