Arms Race • 2013 • episode "1/12" • Mankind Decoded

58:58

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

58:58

Michael Wood tells the tale of China's first great international age under the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He travels along the Silk Road to the bazaars of central Asia and into India on the track of the Chinese monk who brought Buddhism back to China.

S1E2 • The Story of China • 2016 • History

51:00

The flash of the first atomic blasts exposes a multi-billion dollar clandestine operation: The Manhattan Project. A modern state secrecy apparatus emerges directly out of Los Alamos – only to find itself immediately compromised as Russia announces its own atomic arsenal. Radiation testing on unsuspecting civilians. An 800 page American World War III battle plan that targeted 600 million civilians. Broken Arrows. And the real stories of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

S1E1 • Atomic Age Declassified • 2018 • History

58:58

Think Renaissance and you think of Italy. But in the 15th and 16th centuries, the great Islamic empires experienced their own extraordinary cultural flowering.

5/10 • Civilisations • 2018 • History

90:13

Historical documentary featuring colourised archive footage charting the First World War's aftermath in Europe and beyond once celebrations marking the end of hostilities had ceased. Ch1. Vengeance Traumatised by combat, demobilised soldiers return home to the four corners of a war-shattered world. At the Palace of Versailles, the victors draw the borders of new nations, created through strife. Ch2. Return to Hell Nations try to rebuild, but the USA withdraws into isolation, the threat of communism frightens European democracies and populist movements spring up, determined to impose their totalitarian ideology.

2019 • History

49:48

This is the story of the rise and fall of the man who became a role model to Hitler and some of history's worst dictators of the twentieth century and beyond - Benito Mussolini.

7/10 • Evolution of Evil • 2015 • History