Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

All about our feathery friends. This 'Best Of' episode of The Mind of a Chef opens the birdcage on some of our familiar (and some not so familiar) poultry dishes. Chinese chicken noodle soup, and chicken and dumplings make an appearance, but also stuffed Faroe Island puffin and duck-on-a-string get some screen time as well.

We will nvestigate the first skeleton that really looks like us –Turkana Boy– an astonishingly complete specimen of Homo erectus found by the famous Leakey team in Kenya. These early humans are thought to have developed key innovations that helped them thrive, including hunting large prey, the use of fire, and extensive social bonds. The program examines an intriguing theory that long-distance running –our ability to jog– was crucial for the survival of these early hominids. Not only did running help them escape from vicious predators roaming the grasslands, but it also gave them a unique hunting strategy: chasing down prey animals such as deer and antelope to the point of exhaustion. Birth of Humanity also probes how, why, and when humans' uniquely long period of childhood and parenting began.

Supermassive black holes are the engines that power our universe and one of the major players in the evolution of galaxies. They're in fact the driving force at the heart of nearly every galaxy in the cosmos. Now, a new mystery has emerged about the oldest supermassive black holes. We see supermassive black holes in the very early universe. And we don't understand how they grew so large so quickly. We have clues about their formation but, can we solve the mystery of this supermassive growth spurt?

Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain's radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation. On his journey through 18th-century fiction, Hitchings reveals how the novel was more than mere entertainment, it was also a subversive hand-grenade that would change British society for the better. He travels from the homes of Britain's great and good to its lowliest prisons, meeting contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow on the way.

The centre of our galaxy is home to an invisible monster of unimaginable power – a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A star, with four million times the mass of the Sun. Recent astronomical breakthroughs have confirmed not only that black holes like Sagittarius A star exist, but that these bizarre invisible objects may be the ultimate galactic protagonists.
Stunning CGI takes us back to witness the fiery origins of our galaxy’s black hole 13.6 billion years ago, when the early universe was home to colossal blue stars, and when they ran out of fuel, they collapsed under their own enormous mass, crushing down into an object so small and so dense it punched a hole in the fabric of the universe. Over billions of years, Sagittarius A star feasted on nearby gas, stars, and through cataclysmic mergers with other black holes. A breakthrough discovery by Nasa’s Fermi gamma-ray telescope has shown that our black hole had the power to sculpt the entire galaxy, creating vast bubbles of gas above and below our galaxy and even protecting stars systems as ours.
In a mind-bending conclusion, Brian Cox reveals how our modern understanding of black holes is challenging our concepts of reality to the breaking point. In trying to understand the fate of objects that fall into Sagittarius A star, scientists have come to a stunning conclusion: space and time, concepts so foundational to how we experience the world around us, are not as fundamental as we once thought.

This illuminating ten-part series tells the story of World War ll through the ten most pivotal turning points in the conflict. Gripping story-telling illustrated with exquisitely restored and colourised archived films and supported by a global cast of stellar historians bring this crucially important era in history to life.
In the first chapter, Britain and France declare war when Hitler invades Poland. In May 1940 the Germans attack Holland and Belgium as a decoy. As the Wehrmacht comes through the Ardennes and the Luftwaffe strikes in force, French leaders are caught like rabbits in headlights. The Germans are on a drug called Pervitin, which beats off fatigue, and reach the Atlantic coast. There is a danger that the Germans will encircle the Allies and cut them off from the sea. But Hitler issues his Halt Order and some 340,000 Allies are evacuated.