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
Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.
Cameras follow desert elephants seeking sustenance, bison roaming North American grasslands and caterpillars living the good life underground.
S1E5 • Our Planet • 2019 • Nature
Astronaut Mike Massimino explores the incredible new alien planets being found daily by astronomers; using the latest science, he investigates everything from worlds that appear to eat light to planets that resemble Earth in shocking ways.
S1E7 • The Planets (US) • 2017 • Astronomy
England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam is joined by a host of top UK scientists to take a deep dive into the science of viruses. Plus, how new research could have an impact far beyond Covid-19.
S1E2 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - Going Viral • 2021 • Health
In the middle of the Renaissance, the son of Francis I shake up the foundations of Europe. Henry II, the King of France, secures a claim to the Scottish crown by marrying young queen Mary Stuart to his son, the future Francis II, heir to the French throne.
S2E1 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
Dr Alice Roberts asks one of the great questions about our species: are we still evolving? There's no doubt that we're a product of millions of years of evolution. But thanks to modern technology and medicine, did we escape Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest? Alice follows a trail of clues from ancient human bones to studies of remarkable people living in the most inhospitable parts of the planet and the frontiers of genetic research, to discover if we are still evolving - and where we might be heading.
Lifehack Documentaries
How might your life be better with less? MINIMALISM: A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE IMPORTANT THINGS examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from all walks of life—families, entrepreneurs, architects, artists, journalists, scientists, and even a former Wall Street broker—all of whom are striving to live a meaningful life with less.
2016 • Lifehack
These 9 life lessons from comedian Tim Minchin will make you laugh -- and learn
2017 • Lifehack
Use Anchoring to your advantage!
Bite Size Psych • 2015 • Lifehack
There’s a chicken waiting to cross the road, but every time she is about to take a step she asks herself "is now the right time?”
Meet the most scientifically studied people in the world. A group of 1,037 New Zealanders born in one city have been followed since their births in 1972. Members are now dispersed around the globe but 96% of the original group are still taking part - an extraordinary achievement in such a long running study.
S1E1 • Predict my Future: The Science of Us • 2016 • Lifehack
Creativity Documentaries
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
Pierre Soulages, the painter of the anti-image, who uses a palette of black, is the subject of this fascinating documentary. The preeminent painter of contemporary France, his paintings are stark and plain and painted with unconventional materials.
9 • Behind the Artist • 2016 • 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
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
Widely considered Britain's most popular artist, David Hockney is a global sensation with exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and beyond, attracting millions of visitors worldwide. Now entering his ninth decade, Hockney shows absolutely no evidence of slowing down or losing his trademark boldness. Featuring intimate and in-depth interviews with Hockney himself, this revealing documentary captures the voice of the artist over five years and focuses on two of his blockbuster exhibitions.
S2E1 • Great Art • 2018 • Creativity
Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
2008 • Creativity
Randoms! Documentaries
Chapter 1: Most Wanted The return of the documentary, picking up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when the Allies uncovered the scale of the Holocaust. Preparations began for a trial at Nuremberg, where 22 of the highest-ranking Nazis, including Hermann Goering, were to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But not all the highest-ranking Nazis had been captured, and the job of tracking them down fell to Allied soldiers. Chapter 2: The Ratline After the Nuremberg trial, the most senior ranking Nazis had been executed or imprisoned - but many of the worst criminals were still at large. They included Adolf Eichmann, who arranged the transportation of millions of Europe's Jewish people to death camps, and Nazi secret police chief Klaus Barbie, who became known as "the Butcher of Lyon" because of his reputation for extreme cruelty. This documentary follows the hunt for these two war criminals. Chapter 3: The Reckoning The continuing story of the diehards committed to hunt down thousands of Nazi war criminals, some of whom were living in plain sight. One such woman was German Beate Klarsfeld, determined to right the wrongs of her country's dark past and identify Nazis who had gone unpunished - including the notorious Klaus Barbie. The documentary also tells the story of Josef Mengele - who performed gruesome experiemnts on Auschwitz inmates - and the son so appalled by his father's actions he considered turning him in.
S4 • Rise of the Nazis • 2019 • History
What's your earliest memory? Why can't we remember being babies?
Apollo astronauts and engineers tell the inside story of how the first mission to the moon, Apollo 8, pioneered groundbreaking technologies that would pave the way to land a man on the moon and win the space race.
The battle between the French and English for the French territory of New France hinges on the presence of the British navy. And the Battle on the Plains of Abraham is tipped to Great Britain by the solidly trained soldiers of the British army. This changed the landscape of North America.
S2E3 • Butterfly Effect • 2018 • History
Dramatised documentary revealing Spartacus as he really was - a brilliant leader of a guerrilla band, but a flawed and indecisive human being. Starring Anthony Flanagan as Spartacus and Robert Glenister as his nemesis, Marcus Licininus Crassus. 73 BC BC Spartacus is captured and ends up on the slave market in Rome. He is sold to a gladiator school in Capua - his combat skills quickly show. In his first official battle, Spartacus is forced to kill his opponent at the request of the people and their master. From then on he plans his escape - in the same year he escapes with 70 other slaves. The small uprising quickly turns into a bitter fight for the freedom of thousands.
S1E3 • Warriors: Great Men of History • 2007 • History
Throughout Burma, temples, stupas, and statues of gold pop out in the lush, green landscape. This golden architecture has become Burma's calling card, but how and why did that become the standard here? Join us as we travel across Myanmar, the jewel of Asia, and reveal the history and myths surrounding these shrines, each one created as an offering to the Buddha. We will visit such treasures as the golden pagoda of Mt. Kyaiktiyo, which rests perilously atop a huge boulder, the 344-foot Shwedagon Pagoda, and the revered Mahamuni Buddha Temple.
S1E1 • Wonders of Burma • 2015 • Travel