Latest Documentaries

The Horse

In the salt marshes of the Camargue, Chris explores the evolutionary beginnings of animal movement and how it reached its peak in one of the most elegant and athletic animals on Earth: the horse.

Evolution • 2026 • Nature

The Dolphin

In the Bahamas, Chris dives into one of the biggest questions in nature - how intelligence itself evolved, and how it arose in the dolphin's mind. Inside each is the result of a three-billion-year journey.

S1E4Evolution • 2026 • Nature

The Bat

In Borneo, Chris sets out to answer a deceptively simple question: how the drive to find food shaped life on Earth, and gave rise to one of nature’s most insatiable feeders. This feeding frenzy has origins from half a billion years ago.

S1E3Evolution • 2026 • Nature

The Ostrich

In South Africa, Chris finds out how reproduction has shaped life on Earth and the surprising evolutionary origins of sex, eggs and birds. This is a journey of innovation, adaptation and astonishing creativity.

S1E2Evolution • 2026 • Nature

The Elephant

In Kenya, Chris embarks on a journey through time to uncover how a creature as vast, complex and charismatic as the elephant came to be. It's a story of innovations, lucky breaks and unlikely partnerships.

S1E1Evolution • 2026 • Nature

The Odyssey with Dan Snow

Dan Snow sets sail across the Mediterranean in the wake of Homer's The Odyssey. This epic was written down almost 3,000 years ago, and it has been loved by generations of filmmakers, artists, authors and historians since. Now Dan re-tells the story visiting the harbours, mysterious islands and incredible ancient locations across Greece that inspired The Odyssey.

2026 • Travel

The Tech Billionaire Takeover

A new generation of tech billionaires believe their technologies can replace democracy as we know it and upend the global financial system. Matt Shea gets inside access to this new super-elite, visiting the sovereign nations they're building and tracing their growing political connections to the Trump administration. Are these men trying to take over the world?

2026 • Technology

ROMANIA: The Country Everyone Gets Wrong

Most people hear "Romania" and immediately picture Dracula, the gothic myths of Bran Castle, or the grey, concrete remnants of the communist era. But the reality of this nation in Eastern Europe is far more complex, untamed, and beautiful.

2026 • Travel

The Hadron Collider: In Search of the Peace Particle

In the aftermath of Hiroshima, a group of scientists vowed never to turn knowledge into weapons again, and from that promise, CERN was born. Deep underground, researchers from nations in conflict have worked side by side for decades, driven by curiosity and shared wonder. For 70 years, CERN has stood as an act of hope, a place where collaboration transcends borders, even as the world above grows more divided. Blending poetry, music and rare archival footage of nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer with remarkable access to the Large Hadron Collider, the film explores how science, politics and culture collide.

2026 • Physics

OnlyFans: Inside the Machine

Behind the billion-pound success of OnlyFans lies a hidden ecosystem of exploitation. A BBC Current Affairs investigation uncovers allegations of exploitation, coercion and violence committed by some of the hundreds of agents who manage many of the platform's creators as well as the potential for modern slavery. Through survivor testimony, undercover access to a managers' chat forum and expert legal analysis, the film exposes an industry where young women are trapped, threatened and profited from - raising urgent questions about accountability at the heart of one of Britain's most lucrative tech companies.

2026 • Economics

Dolly: The World's Most Famous Sheep

The story of the cloned sheep that was the first mammal to be created from an adult cell, and the unassuming lab that changed scientific history, leading to press stampedes, presidential panic, protests and even a failed kidnapping plot. As Dolly blinked up at the cameras, the Roslin science team's sleepy lab became the centre of an ethical uproar.

2026 • Science

Building the Sun - The World's Largest Fusion Project

ITER is an international attempt to meet humanity's energy needs by harnessing nuclear fusion. We take you within the ITER project to see how close the technology is to becoming a reality.

2026 • Science

Recommended Documentaries

The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth

The Ship of the Imagination embarks on a journey through space and time to grasp how the autobiography of the Earth is written in its atoms, its oceans, its continents and all living things. Later, American geologist Marie Tharp creates the first true map of Earth's ocean floor, and discovers microscopic life that exists deep beneath the ocean.

S1E9Cosmos: A Spacetime OdysseyAstronomy

Oceans

Deep beneath the water's surface, the world's largest predator -- the Mosasaurus -- lies in wait to ambush unsuspecting prey.

S2E4Prehistoric Planet • 2023 • Nature

Transilvania - Part II

The second leg of the journey through Transilvania. We pick up our journey in the fields just outside the scenic village of Crit.

S1E6Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel

Don't Grow Old

For centuries scientists have been attempting to come up with an elixir of youth. Now remarkable discoveries are suggesting that ageing is something flexible that can ultimately be manipulated.

HorizonHealth

Credit Cards

Credit cards changed the global economy and attitudes about personal spending, but record levels of consumer debt beg the question: Just who's in charge?

S2E3History 101 • 2022 • Technology

How to Find Fulfilling Work

The key to finding fulfilling work is to think a lot, analyse one's fears, understand the market, reflect on capitalism.

The School of Life • 2015 • Lifehack

Music Documentaries

How playing an instrument benefits your brain

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians' brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.

TED-EdMusic

Revolution

Suzy Klein takes us back to the volatile years following the Russian Revolution and World War I, when music was seen as a tool to change society. Suzy explores the gender-bending cabarets of 1920s Berlin and smashes a piano in the spirit of the Bolshevik revolution. She also reveals why one orchestra decided to work without a conductor, uncovers the dark politics behind Mack the Knife and probes the satirical songs which tried to puncture the rise of the Nazis. Suzy's musical stories are brought to life with the help of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its Chorus, as well as solo performers. This was a golden age for music, and its jazz, popular songs, experimental symphonies and classics like Rachmaninoff all provoke debate - what kind of culture do we want? Is music for the elite or for the people? Was this a new age of liberal freedom to be relished - or were we hurtling towards the apocalypse?

S1E1Tunes for Tyrants • 2017 • Music

Nigeria

DJ and broadcaster Rita Ray travels to Nigeria, home of some of the most influential African music of the last 60 years. The country's extraordinary polyrhythms have powered highlife, funk and Afrobeat for decades, and can still be heard in modern pop music. Travelling to Lagos and beyond, Rita traces the importance of rhythm in Nigeria's music and discovers the many different musical styles it has created, from Yoruba juju music, to acoustic singer-songwriters and world-class pop.

1Africa: A Journey into Music • 2018 • Music

Concerto - A Beethoven Journey with Leif Ove Andsnes

Filmed over the course of four years, award-winning director Phil Grabsky follows one of the world's greatest pianists, Leif Ove Andsnes, as he attempts, in a series of sold-out worldwide performances, to interpret one of the greatest sets of works for piano ever written - Beethoven's five piano concertos.

2015 • Music

Whole Lotta Shakin

In episode two, Whole Lotta Shakin', the rock 'n' roll story continues with the boom in the sound across America and its move into mainstream culture thanks to seminal TV appearances from Elvis, who made his small-screen debut with a rendition of Heartbreak Hotel before his notoriously sexualised performance of Hound Dog that caused shockwaves across conservative America. The programme explores the media's failed attempts to suppress the genre before wholesome Buddy Holly calmed the waters, converting geeky looks into chart success, before scandal again in 1958 with Elvis's conscription to the army and Jerry Lee Lewis's career suicide when he married his 13-year-old cousin.

S1E2Rock and Roll America • 2015 • Music

The Most Dangerous Band in the World: The Story of Guns N' Roses

It was 1985. Guns N' Roses were soon to be known as the last mammoth rock entity to come out of LA after selling over 100 million albums. Jon Brewer brings alive never-before-seen video footage of Guns N' Roses in their earliest days as a fledgling band, filmed and meticulously archived over the years by their close friend. They became known as 'the most dangerous band in the world' and retained the title for reasons this film portrays, via interviews with band members and those who were there on, and off, tour. Venture down seedy Sunset Strip to the Whiskey, the Rainbow and the Roxy, all known as 'the Jungle'.

2016 • Music

Design Documentaries

USA

Piers and Caroline end their tour in Florida with a waterfront wonder, a modest pavilion, a modernist showpiece and a high-end home built on stilts

S2E1The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2018 • Design

Future Crisis

The future of graphics in crisis.

S1E5A Brief History of Graphics • 2014 • Design

Norway

Piers and Caroline travel to Norway to see a charming family cottage, a summer house built around a rock, a daring concrete home and a rugged retreat.

S2E7The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design

Helvetica

A documentary about typography, graphic design, and global visual culture.

2007 • Design

Mountain

They begin in California, viewing a property built from the wings and tail fins of a Boeing 747. In Arizona, the pair stay in a modern house with an innovative take on an ancient technique of absorbing the heat during the day and releasing it at night. In New Zealand, Caroline and Piers view a house camouflaged using cedar cladding, while their last stop takes them to a hexagonal alpine chalet with a steel chimney core that anchors it to the mountain.

S1E1The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2017 • Design

CRASH: The Year Video Games Died

Lil' piece of Arcade history.

2016 • Design

Random! Documentaries

Dunkirk: Mission Impossible

(contains all 3 parts)Former Royal Marine JJ Chalmers uses his own devastating experiences of war to give his perspective on the evacuation of Allied soldiers in May and June 1940.

2022 • History

How do we measure distance in space?

When we look at the sky, we have a flat, two-dimensional view. So how do astronomers figure the distances of stars and galaxies from Earth? Yuan-Sen Ting shows us how trigonometric parallaxes, standard candles and more help us determine the distance of objects several billion light years away from Earth.

TED-Ed • 2014 • Physics

Marine Animals

A look at marine wildlife around the world, Oceans cover more than 70 percent of our planet. This is where life on earth began. And where it continues to surprise those looking for animal encounters with bite. Scientists are discovering new species every day here, on our shorelines, on our reefs and out to sea. These watery wonderlands are home to the largest, and indeed many of the smallest, creatures on Earth.

S1E4World's Greatest Animal Encounters • 2020 • Nature

Clever Monkeys

David Attenborough's entertaining romp through the world of monkeys has a serious side: for when we look at monkeys, we can see ourselves. From memory to morality, from 'crying wolf' to politics, monkeys are our basic blueprint. Pygmy marmosets 'farm' tree sap; bearded capuchins in Brazil develop a production line for extracting palm nuts; white-faced capuchins in Costa Rica tenderly nurse the victims of battle; and in the Ethiopian highlands, a deposed gelada baboon has got the blues. Cheating, lying and bare-faced murder are all there too. These revelations of simian science, combined with captivating photography, make this film about monkey business our business.

2008 • Nature

The Science of Sleep: How To Sleep Better

The British Sleep Council says that 70 per cent of people in the UK do no get enough sleep. Gaby Roslin and Amir Khan present the first of two programmes in which they aim to put things right, applying the latest science to some of the worst sleepers. They include a sleep deprivation experiment, as well as help for an extreme snorer and a man who suffers from night terrors. A woman who has restless leg syndrome, and a man who has had chronic insomnia for 20 years. The sleep deprivation experiment continues, setting up a mini casino to test for risky behaviour, pain resistance and emotional control. Finally, as the subjects reach the final hours of the challenge, the experiment begins to take its toll as the participants' emotions go into overdrive, with one threatening to quit altogether.

2019 • Lifehack

Bonaire

With crystal-clear waters, breathtaking marine life, and teeming biodiversity, the Caribbean island of Bonaire is a top destination for ecotourists. Visit one of the world's great ocean parks and see how the influx of travelers is fueling an ambitious project to conserve it.

S1E1Ocean Parks • 2015 • Nature