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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Horizon follows the story of Richard Gray and his remarkable recovery from a life-changing catastrophic stroke. The film shows the rarely seen journey back to recovery. Recorded by his documentary film-maker wife Fiona over four years, this film shows the hard work of recovery. Initially bed bound and unable to do anything, including speak, the initial outlook was bleak, yet occasionally small glimmers of hope emerged. Armed always with her camera, Fiona captures the moment Richard moves his fingers for the first time, and then over months she documents his struggle to relearn how to walk again. The story also features poignant footage delivered in a series of flashbacks, in which we see and hear Richard at his professional best. He was a peacekeeper with the United Nations, immersed in the brutal war in Sarajevo, Bosnia. We also hear from the surgeons and clinicians who were integral to Richard's remarkable recovery, from describing life-saving, high-risk reconstructive surgery to intensive rehabilitation programmes that push the former soldier to his limits.
Time travel is not forbidden by the laws of nature, but to build a time machine, we would need to understand more about those laws and how to subvert them than we do now. And every day, science does learn more. In this film Horizon meets the scientists working on the cutting edge of discovery - men and women who may discover how to build wormholes, manipulate entangled photons or build fully functioning time crystals. In short, these scientists may enable an engineer of the future to do what we have so far been only able to imagine - to build a machine that allows us travel back and forward in time at the touch of a button. It could be you! Science fiction?
Planet Earth grows to outlandish proportions that causes lying down to become the new standing up, the sun gets big ideas giving us a 20,000-year winter before blowing up in the biggest explosion since the big bang, we meet a dog the size of a dinosaur and Joe himself turns into a 49ft giant.
S1E1 • Size Matters • 2019 • Physics
Human Planet meets people for whom rivers can be both a risk to life and a lifeline.
S1E7 • Human Planet • Environment
Mehmed launches an ambitious siege to break through the walls of Constantinople, but Giustiniani's mercenaries manage to forestall the Janissaries.
S1E2 • Rise of Empires: Ottoman • 2020 • History
At the end of the 1950s, populations of the newly occupied territories of the East and intellectuals remained two categories particularly suspected of anti-Sovietism. Subjected to exhausting tasks like men, women, including many war widows condemned to heavy sentences for petty food pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them on the very edge of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions cause the economic profitability of the Gulag to drop. On March 5, 1953, after Stalin's death, a million releases were announced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, however undeniable, denounced the crimes of Stalinism, provoking an immense shock wave in the world.
S1E3 • Gulag: The Story • 2019 • History
On the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's treasure-packed tomb, Dr Janina Ramirez turns detective and heads to Egypt to uncover the real story of how a Briton called Howard Carter unearthed a pharaoh's tomb when everyone else believed there were no more great Egyptian finds to be made. She discovers that some of Tutankhamun's treasures are missing and reveals the name of the person responsible. She delves into the origins of the supposed pharaoh's curse, finds the surprising truth about the young king's brutal injuries, and digs out fresh evidence that Tutankhamun wasn't the delicate, powerless boy king of legend but was instead a powerful statesman.
2022 • History
In the conclusion, the winds finally change and Duke William leads his vast invasion fleet across the Channel. But King Harold is 300 miles away in the north having defeated the Vikings.
S1E3 • Europe's Last Warrior Kings • 2018 • History
Alastair Sooke follows in the footsteps of Rome's mad, bad and dangerous emperors in the second part of his celebration of Roman art. He dons a wetsuit to explore the underwater remains of the Emperor Claudius's pleasure palace and ventures into the cave where Tiberius held wild parties. He finds their taste in art chimes perfectly with their obsession with sex and violence. The other side of the coin was the bombastic art the Romans are best remembered for - monumental arches and columns that boast about their conquests. Trajan's Column in Rome reads like the storyboard of a modern-day propaganda film. Sooke concludes with the remarkable legacy of the Emperor Hadrian. He gave the world the magnificent Pantheon in Rome - the eternal image of his lover Antinous, the most beautiful boy in the history of art - and a villa in Tivoli where he created one of the most ambitious art collections ever created.
S1E2 • Treasures of Ancient Rome • 2012 • History
The Battle for Berlin has begun. Step by step, the soon-to-be victorious powers advance. On 30 April, the Red Flag flies over the Reichstag and Adolf Hitler takes his own life. Another seven days pass before the Wehrmacht disassembles. National Socialism is finally beaten, along with Germany and Berlin. But for many, the fall of Nazism spells liberation rather than defeat.
S1E2 • Berlin 1945: Diary of a Metropolis • 2020 • History
Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles looks at the winners, losers and survivors of the great Bronze Age collapse, a regional catastrophe that wiped out the hard-won achievements of civilisation in the eastern Mediterranean about 3,000 years ago. In the new age of iron, civilisation would re-emerge, tempered in the flames of conflict, tougher and more resilient than ever before.
S1E2 • Ancient Worlds • 2010 • History
Following the Euromaidan protests and fleeing of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Valdimir Putin invades the strategic region Crimea using separatist forces, and annexes it to the Russian Federation. The western world leaders try to convince Putin to a ceasefire in Crimea.
S1E1 • Putin vs the West • 2023 • People
After idolizing drug lords as a child, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman becomes one of history's most notorious kingpins, known for his audacious escapes
S2E1 • Drug Lords • 2018 • People
Sex is a simple word for a very complex set of desires. It cuts to the core of our passions, our wants, our emotions. But when it goes wrong, it can be the most painful thing of all. Professor Alice Roberts looks through 45 years of Horizon archive to see how science came to understand sex, strived to solve our problems with it, and even help us to do it better. Can science save the day when sex goes wrong?
2013 • People
The first world power goes to war against drugs: the United States strikes hard. But the drug trade never dies. It moves, transforms, adapts. As the war on drugs progresses around the world, a new generation of drug lords emerged at the end of the 1970s, more powerful than ever. These criminals were not only in it for the money; they also wanted power. Pablo Escobar was the most notorious, but there was also Toto Riina in Sicily, Khun Sa in the Golden Triangle, and Felix Gallardo in Mexico, all of whom changed the destinies of their respective territories by taking drug trafficking to a global scale. They defied states and threatened the powers-that-be. It took almost 20 years for states to get organized and come up with strategies to bring down the drug barons.
S1E2 • The Story of Drug Trafficking • 2020 • People
A riveting story that captures the immense draw that Antarctica has had on dreamers, explorers and travelers alike over the last 200 years. Explorer Geoff Wilson attempts a challenge that may see him travel further than any explorer before.
2020 • People
Samsara is a documentary that explores the world through images to discover the connection between humanity and nature. The film was shot in 25 different countries over 5 years to deliver a powerful and unique insight into natural wonders, disaster zones and sacred places around the world. The world Samsara means “The ever turning wheel of life”; a Tibetan word which is something Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson have explored in a precisely filmed documentary using 70mm camera specially made for the film as well as using a dynamic music score. Prepare for a journey through the human soul.
2011 • People
Like other kinds of human who once shared our world, homo sapiens should have died away. Discover how our species faced near extinction in Africa, and then found a place to rebuild. Explore the birth of language and art at archeological excavations scientists are now calling "the cradle of the human mind".
S1E1 • The Great Human Odyssey • 2015 • People
A look at the continuing evolution of the cosmos. What our existence tells us about the universe and how complicated it is. Why are things the way that they are? The spacecraft Artemis initiates launch sequence and begins its 4.7 light year journey to Minerva B - an Earth-like exoplanet.
S1E2 • Living Universe • 2018 • Astronomy
Maverick doctors supercharge killer T cells, creating a breakthrough treatment for cancer.
S2E3 • Breakthrough National Geographic • 2017 • Health
Neil Oliver reveals the truth behind the legend of the Vikings. (Part 2.) Neil Oliver heads out from the Scandinavian homelands to Russia, Turkey and Ireland to trace the beginnings of a vast trading empire that handled Chinese silks as adeptly as Pictish slaves. Neil discovers a world of 'starry-eyed maidens' and Buddhist statues that are a world away from our British experience of axe-wielding warriors, although it turns out that there were quite a few of those as well.
Eagles are the most powerful birds in the sky, capable of tackling enormous prey, spotting food at vast distances and soaring for miles on the wing. Armed with cutting-edge filming technology, this documentary examines the science behind such extraordinary abilities. Featuring dramatic stories and some remarkable experiments, the film follows the story of a family of bald eagles in Iowa as two chicks face the challenges of life in the wild. Plus, bird specialist Lloyd Buck puts his trained golden eagle Tilly's skills to the test.
Natural World • 2020 • Nature
Continuing his fascinating journey to rediscover the central role played by the Ottoman empire in Europe and the Middle East, Rageh Omaar explores the huge contrasts in the times of two very different Ottoman sultans. The most famous Suleiman the Magnificent in the golden age of the 16th century and the troubled reign of Abdul Hamid II in the 19th century when the Ottomans were dubbed 'the Sick Man of Europe'. Rageh examines the cultural legacy as well as the physical, religious and political architecture of Ottoman rule to find out what a Muslim world run from Europe was really like. It reveals the backdrop to the relationship between Islam and Europe today, how the Ottomans became central in the power politics of Europe and what could have happened had they succeeded in their successive bids to seize Vienna, then a key European capital.
S1E2 • The Ottomans: Europe's Muslim Emperors • 2013 • History