Bettany goes way back in time, where myth and historical reality blend - to Sardis and to Gordion, home of King Midas, the man with the golden touch
S1E2 • Dawn of Civilisations • 2026 • History
From Ephesus to Cappadocia, from Ani to Divrigi, and from the world's first societies and weapons to the birth of myths and empires, this is the story of where it all began
S1E1 • Dawn of Civilisations • 2026 • History
Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks killed almost 3,000 people, tens of thousands of newly released documents are shedding fresh light on the claim that individuals working for the Saudi government might have been involved. Panorama investigates the role of Omar al-Bayoumi, who helped the first two hijackers after they arrived in America. A US judge has found that he could have been an agent working on the instructions of the Saudi government – something he, and Saudi Arabia, have always denied. After being arrested by British police and held for seven days, al-Bayoumi was released and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia. But Jane McMullen, reporting for Panorama, explores whether UK officers and FBI agents had access to all the available evidence against him. She uncovers never-before-broadcast video footage, hears from people close to the case who have never spoken before and asks why significant evidence remained hidden for so long.
Marc-André Leclerc climbs alone, far from the limelight. The free-spirited 23-year-old makes some of the boldest solo ascents in history. With no cameras and no margin for error, Leclerc's approach is the essence of solo adventure.
2021 • People
We turn the camera on the extraordinary people who are dedicating their lives to helping the animals cope with today's extreme weather.
S1E6 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
New extremes of heat and drought are pushing the extraordinary behavioural and physical adaptations of wombats, leopards and kangaroo rats to their very limits.
S1E5 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
Andrew Lincoln narrates a look at how animals adapted to the cold are struggling in a warming world. A snow leopard in the peaks of the Indian Himalayas is forced from his home by a rival male, while an Arctic ground squirrel in Alaska undertakes the coldest migration of any mammal, and a young Arctic fox in Svalbard must face her first winter alone.
S1E4 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
The world's coastal regions have always been an extreme environment to raise a family, but warming seas are exacerbating the challenges of parenthood. A hurricane hits a flamingo colony while chicks are still on the nest, a sea otter faces a huge winter storm in California, a clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef sees its anemone home bleached, and a little anole lizard clings on during a hurricane.
S1E3 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
As the planet's shifting rain patterns rewrite the rules, survival is no longer about strength alone. From the desert to the jungle, three mothers face the ultimate test of survival as monsoon floodwaters tear through pygmy elephant territory in Borneo, a female platypus in Australia watches a flash flood destroy her home river, and a flood in Africa brings prey to a lone lioness. Andrew Lincoln narrates.
S1E2 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
An owl protects its chicks underground, cheetahs struggle through record floods in Kenya, and a polar bear searches for disappearing Arctic sea ice as extreme weather intensifies across the planet.
S1E1 • Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature
As internal crises, economic strain, and repeated barbarian invasions intensify, the Western Empire fractures and collapses in 476, while the Eastern Empire survives and evolves into the Byzantine state centered on Constantinople.
S1E2 • The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History
From a small Italian city-state to Mediterranean superpower, this episode traces Rome’s expansion, the transition from Republic to Empire under Augustus, and the stability and prosperity of the Pax Romana that cemented imperial dominance.
S1E1 • The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History
Professor Alice Roberts meets our ancient ancestral family, from armadillos to sharks, and discovers our true place in the tree of life. With 4D scanning, giant origami and a ukulele, they will explore evolution like never before.
S1E1 • Who Am I (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures) • 2018 • 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.
S1E1 • Galapagos with David Attenborough • 2010 • Nature
This programme focuses on birds. The feather is key to everything that is crucial about a bird: it is both its aerofoil and its insulator. The earliest feathers were found on a fossilised Archaeopteryx skeleton in Bavaria. However, it had claws on its wings and there is only one species alive today that does so: the hoatzin, whose chicks possess them for about a week or so. Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the probable movement of its ancestor. It may have taken to the trees to avoid predators, and over time, its bony, reptilian tail was replaced by feathers and its heavy jaw evolved into a keratin beak.
8/13 • Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature
We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.
2009 • Environment
NOVA and National Geographic present exclusive access to a unique discovery of ancient remains. Located in an almost inaccessible chamber deep in a South African cave, the site required recruiting a special team of experts slender enough to wriggle down a vertical, pitch-dark, seven-inch-wide passage. Most fossil discoveries of human relatives consist of just a handful of bones. But down in this hidden chamber, the team uncovered an unprecedented trove—so far, over 1,500 bones—with the potential to rewrite the story of our origins. They may help fill in a crucial gap in the fossil record and tell us how Homo, the first member of the human family, emerged from ape-like ancestors like the famous Lucy. But how did hundreds of bones end up in the remote chamber? The experts are considering every mind-boggling possibility. Join NOVA on the treacherous descent into this cave of spectacular and enigmatic finds, and discover their startling implications for the saga of what made us human.
This programme is the second in a series looking at four great modern artists: Warhol, Matisse, Picasso and Dali. Tracing the biography of this fascinating artist, and travelling through France, America and Russia, the programme explores some of the painter's greatest works. Sooke explains why Matisse's art is considered so great and also looks at how Matisse's brilliant use of colour and simplification of form continues to inspire illustrators, designers and of course artists today. Acknowledging the debt the famous couturier Yves St Laurent owed the painter, Sooke also talks to British designers Sir Paul Smith and Tricia Guild about their passion for Matisse, he travels to Utrecht to discover how even children's character Miffy the rabbit owes its origin to art, and reveals how logos and images as diverse as Apple's iPod advertising and even the 2012 olympic logo are inspired by the modern master.
S1E2 • Modern Masters • 2015 • Creativity
Vincent van Gogh's life has long captured the imagination, but who was he really? Tim Marlow delves into his fascinating and sometimes deeply troubled world.
S2E2 • Great Art • 2018 • Creativity
This time it is the turn of the heist movie, with its unique combination of suspense and action. Whether it is the big bank job or netting a fortune in diamonds, why, asks Mark, do otherwise law-abiding audiences find themselves rooting for robbers and even killers? More than any other genre, the heist movie plays with our sympathies, encouraging us to identify with characters we would run a mile from in real life. From The Asphalt Jungle to Ocean's Eleven by way of The Italian Job and even The Wrong Trousers, Mark shows how recurring character types, such as the mastermind, and sequences like the planning scene and the getaway, draw us into the big score. And he demonstrates how recent hits like Inception, The Wolf of Wall Street and Baby Driver have pushed the conventions of the heist in thrilling new directions. At the box office, at least, crime really does pay.
Part 2 • Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema • 2018 • Creativity
This film takes a magical and widely travelled journey to discover how different contemporaries of Monet built and cultivated modern gardens to explore expressive motifs, abstract colour, decorative design and utopian ideas.
S3E4 • Great Art • 2019 • Creativity
Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
2008 • Creativity
Why are most manhole covers round? Sure it makes them easy to roll, and slide into place in any alignment. But there’s another, more compelling reason, involving a peculiar geometric property of circles and other shapes. Marc Chamberland explains curves of constant width and Barbier’s theorem.
Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the "infinity of infinities" -- and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.
In Egypt, professor Marcus du Sautoy uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand and discovers that the way we tell the time is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system. In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a counting tool into the analytical subject of today.
S1E1 • The Story of Maths • Math
A witty and mind-expanding exploration of data, with mathematician Dr Hannah Fry. This high-tech romp reveals what data is and how it is captured, stored, shared and made sense of. Fry tells the story of the engineers of the data age, people most of us have never heard of despite the fact they brought about a technological and philosophical revolution. For Hannah, the joy of data is all about spotting patterns. Hannah sees data as the essential bridge between two universes - the tangible, messy world that we see and the clean, ordered world of maths, where everything can be captured beautifully with equations. The film reveals the connection between Scrabble scores and online movie streaming, explains why a herd of dairy cows are wearing pedometers, and uncovers the network map of Wikipedia. What's the mystery link between marmalade and One Direction? The film hails the contribution of Claude Shannon, the mathematician and electrical engineer who, in an attempt to solve the problem of noisy telephone lines, devised a way to digitise all information. Shannon singlehandedly launched the 'information age'. Meanwhile, Britain's National Physical Laboratory hosts a race between its young apprentices in order to demonstrate how and why data moves quickly around modern data networks. It's all thanks to the brilliant technique first invented there in the 1960s by Welshman Donald Davies - packet switching. But what of the future? Should we be worried by the pace of change and what our own data could be used for? Ultimately, Fry concludes, data has empowered all of us. We must have machines at our side if we're to find patterns in the modern-day data deluge. But, Fry believes, regardless of AI and machine learning, it will always take us to find the meaning in them.
2016 • Math
Without us noticing, modern life has been taken over. Algorithms run everything from search engines on the internet to satnavs and credit card data security - they even help us travel the world, find love and save lives. Professor Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms. By showing us some of the algorithms most essential to our lives, he reveals where these 2,000-year-old problem solvers came from, how they work, what they have achieved and how they are now so advanced they can even programme themselves.
2015 • Math
As Nobunaga's ambitions intensify, some generals begin to question his command, leading to a betrayal that alters the political landscape forever.
S1E3 • Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan • 2021 • History
We humans love to build, create, and organize. So why do we also love to destroy things? Can violently breaking stuff really help to calm us down, or does it just make us more angry? In this episode of Mind Field, I take a hard look at our urge to destroy.
S1E3 • Mind Field • 2017 • Brain
In many of the earth's natural wonders there is an abundance of animals. These can be a devastating threat to the people who live there, or they can provide a means of survival, but often at a high price. In the coastal salt marshes of northern Australia's Arnhem Land, Indigenous Australians still go hunting for the eggs of one of the world's most aggressive predators - the saltwater crocodile. Vanuatu is an island paradise in the south Pacific, but life here isn't perhaps as idyllic as it appears. Overfishing has reduced fish stocks, making food harder to come by for the indigenous islanders like 45-year-old Nigasau.
S1E2 • Earth's Natural Wonders: Series 2 • 2018 • Nature
King and Country tells the story of the first years of war in 1914 and 1915, culminating in the Battle of Loos when the Pals Battalions who had enthusiastically volunteered to serve had their first taste of the horror of mass industrialized warfare.
S1E1 • The First World War: The Peoples Story Series • 2021 • History
Following extraordinary rumours of tigers living in the mountains of Bhutan, the expedition shifts to high altitude. Cameraman Gordon Buchanan captures remarkable footage of a snow leopard cub from over 5,000 metres in the air. Along the Tibetan border, explorer Steve Backshall treks to the mystical Tiger Mountain, where he has a very close encounter with the world's most elusive predator.
S1E3 • Lost Land of the Jaguar • 2009 • Nature
Japan has more than 100 active volcanoes--two in particular may be on the verge of unleashing a devastating sequence of deadly eruptions and secondary earthquake activity. Join intrepid volcanologist Tom Pfeiffer's dangerous and exhilarating journey to the foot of these angry giants.
S2E4 • Volcanic Odysseys • 2016 • Environment