Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

On the coast, two worlds collide. Coasts are the most dynamic and challenging habitats in the ocean - that brings great rewards but also great danger. The extraordinary animals that live here must find ingenious ways to cope with two very different worlds. This episode is a rollercoaster ride of heart-stopping action and epic drama, peopled with characters from the beautiful to the bizarre. We meet fish that live on dry land and puffins that must travel 60 miles or more for a single meal, and witness a life-and-death struggle in a technicolour rock pool. In a secluded cove in the Galapagos, sea lions feast on 60kg tuna. It should be impossible - tuna are usually far too fast for sea lions to catch. But here the sea lions club together to herd their prey inshore. Once trapped in the shallows, these huge fish are easy pickings. As the tide recedes in Brazil, lightfoot crabs leap from rock to rock, desperately avoiding the water - their lives depend on it. Moray eels launch themselves from rock pools, jaw gaping. Then octopuses, too. Both crawl across dry rock to set their ambush. Elsewhere, the ever-changing tides create rock pools. But these temporary worlds are a battleground. Predatory starfish turn a magical garden into the stuff of nightmares.

Professor Brian Cox fulfils a childhood dream by going behind the scenes at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), mission control for Mars 2020 – one of the most ambitious missions ever launched that may finally reveal if life ever existed on the red planet.
In 1980, a young Brian Cox wrote to JPL asking for photos from some of their missions to the planets. The pictures they sent him from Voyager and the Viking mission to Mars were a source of inspiration that set him on the path to becoming a physicist.
Now, over 40 years later, he has been granted privileged access to JPL, including key mission areas that are usually off-limits to film crews. Brian spends a week following the team who guide the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter - the first powered aircraft ever sent to another planet - across the surface of Mars during a critical stage of the mission.
Perseverance’s goal is to search for signs of long extinct life on the surface of Mars in an area called Jezero Crater, which, 3.8 billion years ago, was filled by a vast lake. If it finds evidence of that life, it could change everything we know about life in the universe - and even transform our understanding of our own origins.

The documentary delves deep into the mysterious and catastrophic collapse of ancient civilizations during the late Bronze Age, as empires from Greece to ancient Egypt were wiped off the map. It explores the various theories and hypotheses that have emerged to explain their sudden downfall, revealing the tumultuous events that brought an end to a once-thriving era of human history.
Through invasions, mega-droughts, natural disasters, and rebellions, we discover the complex web of factors that were involved. With stunning visual imagery, expert interviews and immersive storytelling, this film offers a fascinating glimpse into one of the most pivotal and enigmatic periods of human history. And it warns that we could be facing a similar combination of threats today.

Scientists investigate the way the Sun builds its power -- through fusion -- hoping to find a way to use fusion as a less dangerous and less radioactive waste-producing path to energy than fission. But there are some major difficulties along the way. Fusion really is the perfect way to make energy. We have millions of years worth of fuel. It produces no long-lived radioactive waste. If we can solve the engineering challenges, energy will become cheaper, more available for everybody.

Join investigators as they untangle the cause of Alzheimer’s and race to develop a cure. Alzheimer’s disease strikes at the core of what makes us human: our capacity to think, to love, and to remember. The disease ravages the minds of over 40 million victims worldwide, and it is one of the greatest medical mysteries of our time. Join investigators as they gather clues and attempt to reconstruct the molecular chain of events that ultimately leads to dementia". Follow key researchers in the field who have helped to develop the leading theories of the disease. Along the way, meet individuals from all walks of life who will reveal what it’s like to struggle with Alzheimer’s. Among them, members of a unique Colombian family who have learned that their genetic predisposition all but guarantees early onset Alzheimer’s. Yet there may be hope. Join these courageous patients participating in clinical trials, and then go behind the scenes of the major drug trials to see how researchers target and test therapies that may slow and even prevent Alzheimer’s

Could nuclear fusion hold the answers to the energy crisis? It is the process that has forged all matter in the universe. It lights the stars and it is what transformed the lighter atoms that formed in the Big Bang into heavier atoms. In Can We Make a Star on Earth?, Brian Cox peers beyond the glare of our Sun to reveal the hidden forces that provide its power. He discovers how this fusion energy has kept our closest star burning for five billion years. Brian believes humanity must build a star on Earth to ensure survival. Will scientists be able to harness fusion power and achieve abundant, cheap, clean energy?