Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, with the help of the world’s most powerful telescope, ventures through the Milky Way and into the universe beyond, on the hunt for alien worlds.
S1E3 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Is There Life Beyond Earth? • 2025 • Astronomy
Space scientist Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock continues her search for alien life with a grand tour of our solar system. Could any other planets or moons out there be habitable?
S1E2 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Is There Life Beyond Earth? • 2025 • Astronomy
Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock begins her search for extraterrestrial life with an exploration of our nearest neighbour, and her favourite space rock, the moon.
S1E1 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Is There Life Beyond Earth? • 2025 • Astronomy
Sir David Attenborough explores the wildlife of his London hometown, from urban deer to rooftop peregrines and many others, revealing how nature thrives in the world’s greenest major city.
2026 • Nature
Dan Cruickshank presents a documentary revealing the story of the Dalai Lama, his secret Himalayan kingdom and the story of his exile, using eyewitness accounts from Tibetans including the Dalai Lama himself and colour archive footage of Tibet from the 1930s to 50s.
2008 • History
This episode examines how people can work with nature to make this world thrive.
S1E4 • The Future of Nature • 2025 • Nature
A look at how forest ecosystems reduce global carbon levels and effect climate, meeting the people working to improve biodiversity, saving keystone species and using Indigenous wisdom to rebuild and restore our forests.
S1E3 • The Future of Nature • 2025 • Nature
Glimpse into grasslands where the biggest animal numbers are found, and see how animal life helps to draw down carbon.
S1E2 • The Future of Nature • 2025 • Nature
How oceans and organisms within them play a fundamental role in removing carbon from the atmosphere.
S1E1 • The Future of Nature • 2025 • Nature
It's not as crazy as it sounds: life on Earth could be descended from space-faring microbes from Mars, or even further beyond, riding here on an interplanetary highway of asteroids. Extremophile bacteria may be resilient enough to survive the intense 3-stage journey, by repairing their own damaged DNA or hibernating for the long and deadly journey through space.
melodysheep • 2026 • Astronomy
A Madagascan chameleon and a Scottish water vole travel to secure their bloodline.
S1E3 • Big Little Journeys • 2023 • Nature
A Taiwanese pangolin and a Brazilian lion tamarin family travel to a strange new world.
S1E2 • Big Little Journeys • 2023 • Nature
The second leg of the journey through Transilvania. We pick up our journey in the fields just outside the scenic village of Crit.
S1E6 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel
The cutting-edge research of our organs networking activities greatly contributes to scientists pursuit of the largest mystery about human life and birth. How does a single cell ultimately grows into all the varieties of our organs each with complex structure and function?
The Ship of the Imagination embarks on a journey through space and time to grasp how the autobiography of the Earth is written in its atoms, its oceans, its continents and all living things. Later, American geologist Marie Tharp creates the first true map of Earth's ocean floor, and discovers microscopic life that exists deep beneath the ocean.
S1E9 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • Astronomy
David Attenborough presents a guide to wildlife that have adapted to survive in frozen mountain regions. On the high slopes of Mount Kenya, a pregnant High Casqued Chameleon must choose the right time in a daily cycle of tropical sun and frost at night to give birth. The mountains of Japan are the snowiest place on Earth, providing hostile conditions for a lone male Macaque cast out of his troop. In the remote Southern Alps of New Zealand, parrots feed on the dead, while in the Andes, flamingos thrive in high altitude volcanic lakes.
S1E3 • Frozen Planet II narrated by Sir David Attenborough • 2022 • Nature
A look at the survival techniques of creatures that endure the harsh conditions of the Arctic and Antarctic.
S1E4 • Blue Planet I • 2001 • Nature
In France, Henry III still has no heir. Catherine de Medici is determined to prevent him from being the last of the Valois line and leaving the throne to Henry of Navarre. Yet again, the wind of revolt blows over the kingdom of France and leads to the assassination of Henry, Duke of Guise.
S2E6 • The Real War of Thrones: The True History of Europe • 2018 • History
China is a nation of contrasts, and nowhere is it more evident than along its dynamic coastline. This aerial journey takes us from the north's icy Chagan Lake to the tropical Hainan province's southern volcanoes, and from the nation's most populated cities in the east to an abandoned fishermen's village off Shanghai's coast. It's a spectacular voyage highlighting the country's diverse environments, evolving cultures, and growing prosperity.
S1E3 • China from Above • 2018 • Travel
Levison Wood returns to the site of his car crash to resume the journey, and is reunited with the people who saved his life. He keeps a promise to Binod by accompanying him on a trek to his family home in Pokhara, before continuing their travels with members of the Gurung tribe, who risk their lives to collect honey from wild bees living on high cliffs. They visit the site of an earthquake in 2014 and visit Kathmandu, before crossing the border into Bhutan.
In central Thailand's forests, fertile plains and even city streets, nature finds a way of living alongside people. Spirituality can be found in human and animal relationships, both likely and unlikely. This bustling region is known as the nation's rice bowl - but even here, there are magical places to be found.
S1E2 • Thailand: Earth's Tropical Paradise • 2017 • Travel
Famed for its painted churches, this is a region that's replete with ancient monuments.
S1E9 • Flavours of Romania • 2018 • Travel
Levison is reunited with a man who saved his life and joins pilgrims on their way to India's holiest city, where he meets a monk who claims to have gained special powers from eating human flesh. Levison then travels into Nepal, encountering dangerous wildlife and having to flee a town in the middle of the night when monsoon rains cause flooding.
S1E3 • Walking the Himalayas with Levison Wood • 2016 • Travel
China is growing at a breakneck pace and racing to keep up with demand. As new cities are built and current ones expand, the country is pushing the limits of technology and innovation. On an aerial tour over megacities like Shanghai and Beijing, discover how the population works, travels, plays, and adapts to China's exploding economy and massive urban transformation.
S1E2 • China from Above • 2018 • Travel
In Switzerland, Piers and Caroline tour a modern chalet, a concrete retreat, an S-shaped home and a house built for it's owner's classic cars
S2E3 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2018 • Design
The story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with the miracles of electronic miniaturisation to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation.
S1E4 • The Genius of Design • 2010 • Design
For two millennia, great artists set the standard for beauty. Now those standards are gone. Modern Art is a competition between the ugly and the twisted; the most shocking wins. What happened?
Israel serves up a palatial family estate, a pastoral property that filters the elements, a house built on a cliff and a home with three gardens.
S2E8 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design
We each spend three years of our lives on the toilet, but how happy are we talking about this essential part of our lives? This film challenges that mindset by uncovering its role in our culture and exploring the social history of the toilet in Britain and abroad - as well as exploring many of our cultural toilet taboos. Starting in Merida, Spain with some of the the earliest surviving Roman toilets, we journey around the world - from the UK to China, Japan and Bangladesh - visiting toilets, ranging from the historically significant to the beautiful, from the functional and sometimes not-so-functional to the downright bizarre. Leading the journey is Everyman figure, Welsh poet and presenter Ifor ap Glyn, who has a passionate interest in the toilet, its history and how it has evolved over the centuries, right up to the development of the current design. Finally, there's a glimpse of the future and a possible solution to the global sanitation issues we now face.
2012 • Design
The story of the exclamation point. How it came to be and are we overusing it today?
Documentary offering a chronological timeline of how and why the central alliance between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union was formed in the years leading into the Second World War. It was an uneasy alliance and one fraught with power struggles, false promises and deadly suspicions. Plus, an in-depth picture of the race to ultimate victory and post-war supremacy, concluding with V day on the May 8 1945.
S1E1 • World War II: Race to Victory • 2020 • History
From the stealthy tarantula to the prehistoric Komodo dragon to the deceptive mosquito--one of the more prolific modern predators--killers come in all shapes and sizes. Join us as we examine the deadly adaptations of these cold-blooded culprits.
S1E4 • Attack and Defend • 2016 • Nature
Mumbai is a city of contrasts. Here, the super-rich and slum dwellers live side by side. As more and more luxury skyscrapers go up, slums are forced to make way for them. Conflicts ensue. So what is life like, in a megacity with 20 million inhabitants?
2022 • Travel
Left to fend for themselves until they find their footing, baby sea turtles, elephant seal pups, pumas and crabs bravely trek towards adolescence.
S2E3 • Our Planet • 2023 • Nature
A riveting story that captures the immense draw that Antarctica has had on dreamers, explorers and travelers alike over the last 200 years. Explorer Geoff Wilson attempts a challenge that may see him travel further than any explorer before.
2020 • People
Sophie is joined in the theatre by chirping crickets, hissing cockroaches and groaning deer to reveal the very different ways that animals have adapted their bodies to send audible messages that are vital to their species. She also explores how and why the human voice evolved to become the most versatile sound producer in the natural world. She demonstrates what sound actually is and how it travels. Unpacking the power behind sound, she uses it to shatter glass and reveal how the human body can resonate in a way that amplifies our voices to send our messages further. She also explores how different species use very different frequencies to communicate and why humans can only hear a fraction of these animal messages. Finally, she investigates why we all have unique vocal prints, and how computers are learning to recognise these.
S1E1 • Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: The Language of Life • 2017 • Nature