Latest Documentaries

Part 2

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

S1E2Dawn of Civilisations • 2026 • History

Part 1

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

S1E1Dawn of Civilisations • 2026 • History

9/11: The Saudi Connection

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.

Panorama • 2026 • History

The Alpinist

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

Into the Extreme

We turn the camera on the extraordinary people who are dedicating their lives to helping the animals cope with today's extreme weather.

S1E6Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

Boiling Point

New extremes of heat and drought are pushing the extraordinary behavioural and physical adaptations of wombats, leopards and kangaroo rats to their very limits.

S1E5Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

Melting Worlds

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.

S1E4Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

Savage Seas

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.

S1E3Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

Rising Waters

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.

S1E2Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

Extreme Earth

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.

S1E1Force of Nature • 2026 • Nature

The Fall

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.

S1E2The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History

The Rise

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.

S1E1The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire • 2026 • History

Recommended Documentaries

Elephant

In Amboseli, Kenya, a rare event pushes a struggling elephant family to its limits. To save their dynasty, they must work together and overcome the challenge of a lifetime.

S2E2Dynasties • 2022 • Nature

Bones

In the first episode, Dr Alice Roberts looks at how our skeleton reveals our incredible evolutionary journey.

S1E1Origins of UsNature

When Knowledge Conquered Fear

Neil deGrasse Tyson sets off on the Ship of the Imagination to chase a single comet through its million-year plunge toward Sol. Later, Tyson visits the birth-place of Sir Isaac Newton and retraces the unlikely friendship between Newton and brilliant polymath Edmond Halley. It was Halley's patience and generosity which allowed Newton to conquer his fear of isolation and find the courage to publish his masterwork, "Principia Mathematica" which launched a scientific revolution.

S1E3Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • 2014 • Astronomy

Can you be too rich?

The income gap is a growing concern with far-reaching implications. Bill explores ways to address inequality with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Mitt Romney.

S1E4What's Next: The Future with Bill Gates • 2024 • Technology

Inside the Social Network: Facebook's Difficult Year

Facebook is a company that has grown from nothing to be worth half a trillion dollars in just 15 years. Today nearly a third of all humans are using it, and yet we rarely get to see the people actually in charge of the biggest social network in the world. The company has suffered a series of deepening scandals and intense media scrutiny. In 2018, their mission - to connect everyone on the planet - seemed to be going dramatically wrong. Data leaks, fake news and hacks on user security were threatening to destroy everything Mark Zuckerberg had built. Yet throughout this difficult time, the company allowed the BBC’s flagship science strand Horizon to follow key members of the team trying to fix the problems and secure the platform. This film goes behind the scenes and follows the teams inside Facebook. It tackles difficult questions, like how our data is used and what content should and shouldn’t be on the site, but also shows how Facebook works, what the teams are doing to secure it, and reveals a hidden technological playground, where some of the smartest engineers in the world are being hired to build systems and technology no one has built before.

Horizon • 2019 • Economics

Life in the Wet Zone

David begins his journey inside the magnificent Palm House, a unique global rainforest in London. Here, he explores the extraordinary plants that are so well adapted to wet and humid environments and unravels the intimate relationships between wet zone plants and the animals that depend on them. It was in the wet zones of the world that plants first moved on to land and in the Waterlily House David reveals how flowers first evolved some 140 million years ago. Watching a kaleidoscope of breath-taking time-lapses of these most primitive of flowers swelling and blooming ...

S1E1Kingdom of Plants • 2012 • Nature

Health Documentaries

The Truth About... Dementia

Angela Rippon investigates the disease that took her mother's life and is now starting to affect her friends. She undergoes a series of tests to discover if she has any early signs of the disease and makes the difficult decision about whether to take a genetic test that could predict her future risk. Along the way, Angela finds out some of the surprising ways people can help to protect themselves. She discovers why getting a good night's sleep could help prevent Alzheimer's and how learning a new language might be more effective than any current drug treatment. Angela also visits a number of people who are living with the disease, including Bob, the husband of one of her oldest friends. She meets families that carry a gene for early-onset Alzheimer's and discovers how they could be the best hope of finding a cure for this devastating disease.

2016 • Health

The Most Important Question About Abortion

Is abortion right, or is it wrong? It's the big question that's lost in a societal debate that's mostly focused on legality. But, really, whether it's right or wrong is the most important question about abortion.

PragerU • 2015 • Health

The Truth About... Alcohol

A&E doctor Javid Abdelmoneim is on a mission to find out the truth about alcohol. In January, the government released its new alcohol guidelines. For men, the recommended weekly limit was cut by a third to 14 units per week, equivalent to about seven pints of beer, bringing it in line with the amount recommended for women. So what is behind the change? This is just one question of many that Javid aims to answer as he explores the science of drinking and the new evidence for the health risks of alcohol. Why do some people get drunk quicker than others? What is behind red wine's healthy reputation? Is a nightcap actually good for your sleep? Does lining your stomach work? And can alcohol actually make you eat more?

2016 • Health

Eating You Alive

How and why what we eat is the cause of the chronic diseases that are killing us, and changing what we eat can save our lives one bite at a time.

2018 • Health

Is Organic Really Better? Healthy Food or Trendy Scam?

Organic food is a huge trend: it promises a healthier and better life. But can Organic food really live up to the expectations or is it just baloney?

In a Nutshell • 2019 • Health

Disease X: Hunting the Next Pandemic

Virologist Dr Chris van Tulleken embarks on a global investigation into the hunt for the pathogen that could trigger the next pandemic and the cutting-edge science developed to tackle it. Known only as ‘Disease X’, it is shrouded in uncertainty. Its origin is unknown, how it could spread is unclear, but its impact could be much more severe than Covid-19.

Horizon • 2025 • Health

Brain Documentaries

What do brains do?

Brains and nervous systems do a lot of things, but overall their purpose seems to be to allow cells to communicate and behave together. But because gene's generally code for things that help reproduction, you can start to see harsh patterns in behavior.

This Place • 2014 • Brain

Mindfulness

Take a deep, cleansing breath and slowly exhale while being enlightened on the impact meditation can have on your mind and body.

S1E4The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain

Mind Reading

In this episode I visit a researcher who is studying memory by using machine learning and neuroimaging to detect and predict people's brain states. I also travel to Japan to meet with a team working on ways to record the content of peoples’ dreams.

S3E8Mind Field • 2019 • Brain

The Myth of Responsibility

Are we wholly responsible for our actions? We don’t choose our brains, our genetic inheritance, our circumstances, our milieu – so how much control do we really have over our lives? Philosopher Raoul Martinez argues that no one is truly blameworthy. Our most visionary scientists, psychologists and philosophers have agreed that we have far less free will than we think, and yet most of society’s systems are structured around the opposite principle – that we are all on a level playing field, and we all get what we deserve.

RSA Shorts • 2017 • Brain

Extremism

An investigation into hate, produced by Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney. Extremism expert Sasha Havlicek explores ideological factors that fuel hate and violence.

S1E4Why We Hate • 2019 • Brain

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Normal people can become monsters, given the right situation. That’s the standard narrative of the Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous psychological experiments of all time. But what if the cause of its participants’ cruel behavior wasn’t what we’ve always been told?

S3E4Mind Field • 2018 • Brain

Random! Documentaries

The Downfall of Nero

On 9th June 68 AD, Nero, Emperor of Rome, took his own life with the help of a servant, as troops came to arrest him for crimes against the state. His death ended the empire's first dynasty and ushered in an age of anarchy and civil war. With the aid of evidence from across the Roman world, including Nero's Golden House, Bettany examines his reign, his character and his relationships with his mother Agrippina, the Senate and the Roman populace.

S1E6Eight Days That Made Rome • 2017 • History

A Sky Full of Ghosts

Explores how light, time and gravity affects our perception of the universe.

S1E4Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • 2014 • Astronomy

Infinite Variety

The episode begins in the South American rainforest whose rich variety of life forms is used to illustrate the sheer number of different species. Since many are dependent on others for food or means of reproduction, David Attenborough argues that they couldn't all have appeared at once. He sets out to discover which came first, and the reasons for such diversity. He starts by explaining the theories of Charles Darwin and the process of natural selection, using the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands (where Darwin voyaged on HMS Beagle) as an example. Fossils provide evidence of the earliest life, and Attenborough travels a vertical mile into the Grand Canyon in search of them.

1/13Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature

Wild Extremes

The most extreme and wild parts of New Zealand are in the South Island, which lie towards Antarctica, in the path of the tempestuous 'roaring forties'. This is home to some of the most rapidly rising mountains in the world, the Southern Alps. From hyper-intelligent parrots to sinister snails with teeth and magical constellations of glow-worms, this is the story of New Zealand's wildest places and its most resilient pioneers, all of whom must embrace radical solutions to survive.

Part 2New Zealand: Earth's Mythical Islands • 2016 • Nature

Berlin, Germany

Do walls work? See how this ultra modern city, one of the most divided on earth, became a vibrant center for art, culture, and immigration. Kari Byron crash tests the ongoing urban experiment known as Berlin, and discovers what was once the most defining feature of the city, the Berlin Wall, has given way to an entirely unique urban experience.

S1E2Crash Test World • 2021 • Travel

The Ritchie Blackmore Story

Ritchie Blackmore is beyond doubt one of the all-time great guitar players. The Ritchie Blackmore Story traces the long and winding road of the guitar legend — from his early days as a session player (with legendary producer Joe Meek) and his early '60s combo the Outlaws up through his years guiding one of hard rock's finest bands, Deep Purple, the formation of Rainbow and into his recent work with Blackmore's Night. Ritchie has proven to be a master of the guitar across a multitude of styles. The 'man in black' helped invent neo-classical heavy metal with his medieval-oriented guitar solos. He gave the world perhaps the most played guitar riff ever with the opening notes to "Smoke on the Water." For the first time his story is told in this extraordinary rockumentary. "The Ritchie Blackmore Story" tells the career through some of it's historical performance and extensive specially recorded new interviews with Ritchie himself and many of his colleagues and admirers including: Brian May, Glenn Hughes, Lars Ulrich, Steve Lukather, Joe Satriani, the late Jon Lord, David Coverdale, Gene Simmons, Joe Lynn Turner, Steve Vai, Graham Bonnet and Ian Anderson. This is the definitive story of a true guitar legend.

2015 • Music