Latest Documentaries
We often assume that advanced technology will make it easy for aliens to colonize space. But what if space exploration is always difficult, no matter how advanced you are? Let’s travel back in human history, to the colonization of Oceania over 5000 years ago, to find parallels between ancient explorers and extraterrestrial civilizations.
In a Nutshell • 2024 • Astronomy
The mid-10th-century reign of Harald Bluetooth as king of a newly unified, powerful and Christianized Denmark marked the beginning of a second Viking age. But the reign was not to last with the Normans finally winning the English Kingdom in 1066. We look at the final days of the Viking empire.
S1E6 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
Political turmoil in Norway leads a voyage of discovery west. The Vikings discover Iceland where they established lasting settlement. Further exploration from Iceland leads to the discovery of Greenland and to the shores of Newfoundland, making them the first Europeans to discover America.
S1E5 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The siege of Paris in 885 was the culmination of the Viking invasions of Francia. We look at the persistent Viking attacks on Francia and the enduring presence of the Scandinavians on the Frankish Empire and beyond.
Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The "Silk Road" opened up a world of trade for the Scandinavians in the East. Seeking further wealth, the Vikings known in the East as "the Rus" attacked Constantinople in 860. The Rus became a permanent and feared fixture in the Byzantine Empire.
S1E3 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
The Siege of York occurred from 866 when the Great Heathen Army laid claim to the Northumbrian capital of York. We look at the major battles, players and strongholds of the York battle and how the Vikings later came to control much of the 9th Century England.
S1E2 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
An attack on a small religious community on the holy island of Lindisfarne in AD 793 heralded the start of the Viking Age of conquest and expansion. For 200 years, the longships from Scandinavia threatened all of Europe. But it was far from their first attack. We reveal how the Vikings' reign of terror began in Scandinavia.
S1E1 • Vikings: The Rise and Fall • 2022 • History
Follows a Ukrainian battalion on the frontline of the war against Russia, filmed by the soldiers themselves as they try to defend a vital railway line, the capture of which would enable Russia to mount a direct attack on Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv. The film examines the lives of the 99-strong military company as they face sustained Russian assaults, presenting a ground-level view of the war through the eyes of the troops fighting it.
2024 • History
The story of how the life-saving cervical cancer test became an ordinary part of women's lives is as unusual and remarkable as the coalition of people who ultimately made it possible: a Greek immigrant, Dr. George Papanicolaou; his intrepid wife, Mary; Japanese-born artist Hashime Murayama; Dr. Helen Dickens, an African American OBGYN in Philadelphia; and an entirely new class of female scientists known as cyto-screeners. But the test was just the beginning. Once the test proved effective, the campaign to make pap smears available to millions of women required nothing short of a total national mobilization. The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the people who fought tirelessly to save women from what was once the number one cancer killer of women.
2024 • Health
The search for Pablo Escobar as told by US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, with never-before-seen footage of Escobar's life and capture.
2018 • People
In 1960, a young secretary from Bournemouth, with no scientific qualifications, entered a remote forest in Africa and achieved something nobody else had ever done before. Jane Goodall became accepted by a group of wild chimpanzees, making discoveries that transformed our understanding of them, and challenged the way we define ourselves as human beings by showing just how close we are as a species to our nearest living relatives. Since then, both she and the chimps of Gombe in Tanzania have become world famous - Jane as the beauty of many wildlife films, they as the beasts with something profound to tell us. As one of the programme's contributors, David Attenborough, suggests, Jane Goodall's story could be a fable if it wasn't true. In this revealing programme filmed with Jane Goodall in Africa, we discover the person behind the myth, what motivates her and the personal cost her life's work has exacted from her - and why she still thinks we have a lot to learn from the chimps she has devoted her life to understanding.
2010 • Nature
This is a story about the greatest risks to humanity, and what we can do about it. We are living in a time when human-made risks pose the biggest threat to our existence. Technological progress has brought us to a precipice. For the first time ever, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves. Edge of Existence lays out how we can pull ourselves back from this precipice in order achieve a vast and extraordinary future.
2022 • Environment
Recommended Documentaries
Dawkins discusses his book, the Selfish Gene, which divided the scientific community and made him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his time. Professor Richard Dawkins is one of the most well-known and controversial scientists in Britain. A passionate atheist he believes science rather than religion offers us the best way to appreciate the wonders of the Universe we live in. In the last 10 years he has become notorious for his outspoken views on religion, but at the heart of his success is his explosive first book -- The Selfish Gene -- which put forward a radical rewriting of evolutionary theory and divided the scientific community. Much of the controversy comes from its provocative title.
S2E3 • Beautiful Minds • 2012 • People
Are you genetically destined to despise brussels sprouts? We’re all human, but why are we all so different? With the help of a line-up of dogs and many sets of twins, Prof Alice Roberts explores what makes each of us totally unique.
S1E3 • Who Am I (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures) • 2018 • Nature
David Attenborough narrates a natural history of the oceans, examining how animals from in and around the sea use the constantly changing coastal areas.
S1E8 • Blue Planet I • 2001 • Nature
The Banat region borders on Serbia and Hungary, so its capital, Timisoara, is a very multi-cultural, cosmopolitan city, and provides the main social and economic hub for western Romania.
S1E7 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel
The world's electric grids are aging and vulnerable. Now, engineers are making a dangerous trek to prove there is a better way to bring power to the people. Engineers make a dangerous trek across the Himalayas to bring power to a remote monastery.
S2E6 • Breakthrough National Geographic • 2017 • Technology
Astronaut Mike Massimino explores Venus, a hellish planet covered in active volcanoes and dense clouds. Using cutting edge technology, he decodes the secrets beneath this volatile planet and investigates if Earth could be heading towards the same fate.
S1E3 • The Planets (US) • 2017 • Astronomy
Nature Documentaries
With its feathered body and duck bill, the eight-ton Deinocheirus wades through an Asian wetland in search of relief from pesky biting flies.
S1E3 • Prehistoric Planet • 2022 • Nature
Plants' solutions to life's challenges are as ingenious and manipulative as any animal's. Innovative time-lapse photography opens up a parallel world where plants act like fly-paper, or spring-loaded traps, to catch insects. Vines develop suckers and claws to haul themselves into the rainforest canopy. Every peculiar shape proves to have a clever purpose. The dragon's blood tree is like an upturned umbrella to capture mist and shade its roots. The seed of a Bornean tree has wings so aerodynamic they inspired the design of early gliders. The barrel-shaped desert rose is full of water. The heliconia plant even enslaves a humming bird and turns it into an addict for its nectar.
Deep in the rainforest of Central Africa lies an elephant oasis - a remarkable place that holds the key to the future for forest elephants. Over the last 20 years, Andrea Turkalo has been studying these enigmatic giants, getting to know over 4,000 intimately. She has begun to unravel the secrets of their complex social lives and the meanings of their unique vocalisations. New acoustic research is shedding light on the many mysteries that still surround forest elephant society. Will these endangered elephants finally speak out and tell Andrea what it is they need to survive?
Natural World • 2010 • Nature
"Strange Parents" asks how we usually recognise animals as either male or female and how each sex normally plays a particular role in their own life cycle. However both hyenas and seahorses completely break the gender rules.
S2E9 • Natural Curiosities • Nature
Andrew Scott narrates a special programme which celebrates winter and explores how animals and plants rise to the challenges it brings. With their world encased in snow and ice, animals must find the most inventive ways to survive and even benefit from the cold. Caribou become ice road travellers as it gets slippery underfoot, stoats make their own fur bedding, and snow monkeys find a warm bath. Emperor penguins are built for the cold weather, but even they must find their own tricks to endure the world's most savage winter.
S1E3 • Earth's Seasonal Secrets • 2016 • Nature
Orphaned leopard, Motsidi, makes a heart-breaking decision to leave her mother's forest.
S4E3 • Savage Kingdom • 2020 • Nature
Health Documentaries
In this programme, Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken discover the everyday miracles that keep you alive. They explore the extraordinary lengths our bodies go to in order to keep our organs working at every moment of every day.
S1E2 • The Human Body: Secrets of Your Life Revealed • 2017 • Health
What are the principles behind Homeopathy and does it work?
In a Nutshell • 2018 • Health
We’ve heard for years about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt. But there have never been recommended limits for sugar on Canadian food labels, despite emerging research that suggests the sweet stuff may be making more of us fat and sick. In the fifth estate’s season premiere, Gillian Findlay digs into the surprising science — and the reaction from the food industry — to reveal The Secrets of Sugar. Has the sugar industry been hiding an unsavoury truth from consumers?
The Fifth Estate CBC • 2013 • Health
Gloria Hunniford and Chris Bavin investigate the controversial diets that recommend cutting out entire food groups from what you eat. With the experts divided, could some of these quick-fix fads do you more harm than good?
S2E5 • Food: Truth or Scare • 2017 • Health
This programme explores the way our experiences shape our minds and bodies as we make the journey from the most helpless to the most sophisticated organism on earth. Dr Chris and Dr Xand van Tullekan uncover how we develop new skills - whether riding a bike or learning to walk.
S1E3 • The Human Body: Secrets of Your Life Revealed • 2017 • Health
Randoms! Documentaries
A look inside the shadowy world of hackers, where good battles evil. "White-hat" hackers stage a risky raid on a bank; a "black-hat" ISIS recruiter organizes a terrorist attack.
S2E2 • Breakthrough National Geographic • 2017 • Technology
Explained examines the possibility of extraterrestrial life and looks at why we have not yet found evidence for its existence despite efforts to look for it. It considers the Fermi paradox which suggests that given the vastness of the universe that there should be a great deal of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy. It also consider conspiracy theories about U.F.O.
Could parallel universes exist? If so, what would they look like and how would they form?
Writer Will Millard visits the treehouse-dwelling Korowai tribe in Papua, Indonesia
S1E1 • My Year With the Tribe • 2018 • People
A behind-the-scenes special offering an insider's look at Sir David Attenborough's innovative series exploring the macroscopic world of bugs. David reveals how the film-makers got up close with the insect and arachnid world for the innovative documentary series
7 • Micro Monsters with David Attenborough • 2013 • Nature
NOVA and National Geographic present exclusive access to a unique discovery of ancient remains. Located in an almost inaccessible chamber deep in a South African cave, the site required recruiting a special team of experts slender enough to wriggle down a vertical, pitch-dark, seven-inch-wide passage. Most fossil discoveries of human relatives consist of just a handful of bones. But down in this hidden chamber, the team uncovered an unprecedented trove—so far, over 1,500 bones—with the potential to rewrite the story of our origins. They may help fill in a crucial gap in the fossil record and tell us how Homo, the first member of the human family, emerged from ape-like ancestors like the famous Lucy. But how did hundreds of bones end up in the remote chamber? The experts are considering every mind-boggling possibility. Join NOVA on the treacherous descent into this cave of spectacular and enigmatic finds, and discover their startling implications for the saga of what made us human.