The Housemartins return to Hull during their breakthrough year of 1986 and revisit the places where the band began. Paul Heaton, Stan Cullimore, Norman Cook and Hugh Whitaker talk about forming the group, their sudden success and their determination to remain rooted in ordinary life despite growing fame. The film follows them through Hull, mixes informal conversations with rehearsals and performances, and includes songs such as Happy Hour, Sheep, Think for a Minute and Caravan of Love. The members also speak openly about their socialist views, religion, money and their distrust of the music industry, revealing the ideas behind their deliberately unglamorous image and sharply observant lyrics. Ending with a concert for their home audience, this documentary captures The Housemartins at the moment they were becoming nationally famous while still maintaining the humour, friendship and political convictions that defined the band.
As climate chaos intensifies, animals across the planet are being pushed into conditions their bodies and instincts were never designed to face. Floods arrive where drought once ruled, storms grow stronger, seas warm and familiar habitats disappear. Narrated by Andrew Lincoln, this six-part natural history series follows wildlife confronting these extremes at close range, revealing not only the destructive power of a changing climate but also the extraordinary ingenuity, resilience and adaptability animals use to survive. In the first three episodes, the struggle begins on an increasingly extreme Earth. Burrowing owls on the North American Great Plains race to protect their chicks from tornadoes, cheetahs in Kenya battle record floods, polar bears search for vanishing sea ice and chimpanzees survive severe drought by digging their own filtered water holes. Rising waters then transform entire ecosystems: pygmy elephants face monsoon floods in Borneo, a platypus is swept into a violent flash flood in Australia, and a lone lioness in the Kalahari turns an unexpected flood into a rare hunting opportunity. Finally, along the world’s coasts, Caribbean flamingos confront a category-five hurricane, anole lizards cling on through violent winds, California sea otters struggle through huge storms and collapsing kelp forests, while clownfish on the Great Barrier Reef face a marine heatwave that threatens the very anemones on which their families depend.
In episodes 5 and 6, Ragnar’s rise becomes a mortal threat to Earl Haraldson, as prophecy, fear and ambition turn Kattegat into the center of a brutal struggle for power. After the Seer warns that Ragnar seeks his death, Haraldson moves from suspicion to violence, attacking Ragnar’s home and torturing Rollo in an attempt to destroy the challenger before he can grow stronger. Wounded, hunted and betrayed, Ragnar must decide whether survival is enough, or whether the time has come to confront the man who has ruled his people through fear. The conflict explodes into a direct challenge that will decide the future of Kattegat. Still weakened but driven by destiny, Ragnar faces the Earl in a duel where honor, vengeance and leadership are at stake. What follows is not only a fight between two men, but the collapse of an old order and the birth of a new one. With funerals, rituals, loyalty and sacrifice surrounding the change of power, these episodes reveal the dark beauty of Viking tradition and the moment when Ragnar Lothbrok’s legend truly begins to rise.
Professor Jerry Brotton reveals that maps are far more than neutral guides to places: they are expressions of the societies that create them and powerful instruments for shaping territory, belief and authority. Beginning with some of the earliest known maps, he traces how cartography evolved from marking land and ownership to serving kings, empires, scientists and governments. From Henry VIII’s coastal surveys and the Cassini family’s scientific breakthroughs to the drawing of modern national borders, the series shows how maps can define who controls land, who belongs where and even how entire peoples understand the world around them. Across the three episodes, presented here together in a single uninterrupted video, the journey moves from ancient and medieval worldviews to imperial expansion and the digital age. Brotton explores religious maps, Aztec symbolism, Victorian attempts to classify societies, the politics behind projections of the globe, and the rise of Google Earth and data-driven mapping. He then follows the mapmakers and explorers who turned distant lands into targets for conquest and profit, from Ptolemy and Columbus to Walter Raleigh and the trading empires that followed. The story ends in the Arctic, where new maps are once again being used to stake claims over oil, gas and minerals, proving that even in the twenty-first century, cartography remains inseparable from power, plunder and possession.
In the final three episodes, the investigation takes a decisive turn when the Frankfurt luggage records and bomb-damaged clothing recovered from the wreckage lead Scottish detectives to Malta. A small clothes shop and the memory of a mysterious customer begin to connect the bomb to a wider international network, while cooperation between Scottish police, the FBI and the CIA becomes increasingly strained. As investigators follow the trail toward Libya, a secret CIA source and similarities with another aircraft bombing appear to offer the breakthrough they have been searching for. More than a decade after Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed, the case finally reaches the courtroom. Following years of political negotiation, two Libyan suspects stand trial under Scottish law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. But the prosecution still depends on fragile witness testimony and painstaking forensic evidence assembled across several countries. As key witnesses are challenged and doubts emerge, the series builds toward a tense question that has haunted the victims’ families since 1988: will the investigation finally deliver justice?
In the next three episodes the journey moves into three radically different worlds where survival depends on mastering water, ice and extreme seasonal change. In the Amazon, giant river otters hunt as a family, black caimans ambush newly hatched turtles, army ants sweep through the forest in highly organized raids and a harpy eagle guards a vulnerable chick high above the jungle floor. The rainforest emerges as a vast living system, shaped by rivers, floods, towering trees and countless species competing for food, space and the chance to raise their young. The story then heads north to Alaska and Canada, where polar bears wait for sea ice, wolves struggle through blizzards, hares evade lynx and immense caribou herds cross dangerous meltwater rivers during their ancient migrations. Finally, along the Gulf Coast, flooded swamps and subtropical wetlands become the stage for black bears, alligators, manatees, burrowing owls and one of America’s rarest wild cats, the ocelot. From the frozen Arctic to the humid marshes of Louisiana, Florida and Texas, these episodes reveal how animals adapt to landscapes that can change completely from one season to the next.
The members also speak openly about their socialist views, religion, money and their distrust of the music industry, revealing the ideas behind their deliberately unglamorous image and sharply observant lyrics. Ending with a concert for their home audience, this documentary captures The Housemartins at the moment they were becoming nationally famous while still maintaining the humour, friendship and political convictions that defined the band.