Escaping Utopia • 2025

58:58

According to the UN, it is predicted that the human population could reach ten billion people by the year 2050. For broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham, who has dedicated his life to championing the natural world, the subject of our growing population and the impact it is having on our planet is one of the most vital – and often overlooked – topics of discussion in an era of increasing environmental awareness. Chris is worried that a world of ten billion may simply be too many people for the earth to sustain, given the impact 7.7 billion humans are already having. Travelling around the globe in search of answers to difficult and sometimes controversial questions, Chris investigates why our population is growing so rapidly, what impact it is having on the natural world, and whether there is anything that can be done. Chris travels to Brazil to discover a megacity on the verge of running out of water and an industry expanding to feed our growing numbers – with dire consequences for biodiversity. In Nigeria, a country set to become the third most populous nation on earth by 2050, overtaking the United States, Chris visits an extraordinary community surviving against the odds and a school that might hold the answer to a future fall in the birth rate. Back home in Britain, Chris interviews Sir David Attenborough – like Chris, he is a patron of the charity Population Matters. Chris also examines the role of falling birth rates around the world, the impact of an aging population, and meets a couple who are struggling to get pregnant through IVF. With interviews from several population experts, Chris's focus ultimately turns to the impact our levels of consumption are already having, and asks whether the world can rebalance to accommodate the needs of over two billion more people.

Horizon • 2020 • People

45:09

Explores the last 24 hours in President Kennedy's life through original footage and oral history, from his arrival into Dallas to his body being taken by Air Force One to Washington DC. The programme also examines the chaos and grief that swept a nation, and the subsequent arrest and murder of apparent sole gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

2023 • People

58:40

In a series about scientists with brilliant minds, James Lovelock explains how his maverick way of thinking led him not only to technical breakthroughs in atmospheric detection systems on Earth and Mars, but also to Gaia - a new way of thinking about the Earth as a holistic, self-regulating system. He tells of his struggle against the scientific consensus of the day, the ridicule of his peers and his belief that the mainstream scientific establishment stifles intellectual creativity.

S1E2 • Beautiful Minds • 2010 • 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

59:30

How did a poor boy from a tiny flat in St Petersburg become one of the world's most powerful leaders? Admired by Trump and feared by his rivals, on the eve of his almost certain re-election as president of Russia, this film reveals the story of Vladimir Putin's extraordinary rise to power - from a lowly KGB colonel to Boris Yeltsin's right-hand man and ultimately his successor. There are revelations from Putin's inner circle at the Kremlin, including former confidante Sergei Pugachev, who helped Putin to power before falling from favour. Chess master Gary Kasparov recounts his failed attempt to stand against him and oligarch Mikhail Khordokovsky, who was jailed and stripped of his wealth, speaks of the consequences of experiencing the wrath of Putin. The programme also hears from former home secretary Jack Straw, who recalls Putin's first encounter with Tony Blair - the leader Putin apparently attempted to model himself on. Straw wryly observes that the two are 'very similar'. Former foreign secretary William Hague entertained Putin during the London 2012 Olympic Games and bonded over a shared love of judo - but later found himself unable to influence the decision made to invade Crimea.

2018 • People

60:18

An affectionate portrait of a group of women who, after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and evacuation, returned to the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant and have resided there - semi-officially, for years.

2015 • People