Hannibal's March on Rome • 2019

113:26

During the sixth episode of NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM, the dramatic events that followed the Crash of '29 fuel the greatest economic depression in American history and plunge the city and the nation into economic gloom. In little more than ten years, immense new forces were unleashed in New York, from the Depression itself to the New Deal, which permanently altered the city and the country. Along the way, two of the most remarkable New Yorkers of all time came to the fore: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and master builder Robert Moses, both of whom attempted to create, in the darkest of times, a bold new city of the future. The episode examines their careers in detail, as well as the immense public works that transformed the city in the '30s. Also explored are the demise of Mayor Jimmy Walker, the coming of the New Deal, the fate of Harlem during the Depression, and the increasingly complex impact of the automobile on the city.

S1E6 • New York: A Documentary Film • 1999 • History

45:55

Color footage of America in the 1940s gives a rare look at the decade's most significant moments, including Nazi sympathisers in World War Two, Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan Project and the rise of post-war prosperity.

S1E3 • America in Colour • 2017 • History

58:00

In the second of this three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Norman conquest of Britain and Ireland. Bartlett shows how William the Conqueror imposed a new aristocracy, savagely cut down opposition and built scores of castles and cathedrals to intimidate and control. He also commissioned the Domesday Book, the greatest national survey of England that had ever been attempted. England adapted to its new masters and both the language and culture were transformed as the Normans and the English intermarried. Bartlett shows how the political and cultural landscape of Scotland, Wales and Ireland were also forged by the Normans and argues that the Normans created the blueprint for colonialism in the modern world.

S1E2 • The Normans • 2010 • History

55:41

Follow historian James Holland on his quest to understand how the use of amphetamines affected the course of World War II and unleashed the first pharmacological arms race.

Secrets of the Dead • 2019 • History

135:09

Sian Phillips narrates the history of the Roman Empire through the eyes of Livia Drusilla, examining the reigns of the empress's husband Augustus, as well as Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Chapter 1: The story begins with the assassination of the Roman republic's most powerful general Julius Caesar, with the chaos and bloody power grabs that follow even taking down Egypt's legendary queen Cleopatra. Augustus and Livia seize their moment and through a ruthless combination of gladiatorial violence, sexual alliances and cold-blooded murder, they hoodwink the world's most powerful democracy into nominating Augustus as a single autocratic leader - the first emperor of Rome. Chapter 2: Tiberius and his notorious successor Caligula dragged the Roman empire into an age of tyranny, incest, and shocking depravity. Tiberius became Rome's second emperor with understandable paranoia and trashed what was left of democracy by making it punishable by death to speak out against him. With no son to name as heir, Tiberius invited his teenage nephew Caligula to join his court, but when the emperor fell ill, Caligula seized his chance to gain power and had him smothered on his sickbed. Chapter 3: Examines the reigns of Claudius and Nero. Claudius surprised everyone by taking Rome to its greatest heights yet, only to be brought down by his third wife Messalina and the seemingly unkillable Agrippina the Younger, the mother of his successor, the psychopathic Nero.

2024 • History

52:00

1916. The war is raging in Europe and stretches from the trenches in France to the Italian Alps and the Balkans, and beyond to the gates of the Eastern world. The conflict becomes industrial, and millions of shells rain down on the battlefields; Verdun and the Somme are the deadliest battles in this second year of the war. Who can stop this infernal machine?

S1E3 • Apocalypse: World War 1 • 2014 • History