Episode IV • 2020 • episode "4/10" • The Last Dance

46:07

The early years of Bin Laden, from timid Saudi schoolboy to revered freedom fighter. The first episode begins with Osama Bin Laden's schooldays in Saudi Arabia. He grew up in a wealthy family, loved westerns and soccer, and avoided fights in the schoolyard. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, like many Arab men, he joined the resistance to liberate the country from the occupying forces. In Peshawar, Pakistan, just across the Afghan border, he sets up a "service bureau" and uses his connections to organize money for the fight. He keeps promising his mother not to go into battle himself, but then joins the mujahideen commander Sayed Wahidyar, who is only called "Fearless". According to Wahidyar, bin Laden is initially a burden because he has no idea about fighting. The wealth he inherited and the family's connections to the construction industry come in handy when he begins to build much-needed infrastructure such as roads, warehouses and clinics on his own. In the Battle of Jaji, the Soviet troops were finally repulsed with the help of the experienced Afghan mujahideen - a decisive victory for bin Laden, which resulted in the superpower's final withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. It is the beginning of a myth fueled in part by Bin Laden himself. His supposed military success gives him enormous prestige. In the same year, Bin Laden founded Al-Qaeda. The die is cast.

S1E1 • Bin Laden: The Road to 9.11 • 2021 • People

42:26

Santa Claus is a global icon. But where did this friendly old man in a red suit who brings gifts for children actually come from? How could Santa become a central figure of our consumer society?

2021 • People

52:15

Gaudi left us a spectacular work. An unfinished creation: the Sagrada Familia. A huge, senseless cathedral project, whose rules and spirit must be understood in order to be completed. A challenge that has occupied the successors of the great Catalan architect for more than a century.

2021 • People

49:59

Starting with some of the most infamous faces of the twentieth century, Marilyn Monroe features alongside Margaret Thatcher and more, as we countdown from 101 to 89 in what is sure to be a controversial start to the series.

S1E1 • The 101 People who Made the 20th Century • 2016 • People

22:15

A year of revolution around the world; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's new policies lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall; a government crackdown follows protests in Beinjing's Tiananmen Square; a power shift sweeps across Eastern Europe.

S1E1 • 1989: The Year that Made the Modern World • 2019 • People

88:41

Documentary that follows a lone Inuit as he hunts, fishes and constructs an igloo. It tells the story of skills that are disappearing and of how climate change is affecting the lives of Greenland's indigenous people. With its focus on the ingenious craft of igloo building before it becomes too late to record it, this is a meditative and poetic sensory immersion in a landscape of ice and snow, an elegy to a world that is melting away.

2019 • People