The Fight to the End • 2021 • episode "S1E3" • The First World War: The Peoples Story Series

58:31

Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Normans on southern Europe and the Middle East. The Normans spread south in the 11th century, winning control of southern Italy and the island of Sicily. There they created their most prosperous kingdom, where Christianity and Islam co-existed in relative harmony and mutual tolerance. It became a great centre of medieval culture and learning. But events in the Middle East provoked the more aggressive side of the Norman character. In 1095, the Normans enthusiastically answered the Pope's call for holy war against Islam and joined the first crusade. They lay siege to Jerusalem and eventually helped win back the holy city from the muslims. This bloody conquest left a deep rift between Christianity and Islam which is still being felt to this day.

S1E2 • The Normans • 2010 • History

26:00

In 814 BC, the exiled Phoenician queen Dido founds the city of Carthage on the African Coast. The city develops and takes the lead of a maritime empire based on trade. Carthage dominates the Western Mediterranean. But in the third century BC, she finds herself opposed to the Roman Republic.

S3E10 • Butterfly Effect • 2018 • History

88:01

The contrast between the majestic statues of Easter Island and the desolation of their surroundings is stark. For decades Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the islanders call it, has been seen as a warning from history for the planet as a whole - wilfully expend natural resources and the collapse of civilisation is inevitable. But archaeologist Dr Jago Cooper believes this is a disastrous misreading of what happened on Easter Island. He believes that its culture was a success story not a failure, and the real reasons for its ultimate demise were far more shocking. Cooper argues that there is an important lesson that the experience of Easter Island can teach the rest of the world, but it doesn't begin by blaming its inhabitants for their own downfall. This film examines the latest scientific and archaeological evidence to reveal a compelling new narrative, one that sees the famous statues as only part of a complex culture that thrived in isolation. Cooper finds a path between competing theories about what happened to Easter Island to make us see this unique place in a fresh light.

2014 • History

59:08

The Romans were brilliant engineers and soldiers, but what isn't as well known is that they also gave us wonderful artistic treasures. In this three-part series, Alastair Sooke argues that the old-fashioned view that the Romans didn't do art is nonsense. He traces how the Romans during the Republic went from being art thieves and copycats to pioneering a new artistic style - warts 'n' all realism. Roman portraits reveal what the great names from history, men like Julius Caesar and Cicero, actually looked like. Modern-day artists demonstrate the ingenious techniques used to create these true to life masterpieces in marble, bronze and paint. We can step back into the Roman world thanks to their invention of the documentary-style marble relief and to a volcano called Vesuvius. Sooke explores the remarkable artistic legacy of Pompeii before showing how Rome's first emperor, Augustus, used the power of art to help forge an empire.

S1E1 • The Treasures of Ancient Rome • 2012 • History

57:08

At the end of the 1950s, populations of the newly occupied territories of the East and intellectuals remained two categories particularly suspected of anti-Sovietism. Subjected to exhausting tasks like men, women, including many war widows condemned to heavy sentences for petty food pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them on the very edge of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions cause the economic profitability of the Gulag to drop. On March 5, 1953, after Stalin's death, a million releases were announced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, however undeniable, denounced the crimes of Stalinism, provoking an immense shock wave in the world.

S1E3 • Gulag: The Story • 2019 • History

50:02

Mehmed the Conquerer must defend his empire and protect his plans for western expansion against a new challenger...Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia.

S2E1 • Rise of Empires: Ottoman • 2022 • History