Latest Documentaries
We often assume that advanced technology will make it easy for aliens to colonize space. But what if space exploration is always difficult, no matter how advanced you are? Let’s travel back in human history, to the colonization of Oceania over 5000 years ago, to find parallels between ancient explorers and extraterrestrial civilizations.
In a Nutshell • 2024 • Astronomy
The mid-10th-century reign of Harald Bluetooth as king of a newly unified, powerful and Christianized Denmark marked the beginning of a second Viking age. But the reign was not to last with the Normans finally winning the English Kingdom in 1066. We look at the final days of the Viking empire.
S1E6 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
Political turmoil in Norway leads a voyage of discovery west. The Vikings discover Iceland where they established lasting settlement. Further exploration from Iceland leads to the discovery of Greenland and to the shores of Newfoundland, making them the first Europeans to discover America.
S1E5 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The siege of Paris in 885 was the culmination of the Viking invasions of Francia. We look at the persistent Viking attacks on Francia and the enduring presence of the Scandinavians on the Frankish Empire and beyond.
Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The "Silk Road" opened up a world of trade for the Scandinavians in the East. Seeking further wealth, the Vikings known in the East as "the Rus" attacked Constantinople in 860. The Rus became a permanent and feared fixture in the Byzantine Empire.
S1E3 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The Siege of York occurred from 866 when the Great Heathen Army laid claim to the Northumbrian capital of York. We look at the major battles, players and strongholds of the York battle and how the Vikings later came to control much of the 9th Century England.
S1E2 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
An attack on a small religious community on the holy island of Lindisfarne in AD 793 heralded the start of the Viking Age of conquest and expansion. For 200 years, the longships from Scandinavia threatened all of Europe. But it was far from their first attack. We reveal how the Vikings' reign of terror began in Scandinavia.
S1E1 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
Follows a Ukrainian battalion on the frontline of the war against Russia, filmed by the soldiers themselves as they try to defend a vital railway line, the capture of which would enable Russia to mount a direct attack on Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv. The film examines the lives of the 99-strong military company as they face sustained Russian assaults, presenting a ground-level view of the war through the eyes of the troops fighting it.
2024 • History
The story of how the life-saving cervical cancer test became an ordinary part of women's lives is as unusual and remarkable as the coalition of people who ultimately made it possible: a Greek immigrant, Dr. George Papanicolaou; his intrepid wife, Mary; Japanese-born artist Hashime Murayama; Dr. Helen Dickens, an African American OBGYN in Philadelphia; and an entirely new class of female scientists known as cyto-screeners. But the test was just the beginning. Once the test proved effective, the campaign to make pap smears available to millions of women required nothing short of a total national mobilization. The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the people who fought tirelessly to save women from what was once the number one cancer killer of women.
2024 • Health
The search for Pablo Escobar as told by US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, with never-before-seen footage of Escobar's life and capture.
2018 • People
In 1960, a young secretary from Bournemouth, with no scientific qualifications, entered a remote forest in Africa and achieved something nobody else had ever done before. Jane Goodall became accepted by a group of wild chimpanzees, making discoveries that transformed our understanding of them, and challenged the way we define ourselves as human beings by showing just how close we are as a species to our nearest living relatives. Since then, both she and the chimps of Gombe in Tanzania have become world famous - Jane as the beauty of many wildlife films, they as the beasts with something profound to tell us. As one of the programme's contributors, David Attenborough, suggests, Jane Goodall's story could be a fable if it wasn't true. In this revealing programme filmed with Jane Goodall in Africa, we discover the person behind the myth, what motivates her and the personal cost her life's work has exacted from her - and why she still thinks we have a lot to learn from the chimps she has devoted her life to understanding.
2010 • Nature
This is a story about the greatest risks to humanity, and what we can do about it. We are living in a time when human-made risks pose the biggest threat to our existence. Technological progress has brought us to a precipice. For the first time ever, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves. Edge of Existence lays out how we can pull ourselves back from this precipice in order achieve a vast and extraordinary future.
2022 • Environment
Recommended Documentaries
The rules for how to doom a relationship are relatively easy to follow. Here are a selection that are guaranteed to blow up love.
The School of Life • 2015 • Lifehack
The incredible story of a mysterious nanny who died in 2009 leaving behind a secret hoard - thousands of stunning photographs. Never seen in her lifetime, they were found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply. Now Vivian Maier has gone viral, and her magical pictures sell for thousands of dollars. Vivian was a tough street photographer, a secret poet of suburbia. In life, she was a recluse, a hoarder, spinning tall tales about her French roots. Presented by Alan Yentob, the film includes stories from those who knew her and those who revealed her astonishing work.
2013 • People
There are 100 billion individual neurons in the human brain. Working together, they allow us to make sense of, and move through, the world around us. Scientists have built replicas of the human brain with computers, but no one has ever successfully made a brain out of humans. On this episode, I’ll travel back to my hometown of Stilwell, Kansas, and turn it into a working brain!
S3E3 • Mind Field • 2018 • Brain
How can a lie become true? In this episode, Dr. Aaron Blaisdell and I create a game show that is actually a giant “human Skinner Box” to observe the formation of superstitious beliefs. And Dr. Samuel Veissière helps me design and perform a placebo reverse exorcism, harnessing the power of belief in both science and religion to convince normal people that a spirit has possessed their bodies.
S3E7 • Mind Field • 2019 • Brain
"I have a friend who is an artist, and sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well."
The Feynman Series • 2011 • People
What is involved in creating a groundbreaking film that documents the latest paleoanthropological findings? This film will shed light on the talent, research, and scientific discoveries that made Out of the Cradle possible.
S1E2 • Out of the Cradle • 2019 • History
Brain Documentaries
What would the world be like if we could expand our senses beyond our current capacities? Neuroscientist David Eagleman is working on the cutting edge of technology that will change what it means to be human.
S1E1 • Curiosity Retreats: 2016 Lectures • 2016 • Brain
Follow Three women at risk of developing Alzheimer’s join a groundbreaking study to try to prevent the disease, while sharing their ups and downs, anxiously watching for symptoms, and hoping they can make a difference. Barb, Sigrid, and Karen all had mothers with Alzheimer’s and witnessed first hand the devastation wrought by the disease, not only on the mind and body, but on patients’ families.
Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archive to discover how our understanding of intelligence has transformed over the last century. From early caveman thinkers to computers doing the thinking for us, he discovers the best ways of testing how clever we are - and enhancing it.
2011 • Brain
The traditional narrative is that humans are selfish. If pushed, the story goes, we look after ourselves first and others later. In this episode, we see how modern neuroscience has blown that myth apart.
S1E2 • The Curious Mind • 2020 • Brain
Chris Packham helps autistic people illustrate how their minds work, helping them connect with their friends and family in a new, more authentic way. Chapter 1: Since sharing his own autism diagnosis with the world, naturalist and presenter Chris Packham has been flooded with letters and emails from other autistic people, frustrated that their friends, families and co-workers don't understand them. And in this series, Chris wants to bridge the gap. By teaming up with top film-makers, graphic designers, animators and musicians, Chris helps a group of autistic people create short films to reveal to their family and friends how they're truly feeling inside – what's really going on in their autistic minds. He helps an autistic comedian reveal to her mum what's really going on inside her head, gives a non-speaking autistic man the chance to take his message to the world and visits the only state school in the country exclusively for autistic girls. Chapter 2: Chris meets Anton, a teaching assistant and trance DJ with a deep love of Middlesbrough FC, and Ethan, a 19-year-old student and aspiring rapper from Essex. He helps them make films to reveal to their friends and classmates how Anton feels about change and Ethan about hypersensitivity to noise. Chris also meets Dr Luke Beardon, an expert in autistic hypersensitivity, and Dr Punit Shah, who helps him to understand both Anton's restrictive and repetitive behaviours and Chris's own need for order in his life.
2023 • Brain
An investigation into hate, produced by Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney. Cognitive scientist Laurie Santos examines how tribalism shapes perceptions of other groups.
S1E2 • Why We Hate • 2019 • Brain
People Documentaries
Through exclusive interviews and archival footage, this documentary traces an intimate portrait of seven-time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher.
2021 • People
Karl Marx remains deeply important today not as the man who told us what to replace capitalism with, but as someone who brilliantly pointed out what was inhuman and alienating about it.
The School of Life • 2014 • People
"I have a friend who is an artist, and sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well."
The Feynman Series • 2011 • People
Charlie Chaplin's final speech in the film the great dictator, with a splash of modern imagery.
2011 • People
What would the world we live in look like without our Top Ten? It is hard to imagine but one thing’s for sure, in making the twentieth century they have indelibly influenced the world we know today. In our final episode we reveal our picks for the most significant people “Who Made the Twentieth Century”. The results will surprise many. Some will disagree with the choices, everyone will remain gripped up to the final reveal.
S1E8 • The 101 People who Made the 20th Century • 2016 • People
Who is Vivian Maier? Now considered one of the 20th century's greatest street photographers, Vivian Maier was a mysterious nanny who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that went unseen during her lifetime. Since buying her work by chance at auction, amateur historian John Maloof has crusaded to put this prolific photographer in the history books. Maier's strange and riveting life and art are revealed through never-before-seen photographs, films, and interviews with dozens who thought they knew her.
2013 • People
Randoms! Documentaries
Colin Stafford-Johnson journeys through one of the most bewitching islands in the world, featuring the wildlife and wild places that make it so special. In the first part of this two-part mini-series, Colin explores corners of Cuba that few outsiders have seen. Amongst the wonders he encounters is the bee hummingbird, the world’s tiniest bird, found nowhere else on the planet, and the spectacle of thousands of crabs migrating en masse.
S1E1 • Natural World • 2020 • Nature
This special report looks at the domino effect of environmental and atmospheric factors that drive the globe to wetter, hotter, drier and colder extremes.
7/10 • Catalyst: Season 1 • 2015 • Environment
Why do we dream? When the lights go out, interesting things happen in the brain and body. What’s the significance of dreams, and what can they teach us?
S1E2 • The Mind, Explained • 2019 • Brain
We strip apart asteroids and peel back surfaces, slice open craters, and exploding out rocks layer by layer to explore these miniature worlds and the secrets of the early solar system.
S1E3 • Strip the Cosmos • 2014 • Astronomy
David Attenborough introduces the colourful underwater world of Britain and Ireland's oceans, including thousands of grey seals congregating on the Norfolk shoreline to give birth. Rich beds of sea grass act as important carbon storage areas, as well as providing home for seahorses, while on the shallow seabed, the spider crab undergoes a mass migration of epic scale.
S1E5 • Wild Isles • 2023 • Nature
The grasslands of our planet are some of the most challenging habitats for playing the Mating Game. They are an open stage where potential partners and jealous rivals can witness your every move… and every failure.
S1E1 • The Mating Game • 2021 • Nature