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No music. No commentary. HOMO SAPIENS is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we’re gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago.
2016 • Environment
In France, Henry III still has no heir. Catherine de Medici is determined to prevent him from being the last of the Valois line and leaving the throne to Henry of Navarre. Yet again, the wind of revolt blows over the kingdom of France and leads to the assassination of Henry, Duke of Guise.
S2E6 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
Mary, Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate and flee to England, where Queen Elizabeth has her imprisoned. Refusing to acknowledge her cousin as her legitimate heir, Elizabeth accepts to wed one of Catherine de Medici’s sons. In Flanders, William I requests military assistance from France.
S2E5 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
In the name of religious tolerance, Catherine de Medici weds her Catholic daughter, Margaret of Valois, to the young Protestant heir of the Bourbon dynasty, Henry of Navarre. Protestants and Catholics are both in attendance. This event leads to the most infamous bloodbath in France's history.
S2E4 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
In France, perfidy and treason plunge the French Kingdom into chaos. Behind new king Charles IX, Catherine de Medici rules in the background as master of the throne. However, she is unable to prevent a civil war.
S2E3 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
The rise of Protestantism is dividing Europe. This is the beginning of the Wars of Religion. While celebrating an alliance treaty, Henry II dies during a jousting tournament. Espionage, conspiracies, treason - his son, the sickly Francis II, sees his life and his reign threatened by the Protestants.
S2E2 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
Recommended
In this film Brian asks how a lifeless cosmos can produce a planet of such varied biology.
3/5 • Wonders of Life • Nature
How we finally came to understand the science of electricity.
This episode details the relationship between flowers and insects. There are some one million classified species of insect, and two or three times as many that are yet to be labelled. Around 300 million years ago, plants began to enlist insects to help with their reproduction, and they did so with flowers. Although the magnolia, for instance, contains male and female cells, pollination from another plant is preferable as it ensures greater variation and thus evolution. Flowers advertise themselves by either scent or display. Some evolved to produce sweet-smelling nectar and in turn, several insects developed their mouth parts into feeding tubes in order to reach it.
4/13 • Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature
The islands of the Galapagos rose explosively from the ocean four million years ago. Although life would not seem viable in such a remote Pacific outpost, the first arrivals landed as the fires still burned. David Attenborough explores the islands for the animals and plants that descend from these pioneers: from the sea birds carrying the seeds that made a tentative foothold on these rocks, to equator-dwelling penguins and a dancing bird with blue feet. This is a story of treacherous journeys, life-forms that forged unlikely companionships, and surviving against all odds. It is the story of an evolutionary melting pot in which anything and everything is possible.
1/4 • Galapagos with David Attenborough • 2010 • Nature
A look at how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges and ingenious solutions.
2/8 • Human Planet • Environment
Using high-speed cameras, Richard reveals the world hidden in the time it takes to blink.
Design
'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Johannes Vermeer is one of the most enduring paintings in the history of art, but despite its popularity, the painting itself is surrounded by mystery. Who was this girl, why and how was it painted, and why is it so revered? This film takes us on a journey through the masterpieces of the extensively-renovated Mauritshuis in The Hague in the Netherlands to try to answer many of the questions surrounding this enigmatic painting and its mysterious creator.
Sarah Hall designs architectural glass for buildings around the world. Now she installs one of her most ambitious designs to date, a series of giant solar energy collecting windows in a cathedral. It will be the first Cathedral in the world to incorporate solar energy into its design.
2/6 • Great Minds of Design • 2012 • Design
Explore the history of WoW with its creators, and journey into corners of Blizzard and the WoW community you’ve never seen before.
Israel serves up a palatial family estate, a pastoral property that filters the elements, a house built on a cliff and a home with three gardens.
S2E8 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design
Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin explore unusual homes built underground. In Greece, they view a house hidden beneath the landscape that still boasts stunning sea views. In the Swiss Alps, they visit a house made so invisible it has to be accessed via a tunnel. Next it's over to New Zealand's South Island to a house built underground to soften its impact on the landscape as well as withstand the threat of earthquakes, before the pair inspects a Dutch house created by deep excavation, which features a huge, light-filled open-plan living space.
S1E4 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2017 • Design
Explores more than a century of animation in Britain, including the creative and technical inventiveness of the UK's greatest animation pioneers. The defining characteristic of British animation has always been ingenuity. Unable to compete with the big American studios, animators in Britain were forced to experiment, developing their own signature styles. The documentary uncovers the trade secrets of animation legends like Bob Godfrey, John Halas and Joy Batchelor, Len Lye and Bristol's world-renowned Aardman Animations. Tracing the development of British animation from the end of the Victorian era to contemporary blockbusters, Secrets of British Animation shows the perseverance and determination that are part of the animator's mind-set. Focusing on the handmade tradition of animation in the UK, the programme includes newly-remastered early films from the archive of the British Film Institute.
2018 • Design
Technology
The Boeing 737 twin-engine jetliner was to become Boeing's greatest success. It had one of the lowest approach speeds of any jet transport, a great asset when landing at smaller airports with shorter runways. It also required minimum equipment for use in refueling. However, despite all its advantages, the 737 was soon overshadowed by the new, improved 747 Jumbo Jet.
10/13 • The Amazing World Of Aviation • 2009 • Technology
Only in the last 200 years have humans learned how to make things cold. Steven Johnson explains how ice entrepreneur Frederic Tudor made ice delivery one of the biggest export business in the U.S. and describes the place where Clarence Birdseye, the father of the frozen food industry, experienced his eureka moment. He also travels to Dubai to see how mastery of cold has led to penguins in the desert. From IVF to food, politics and Hollywood to human migration, the unsung heroes of cold have led the way.
5/6 • How We Got to Now • 2014 • Technology
The story of Nazi engineers tasked with fulfilling Hitler's megalomaniac demand for the construction of a land battleship weighing 1,000 tons.
4/6 • Nazi Megastructures • 2013 • Technology
Board a submarine with Steven Johnson to discover what a lack of natural light means for a sailor’s working day and visit Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport, to try to get timings right at air traffic control. The story of getting a grip on time is full of curious garage tinkerers. One of them, railway clerk William F. Allen, was so exasperated by the chaos caused by the hundreds of local times zones in the U.S. that he fought tirelessly to standardize time into four zones. Learn how advancements in navigation, the way we work, technology and travel would have been impossible without the unsung heroes of time.
2/6 • How We Got to Now • 2014 • Technology
There's a power revolution heading for our homes – a device that allows you to take power into your own hands. It starts with batteries, home batteries, and they've been called the holy grail of renewables – the key to the transition away from fossil fuels.
3/3 • Catalyst: Season 2 • 2017 • Technology
We explore the hidden history and super science of the nylon stocking, the LED and the toaster.
3/10 • Incredible Inventions • 2017 • Technology
Randoms!
One in three of us will develop cancer and many will die from it.
4/6 • Superhuman • 2001 • Health
Artist and writer Matt Collings takes the plunge into an alien world of equations. He asks top scientists to help him understand five of the most famous equations in science, talks to Stephen Hawking about his equation for black holes and comes face to face with a particle of anti-matter. Along the way he discovers why Newton was right about those falling apples and how to make sense of E=mc2. As he gets to grips with these equations he wonders whether the concept of artistic beauty has any relevance to the world of physics.
2010 • Physics
The final episode explores dinosaurs' extraordinary ability to survive. Featured dinosaurs include the bizarre magyarosaurus, which lived in the shadow of the biggest flying animal - hatzegopteryx - and showed an amazing adaptation to island life; and the weird nothronychus, a carnivore that gave up meat eating. This astonishing capacity to evolve into ever more diverse and bizarre forms meant that dinosaurs not only spread throughout the world, but also dominated life upon it for more than 160 million years. It was only an unprecedented extraterrestrial event that finally saw the end of planet dinosaur.
6/6 • Planet Dinosaur • 2011 • Nature
Dame Sally Davies talks to Brian Cox about her interest in antibiotic resistance and admiration of Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey for their development of penicillin.
4/6 • People of Science with Brian Cox • 2018 • Science
One of the most amazing facts in physics is that everything in the universe, from light to electrons to atoms, behaves like both a particle and a wave at the same time. But how did physicists arrive at this mind-boggling conclusion?
How is it that Beethoven, who is celebrated as one of the most significant composers of all time, wrote many of his most beloved songs while going deaf?