We can survive for weeks without food, but only days without water: it is the essential element of life. Yet many millions of us live in parched deserts around the world. In the second episode of Human Planet, we discover how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges - and ingenious solutions - in the driest places on Earth. Battling through a sand storm in Mali, Mamadou must get his cows to a remote lake but desert elephants have arrived first. Can he find a safe way through the elephant blockade? Alone for weeks on end, Tubu women and children navigate the endless dunes of the Sahara. How does young Shede know where to find the last oasis, three days walk across the sea of sand? At the height of the drought we witness a spectacular frenzy: two thousand men rushing into Antogo Lake to catch the fish trapped by the evaporating water. When the rain finally arrives in the desert it's a time for flowering and jubilation - and love. The Wodaabe men of Niger put on make-up for an intoxicating courtship dance and beauty contest.

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?

Rivers provide the essentials of life: fresh food and water. They often provide natural highways and enable us to live in just about every environment on Earth. But rivers can also flood, freeze or disappear altogether!Cities - Surviving the Urban Jungle Human Planet joins Sam Niang, a Laotian fisherman, as he walks a high wire strung above the raging Mekong River rapids on an extraordinary commute to work. There's also a look at the remarkable partnership between Samburu tribesmen and wild elephants in their search for water in the dried-out river beds of Northern Kenya. Plus, a father who must take his two children on a six-day trek down a frozen river - the most dangerous school run on Earth, and the ice dam busters of Ottowa with their dynamite solution to a city centre hold-up.

Fifty years ago there were close to half-a-million lions in Africa. Today there are around 20,000. To make matters worse, lions, unlike elephants, which are far more numerous, have virtually no protection under government mandate or through international accords. This is the jumping-off point for a disturbing, well-researched and beautifully made cri de coeur from husband and wife team Dereck and Beverly Joubert, award-winning filmmakers from Botswana who have been Explorers-in-Residence at National Geographic for more than four years. Pointing to poaching as a primary threat while noting the lion's pride of place on the list for eco-tourists-an industry that brings in 200 billion dollars per year worldwide-the Jouberts build a solid case for both the moral duty we have to protect lions (as well as other threatened "big cats," tigers among them) and the economic sense such protection would make. And when one takes into account the fact that big cats are at the very top of the food chain-and that their elimination would wreak havoc on all species below them, causing a complete ecosystem collapse-the need takes on a supreme urgency.

Growing up. Finding food. Seeking shelter. Finding a soul mate. Raising children. These universal themes touch the hearts of audiences everywhere. Parents will do anything to give their kids the best start in life. Witness the epic journey of a tiny poison arrow frog, scaling impossibly high trees to feed her tadpoles in the canopy. As the young grow, they confront the life long search for food. Capuchin monkeys spend up to eight years teaching their young the complex process of preparing a palm nut meal.
For those creatures who successfully negotiated all the obstacles to adulthood, it’s time to face the ultimate test: to find a partner and to pass on their genes to the next generation. In what is one of the most spectacular and romantic courtship dances in the world, grebes step out across the surface of a lake in perfect unison. We see so much of ourselves in these different animals, and them in us – intelligence, strength, determination, courage, even love. The stories combine to reveal how every living thing on our planet shares the same desire – not just to live, but to foster new life. Relevant, engaging and above all, amazing. Narrated by Daniel Craig,

We are the only species on earth that cooks its food - and we are also the cleverest species on the planet. The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking? Horizon examines the evidence that our ancestors' changing diet and their mastery of fire prompted anatomical and neurological changes that resulted in taking us out of the trees and into the kitchen.