Seven days to finish watching programme?

[peter]

The BBC iPlayer help says "Once you’ve downloaded a programme, you have up to 30 days to play the programme. And once you’ve hit play you have up to seven days to finish watching it."
In the past when a programme was about to reach 30 days I used to start it and watch about 30 seconds, then stop it, and it was then available for seven days.
However recently, although it still says such programmes have a number of days "left to watch", they will not start.
Is there a bug in the latest version, and does anyone have a workaround?