Silverback • 2024

52:03

They are among the most hated and feared animals on the planet - only few people recognize their beauty. This documentary features some of Europe's most stunning species, like the European adder, the nose-horned viper, the dice snake, the ringed snake and the Aesculapian snake. So watch out next time you're walking in the park. After a winter safe in burrows, sometimes in bundles of hundreds, the spring's warmth brings them back to life.

2016 • Nature

57:59

Blue Planet II explores parts of the ocean that nobody has ever visited, encountered extraordinary animals, and discovered new insights into life beneath the waves. In Our Blue Planet, Sir David Attenborough examines the impact of human life on life in the ocean. In this final episode, we uncover the impact that our modern lives are having on our best-loved characters from across the series, including devoted albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks discarded plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their newborn calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. Scientists have even discovered that increasing noise levels may stop baby clownfish finding their way home.

S1E7 • Blue Planet II • 2017 • Nature

58:59

What makes plants grow is a simple enough question, but the answer turns out to be one of the most complicated and fascinating stories in science and took over 300 years to unravel. Timothy Walker, director of the Oxford University Botanic Garden, reveals how the breakthroughs of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, Chelsea gardener Phillip Miller and English naturalist John Ray created the science of botany. Between them these quirky, temperamental characters unlocked the mysteries of the plant kingdom and they began to glimpse a world where bigger, better and stronger plants could be created. Nurseryman Thomas Fairchild created the world's first artificial hybrid flower - an entirely new plant that didn't exist in nature. Today, botanists continue the search for new flowers, better crops and improved medicines to treat life-threatening diseases.

S1E1 • Botany: A Blooming History • 2011 • Nature

43:55

During the rainy season in Africa, a herd of buffalo can create thousands of pounds of waste in a day, which would be an environmental disaster if not for the dung beetle. These extraordinary insects depend on waste to survive. They eat it, attract mates with it, and raise families in it. Although dung beetles are critical to the ecosystem, they don't have it easy. Every day, they must avoid being trampled, evade predators like bullfrogs, honey badgers, and rock monitor lizards, and rival dung beetle families desperate for the same fecal prize.

2018 • Nature

59:06

In Madagascar, the travellers encounter the biggest and the smallest lemurs on earth. But they are searching for the aye-aye, a peculiar lemur which, according to local legend, brings death to those who encounter it.

S1E3 • Last Chance to See • 2009 • Nature

89:08

Thanks to a recent remarkable discovery in the BBC's film vaults, the best of David Attenborough's early Zoo Quest adventures can now be seen as never before, in colour, and with it the remarkable story of how this pioneering television series was made. First broadcast in December 1954, Zoo Quest was one of the most popular television series of its time and launched the career of the young David Attenborough as a wildlife presenter. It completely changed how viewers saw the world, revealing wildlife and tribal communities that had never been filmed or even seen before. Broadcast ten years before colour television was seen in the UK, Zoo Quest was thought to have been filmed in black and white, until now. Using this extraordinary new-found colour film, together with new behind-the-scenes stories from David Attenborough and cameraman Charles Lagus, this special showcases the very best of Zoo Quest to West Africa, Zoo Quest to Guiana and Zoo Quest for a Dragon in stunning HD colour for the very first time.

2016 • Nature