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On night two of the 46th News & Documentary Emmy Awards Thursday night, MSNBC took home the night’s biggest prize, Best Documentary, for “The Sing Sing Chronicles.”

But at the ceremony focused on documentary programming, National Geographic led all winners with six award, taking home Outstanding Historical Documentary and Outstanding Nature Documentary among others. Netflix followed, with two programming wins (Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary and Outstanding Investigative Documentary) and two craft wins (Outstanding Cinematography — Documentary and Outstanding Light Direction — Documentary).

PBS historically does well on the second night of the annual ceremony, often leading the pack in documentary programming with series like “Frontline,” “Pov” and “Independent Lens.” Tonight’s two documentary programming wins brought the network’s two total to 19 this decade. They also saw three Gold/Silver Circle inductees — this amid President Donald Trump’s calls to cut the network’s funding.

Jon Else received the night’s Lifetime Achievement Award for documentary,...

Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s “The Grab” — following up both her groundbreaking documentary “Blackfish,” which revealed how SeaWorld’s use of captive orcas led to unnecessary human deaths and animal cruelty, and her more forgettable narrative drama “Our Friend” — takes an overwhelming interest in journalist Nathan Halverson’s tenacious pursuit of the impenetrable truth behind the colonization of our world’s most precious natural resource, water, by its wealthiest nations.

When Halverson began investigating the purchase of the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, by Shuanghui International Holdings, a company backed by China’s government, he couldn’t have envisioned how this 2014 merger of pig sales would lead to an eight-year journey through top secret emails, unlikely American farmlands, and the distant shores of Zambia. With an earth-shattering story like this, you’d expect sharp twists and unpredictable turns, and factual incongruities that pull us deeper into this narrative’s multiple rabbit holes.

You’ve heard the expression, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Well, “The Grab” makes the case that society had best brace itself for disorder, since certain parties are gobbling up the world’s food and water resources while the rest of us are distracted by other things. Produced in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s astonishing, eye-opening doc hits us with the idea that the next world war won’t be fought over ideology, oil or border disputes, but basic resources like meat, wheat and water, none of which should be taken for granted.

Experts call this field “food security,” and the entire system is more fragile than it looks. World populations are climbing while water resources are dwindling, which has led countries such as Saudi Arabia and China to seek farmland on other continents. Among its myriad examples, “The Grab...