Planet Ocean • 2012

58:00

This film follows Judi’s journey through the seasons and her mission to understand her woodland’s vital role in our history and our future. With the help of some of the best tree scientists and historians in the world, Judi unlocks the remarkable secret lives of trees and the stories that they tell us.

2017 • Environment

57:58

Iain Stewart investigates a new and controversial energy rush for the natural gas found deep underground. Sometimes, this is right under the places people live in. Getting it out of the ground involves hydraulic fracturing - or fracking. Iain travels to America to find to find out what it is, why it is a potential game changer and what we can learn from the US experience. He meets some of the people who have become rich from fracking as well as the communities worried about the risks.

Environment

89:00

Liz Bonnin works with some of the world's leading marine biologists and campaigners to discover the true dangers of plastic in our oceans and what it means for the future of all life on our planet, including us. Trillions of pieces of plastic are choking the very lifeblood of our earth, and every marine animal, from the smallest plankton to the largest mammals, is being affected. Can we turn back this growing plastic tide before it is too late?

2018 • Environment

28:59

James May asks the big questions about the weather, including what is a cloud?

S1E3 • James May's Things You Need to Know • 2011 • Environment

46:12

A look at scientists' claims about human contribution to global warming, and how statistician Leonard Tippet's investigation into snapping cotton threads helps predict extreme weather.

S1E2 • Climate Change by the Numbers • 2016 • Environment

96:15

HBO Original, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes takes a deep-dive behind the 1986 disaster of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Watch never before seen footage and get real-life accounts of the horrific accident. The story of Chernobyl told through a newly discovered hoard of dramatic footage filmed at the nuclear plant during the disaster and newly-recorded, deeply personal interviews of those who were there, directed by Emmy Award-winner and Russian-speaker James Jones. This gripping film tells the story of the disaster and its consequences entirely through extraordinary and immersive archive, shot at great risk in the hours, days, weeks and months after the accident by a handful of cameramen given access to the plant. These cameramen lived side by side with the "liquidators" who went to incredible and often fatal lengths to try to prevent another explosion and make the reactor safe. The reality of their bravery and heroism is more harrowing than any drama can portray. The footage, most of it never seen before in the West, has only now come to light after an extensive trawl by director James Jones and his colleagues of the state archives and other sources in Ukraine and Russia. For thirty-five years the story of what happened in April 1986 when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down has enthralled and horrified. Radio programmes and scripted dramas have all told their version of events. But no-one has made a documentary that reveals the full, shocking reality of this cataclysmic, world changing event – until now. Though many of the rescue workers died, a surprising number who appear prominently in the footage are still alive today. The film features newly recorded audio interviews with people involved in the original key moments of the footage – their memories of that fateful night and the aftermath haunting but also deeply humane. Amongst those interviews is Lyudmila Ihnatenko, whose firefighter husband Vasily died days after the accident, and who was pregnant at the time. She went onto lose her baby hours after she was born. "All the radiation I was inhaling, she absorbed it." From a ten-year-old schoolboy to a Russian general, we see how events at Chernobyl transformed the lives of millions of people. Soviet propaganda plays out as a backdrop, initially saying nothing of the disaster, Gorbachev eventually appearing to downplay what happened, putting his own citizens and the rest of the world at great risk. The film reveals how many people suffering from radiation poisoning, cancer and other illnesses were told that it had no connection to the accident. The state was in denial and was willing to lie to its own citizens to prevent the truth getting out. This film witnesses the incredible physical suffering of men who had sacrificed themselves for the greater good. The film shows how Chernobyl and the cover-up that followed sparked unprecedented distrust in the authorities, giving birth to a protest movement in Ukraine which would eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The modern resonance of a disaster which threatened millions of lives but was tragically mishandled by those in authority will have an obvious resonance to the contemporary audience. Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is the full, unadulterated true story of what happened in one of the most iconic but least understood tragedies of the twentieth century.

2022 • Environment