Last Watched

Bitter Lake

   2015    Culture
And epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer. The narrative goes all over the world, America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia, but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth, that they cannot understand what is going on any longer". The coumentary reveals the forces that over the past thirty years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this. But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan - and used them in new and radical ways. He has tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan. A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

The Satanic Verses 30 Years On

   2019    Culture
The publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1988 sparked a culture war in Britain between those in the Muslim community, who considered the book blasphemous and called for the book to be banned, and those defending it as an expression of freedom of speech. Protests, which began in the north of England, soon spread across the UK and to the rest of the Islamic world, culminating in February 1989 with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa - a death sentence on the writer.
Now, 30 years on, broadcaster and journalist Mobeen Azhar embarks on a journey, starting in his native Yorkshire where the protest first began, to examine the lasting effect the book has had on the Muslim community and how the events of 1989 continue to have an impact today.

Ancient Apocalypse: The Americas

   2024    History
We offer the complete second series of “Ancient Apocalypse” in a single video. In this series, journalist Graham Hancock travels to the Americas to search for evidence supporting his hypothesis: that an advanced civilization was lost to history during the cataclysms that marked the apocalyptic end of the last Ice Age, between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. Each episode investigates new discoveries being made in the American hemisphere, which until recently has been largely under-explored by archaeologists interested in humanity’s origins. Graham reveals new findings and speculates about how those findings might suggest the existence of a globe-traveling advanced civilization that left traces of itself in ancient cultures.
In episode one, evidence from New Mexico’s White Sands desert confirms the presence of people in the Americas long before it was possible to migrate across the Bering Straits that formed a land bridge during the lowered sea-levels of the Ice Age. The series takes us to multiple locations in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Easter Island to investigate when people first arrived in the “New World” and how they made the journey. The findings give Graham reason to question the accepted timeline of human history. During his journey, Graham interviews highly regarded archaeologists and historians as well as indigenous elders, who share their unique knowledge of the sites and their oral histories. Hollywood actor, Keanu Reeves, also joins Graham across the series, discussing, among other things, his insights into storytelling as an act of preserving culture. Experts in the series include American archaeologist Dr. Chris Davis, Brazilian palaeontologist Dr. Alceu Ranzi, and archaeo-botanist Dr. Sonia Cardinali of Rapa Nui, Easter Island, among others.
Series: Ancient Apocalypse

Cat and Mouse

   2019    History
This series is about an attention-seeking criminal who ticked off the wrong people. His gruesome videos on internet drive a group of amateur online sleuths to launch a risky manhunt using internet tools that are available to everyone. This root out brings them into a dark underworld.
In the first episode, a shocking online video of a man killing two kittens brings together a widespread internet group of animal lovers out for justice. Their target, meanwhile, has worse horrors planned.
Series: Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer

The Arctic

   2011    Culture
The Arctic is the harshest environment on Earth: little food grows, it's dark for months on end, and temperatures stay well below freezing for much of the year. Yet four million people manage to survive here. Human Planet tells remarkable stories of extraordinary people who make their homes in nature's deep freeze. In springtime, Amos and Karl-Frederik set out across the sea ice with their dogs to catch a real-life sea monster: a Greenland shark! Inuit mussel-gatherers venture underneath the sea ice at low tide for a perilous race against time as they gather their food. And the children of Churchill, Manitoba, set out on the most dangerous trick or treating Halloween in the world: they risk coming face-to-face with deadly polar bears on the streets of their town. Who'll get the tastiest snack?
Series: Human Planet

Undefeated

   2011    Culture
Set in the inner-city of Memphis, Undefeated chronicles the Manassas Tigers' 2009 football season, on and off-the-field, as they strive to win the first playoff game in the high school's 110-year history. A perennial whipping boy, in recent decades Manassas had gone so far as to sell their home games to the highest bidder, but that all changed in the spring of 2004 when Bill Courtney, a former high school football coach turned lumber salesman, volunteered to lend a hand.
Universe

Universe

2021  Science
First Life

First Life

2010  Science
The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night

2020  Science
Vikings Season 1

Vikings Season 1

2013  History
Reel Rock

Reel Rock

2014  Culture