Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Grasslands cover one quarter of all land and support the vast gatherings of wildlife, but to survive here animals must endure the most hostile seasonal changes on the planet. From Asia's bizarre-looking Saiga antelope to the giant anteaters of Brazil, grassland animals have adapted in extraordinary ways to cope with these extremes. In the flooded Okavango, lions take on formidable buffalo in epic battles, on the savannah bee-eaters take advantage of elephants to help catch insects and, on the freezing northern tundra, caribou embark on great migrations shadowed by hungry Arctic wolves.

The film reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age.
In 1943 Bill Tutte, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer called Tommy Flowers combined to hack into Hitler's personal super code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised.

In Bhutan, Palin finds himself back in the land of yaks for a last look at the high Himalaya. Trekking to Chomolhari base camp he meets a nomad with a penchant for yak songs before heading down to Paro to witness the Buddhist festival or Tsechu. In a bar in Thimphu, he discusses reincarnation and the pursuit of happiness with Benji and Khendum, two of the king's cousins, and en route to Bangladesh is taken by Benji to see the rare black-neck cranes. On his journey south through Bangladesh, Michael visits the ship-breaking beaches of Chittagong and grid-locked Dhaka. He meets a man who made a fortune in Birmingham in the poultry business, and a woman who lends money only to women. On a 1920s paddle steamer he is serenaded with the words of Bengal's Shakespeare, and he completes his epic Himalayan journey aboard a fishing boat that carries him out into the Bay of Bengal and a westering sun.

Following the Yangtze along Tiger Leaping Gorge into Yunnan in China, Palin reaches the easternmost end of the Himalayas. He gets a medical check-up before exploring medieval Lijiang with the director of the local orchestra. Heading over Myanmar to Nagaland in India he rides the steam train to Tipong Coalmine. In Assam he rides an elephant and then stays in a strange monastery.

On a spectacular journey through Renaissance Italy, Andrew Graham-Dixon searches for the shadowy figure who wrote one of the most important books on art and looks at some dazzling works, including masterpieces of the early Renaissance by Giotto, Masaccio and Donatello. Giorgio Vasari was the grandaddy of all art critics, travelling Italy in the 16th century for his definitive Lives of the Artists. It was a time of miracles that he named 'the Renaissance'.

In a world where nothing seems to ever work out as you had hoped, The Rehearsal features Nathan Fielder helping ordinary people rehearse difficult conversations or life events through the use of sets and actors hired to recreate real situations. The situations can be trivial, like confessing to a lie about educational history, or more complex, like raising a child. Fielder commissions extravagant sets with every detail recreated. He hires actors to inhabit these sets and practice different dialogue trees with his clients dozens of times. Information used to train the actors and build the sets is often collected without the subjects' knowledge.
In the firs episode, Nathan Fielder helps Kor Skeete, a Brooklyn-based trivia aficionado who wants to confess to his bar trivia team that he lied about having a master's degree. Nathan reveals an elaborate method of rehearsals involving an actor (K. Todd Freeman) playing a 'fake Kor'. To help Kor rehearse the difficult conversation with his teammate Tricia to clean this long-held lie, Nathan creates simulations of trivia night with a fake Tricia in a full-scale replica of the Alligator Lounge, a Brooklyn bar. Kor overcomes his fears and makes his confession to the real Tricia.