Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism. MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.

Blue Planet II explores parts of the ocean that nobody has ever visited, encountered extraordinary animals, and discovered new insights into life beneath the waves. In Our Blue Planet, Sir David Attenborough examines the impact of human life on life in the ocean. In this final episode, we uncover the impact that our modern lives are having on our best-loved characters from across the series, including devoted albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks discarded plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their new born calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. Scientists have even discovered that increasing noise levels may stop baby clownfish finding their way home.

Jacoba Ballard was an only child, conceived via donor sperm, who always dreamed of having a brother or sister. When an at-home DNA test led her to the discovery of not one but seven half-siblings, she realized that she had stumbled across a major finding.
Jacoba discovers a shocking scheme involving a former Indianapolis based fertility doctor, who, in a case of fertility fraud, used his own sperm to impregnate dozens of unsuspecting patients.

The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering, but it is also extremely limited. Beyond the narrow range of light that makes up the familiar colours of the rainbow is a vast spectrum of light, entirely unseen. Richard Hammond does just that, using ground-breaking new imaging technologies to take the viewer on a breath-taking journey of discovery beyond the visible spectrum, seeing the world, quite literally, in a whole new light. From death-defying aerial repairmen in the United States using ultraviolet cameras to seek out an invisible force that lurks unseen on power lines, to German scientists unlocking the secrets of animal locomotion with the world's most powerful moving x-ray camera, to infrared cameras that can finally reveal the secrets within a humble beehive, he shows how new technologies are letting us see our world anew.

The sixth episode of the series narrates the fascinating story of the evolution and survival of life on our planet after the catastrophic event that marked the end of the era of dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. Through a visually stunning journey, we will see the impact of the meteorite and all its consequences in detail. We will also discover how the animals and plants that survived the mass extinction adapted, evolved, and diversified to fill the ecological niches left by the dinosaurs. From the first mammals and birds that emerged from the ashes to dominate the Earth, to the formation of complex ecosystems in the oceans and on land, the documentary offers a unique vision of the resilience and innovation of life on our planet.
With impressive imagery and exciting stories, it reveals how life, against all odds, thrived after one of the most devastating events in Earth's history. This documentary is a testament to the unbreakable strength of life and its ability to adapt and flourish even in the most adverse conditions.

The film explores how and why mankind's most feared and controversial technological discovery is now passionately embraced by many of those who once led the charge against it. PANDORA'S PROMISE aims to inspire a serious and realistic debate over what is without question the most important question of our time: how do we continue to power modern civilization without destroying it?