Mysterious North • 2017 • episode "3/3" • Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise

59:14

James journeys through Japan's mountainous forests, marvels at its zen gardens and admires centuries-old bonsai, to explore the connections between Japanese culture and the natural environment. Travelling around Japan's stunning island geography, he examines how the country's two great religions, Shinto and Buddhism, helped shape a creative response to nature often very different to the West. But he also considers modern Japan's changing relationship to the natural world and travels to Naoshima Art Island to see how contemporary artists are finding new ways to engage with nature.

1/3 • The Art of Japanese Life • 2017 • Travel

58:35

The third leg of the adventurer's journey takes him from the south of Kenya to the Horn of Africa. Along the way he joins a Ugandan peace-keeping force in Mogadishu, the capital of war-torn Somalia, which turns out to be the most dangerous leg of his journey as he ends up under fire on the front line. In contrast, he finds neighbouring Somaliland a stable and democratic home to thousands of Somalis fleeing fighting and famine. In Kenya's Tana Delta, he meets villagers facing eviction from an area that the government is turning over to sugar cane production for bio-fuels.

3/6 • Indian Ocean • Travel

22:14

How do people live in deserts? How do we make places with extreme climate conditions and limited resources like the desert inhabitable? Home to some of the world’s oldest human history, Doha, Qatar is a land of sweeping desert vistas, deep-rooted heritage, and now a modern, technologically-advanced metropolis on the Persian Gulf. From the 100+ year-old Souq Waqif to the futuristic cityscape, this episode will take viewers through Doha’s rich array of historic customs and traditions as well as into the ambitions for the next generation.

S1E5 • Crash Test World • 2021 • Travel

46:37

The actress flies over Tokyo in a helicopter. The city was bombed extensively during the Second World War, so almost all of it is a symbol of the post-war economic boom that saw Japan become the world's second largest economy. While in the capital, Joanna heads out to a nightclub to see a Japanese girl band and witnesses the largely male audience perform almost as much as the artists on stage. Later, Joanna travels to the Kiso Valley to walk the Nakasendo Way, an ancient route that once linked Tokyo to Kyoto, a place best known for that most famous of Japanese traditions, the Geisha.

Part 2 • Joanna Lumley's Japan • 2016 • Travel

54:03

See many of Chile's varied marine animals as a group of dedicated filmmakers tries to have a close encounter with the largest animal to ever live on Earth, the blue whale.

2/3 • Wild Chile • 2018 • Travel

58:32

He explores how the artistic life of three Japanese cities shaped the country's attitudes to past and present, east and west, and helped forge the very idea of Japan itself. In Kyoto, James reveals how the flowering of classical culture produced many treasures of Japanese art, including The Tale of Genji, considered to be the first novel ever written. In Edo, where Tokyo now stands, a very different art form emerged, in the wood block prints of artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. James meets the artisans still creating these prints today, and discovers original works by a great master, Utamaro, who documented the so-called 'floating world'. In contemporary Tokyo, James discovers the darker side of Japan's urbanisation through the photographs of Daido Moriyama, and meets a founder of the Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata, whose film Grave of the Fireflies helped establish anime as a powerful and serious art form.

2/3 • The Art of Japanese Life • 2017 • Travel