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
Jungles provide the richest habitats on the planet - mysterious worlds of high drama where extraordinary animals attempt to survive in the most competitive place on earth. Flooded forests are home to caiman-hunting jaguars and strange dolphins that swim amongst the tree tops, while in the dense underworld, ninja frogs fight off wasps and flying dragons soar between trees. Acrobatic indri leap through the forests of Madagascar, while the jungle night conceals strange fungi and glow-in-the-dark creatures never filmed before.
S1E3 • Planet Earth II • 2016 • Nature
To determine the true age of the Earth, geochemist Clair Patterson developed the uranium-lead dating method to make an unprecedented discovery - calculating Earth's age of 4.5 billion years. But Patterson's groundbreaking discoveries were just beginning. Patterson made it his mission to draw public attention to the detrimental effects of lead in the environment and dedicated his career to fighting against the petroleum and chemical industry, eventually achieving public health's biggest victory of the 20th century.
S1E7 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • 2014 • Astronomy
Amid a spiral of brutality and low morale, Mehmed makes Giustiniani an enticing offer. The grand vizier urges Mehmed to seek a truce with his rival.
S1E5 • Rise of Empires: Ottoman • 2020 • History
Caught up in the race to discover the atom’s internal parts — and learn how they fit together — a young British physicist, Harry Moseley, uses newly discovered X-rays to put the Periodic Table in a whole new light. And a young American chemist named Glenn Seaborg creates a new element — plutonium — that changes the world forever, unleashing a force of unimaginable destructive power: the atomic bomb.
Part 3 • The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements • 2015 • Physics
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
Creativity Documentaries
Picasso - You think you know him, but do you really? Take an in-depth look at his art, his turbulent life, and the lasting impact he made on the art of the 20th Century.
4 • Behind the Artist • 2016 • Creativity
This time Mark explores the most visionary of all genres - science fiction, and shows how film-makers have risen to the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. Always at the forefront of cinema technology, science fiction films have used cutting-edge visual effects to transport us to other worlds or into the far future. But as Mark shows, it's not just about the effects. Films as diverse as 2001, the Back to the Future trilogy and Blade Runner have used product placement and commercial brand references to make their future worlds seem more credible. The recent hit Arrival proved that the art of film editing can play with our sense of past and future as well as any time machine. Meanwhile, films such as Silent Running and WALL-E have drawn on silent era acting techniques to help robot characters convey emotion. And District 9 reached back to Orson Welles by using news reporting techniques to render an alien visitation credible. Mark argues that for all their spectacle, science fiction films ultimately derive their power from being about us. They take us to other worlds and eras, and introduce us to alien and artificial beings, in order to help us better understand our own humanity.
Part 4 • Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema • 2018 • Creativity
Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists of all time. But where did this all begin? What made Picasso in the first place? Young Picasso visits Malaga, Barcelona and Paris, and explores their influence on Picasso, focusing on specific artworks from these early years - up to the ground-breaking and hugely significant Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. How did he rise to such great heights?
S3E1 • Great Art • 2019 • Creativity
After 500 years Bosch's paintings still shock and fascinate us, but what inspired the man behind these haunting works? Where did his unconventional and timeless creations come from? How did he bridge the medieval and Renaissance world? Why do his strange and fantastical paintings resonate with people now more than ever? Discover the answers to these questions and more with this remarkable documentary, presented by Tim Marlow.
S2E3 • Great Art • 2018 • Creativity
Becoming a central figure in Parisian life in the 1920's when in his early 30's, Le Corbusier was a writer, essayist, editor, painter, lecturer, but more than anything else, an architect of the Modern Era. His influence on architecture and design is incalculable.
3 • Behind the Artist • 2016 • Creativity
Science Documentaries
Hawking joins science and imagination to explore one of the most important mysteries facing humankind - the possibility of alien, intelligent life and the likelihood of future "contact."
S1E1 • Stephen Hawking's Universe • 1997 • Science
The pioneering developmental psychologist Uta Frith discusses Alice Lee, whose work in craniology challenged the idea that women were intellectually inferior because they have smaller brain sizes.
S1E2 • People of Science with Brian Cox • 2018 • Science
Professor Sue Black investigates a Christmas murder mystery to show how serious crimes are solved when there isn't a body. Sue is joined by an expert team including leading police specialists, forensic scientists and an award-winning dog. Assisting them, the audience help to unravel the mystery, using the latest forensic cameras, fingerprint techniques and DNA analysis. Remarkable soil analysis shows how a suspicious pair of muddy boots can be traced back to the most precise location. With insights into real serious crime investigations, Sue and her team draw on all their experience to solve the mysterious case.
S1E2 • Secrets of Forensic Science • 2022 • Science
Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.
New research is beginning to reveal a hidden force in the universe - one that penetrates space with trillions of invisible connections, instantly linking every place in our world and joining our future with our past. Is the Force with us?
S8E01 • Through the Wormhole • 2017 • Science
How does altruism begin. Is it biological? Is it taught? Researchers are trying to understand the DNA of altruism by studying toddlers.
S1E5 • Stories of Impact • 2019 • Science
Randoms! Documentaries
Like human arteries, motorways, roads and train-lines are the lifeblood of any healthy megacity. Whether smoothly flowing or clogged, a city's transport routes affect its inhabitants' quality of life. Andrew Marr finds out how the monstrous megacities stay fed. He also finds out just how hard it is to ride a rickshaw taxi in Dhaka, and discovers how the London tube, once the most ground-breaking transport system in the world, has been usurped by modern transport like Shanghai's 400km/hour magnetic railway. Andrew joins Mexico City's traffic cops in the air, then finds out who is in charge of unblocking Mexico's most filthy canals. He looks into Dhaka's waste management problems, and sees what Britain's fast food obsession is doing to London's sewers.
S1E3 • Andrew Marr's Megacities • 2011 • Technology
The world's deserts force animals to come up with ingenious ways of coping with hostile conditions, giving rise to the most incredible survival stories on earth.
S1E4 • Planet Earth II • 2016 • Nature
When Hitler expounded his intention to invade Russia his generals looked at him in horrified silence. The Soviet Union was vast and had matchless resources. Hitler's whole plan depended upon striking a swift and decisive knock-out blow. Get sucked into a long, drawn-out war and Germany would surely lose. Hitler was certain his forces could do it. No one had so far defeated them. But there had never been a military gamble like it... This film takes in Stalingrad and the battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle in all history.
4/13 • World War II In HD Colour • 2009 • History
While the immense ecosystem of the Kalahari is characterized by its harsh conditions, it also offers a wealth of resources to the native wildlife. From the burrows of nocturnal bat-eared foxes to the massive colonies of harvester ants, the region provides habitats for a vast array of life.
S1E5 • Africa's Wild Horizons • 2017 • Nature
An abandoned orphan's dream opens the way to understanding the architecture of thought.
5/13 • Cosmos: Possible Worlds • 2020 • Astronomy