Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

The risk of human extinction has never been higher. Recent years have seen a global pandemic, a renewed nuclear threat and runaway climate change. New research predicts a 1 in 6 chance that life as we know it won't make it to the end of this century. This compelling science documentary looks at the greatest risks to humanity and what we can do about it. Are we all doomed?

Master Chef judge Gregg Wallace and mathematician Dr Hannah Fry take over a restaurant and invite five special guests to enjoy a dinner party with a difference, where they will be scored on the carbon footprint of every dish they choose. Food accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, so making informed choices about what we eat is more important than ever.
Gregg is with the kitchen team preparing delicious dishes and uncovering tips and tricks we can all use to cook more sustainably. Hannah is working with environmental scientists to reveal the carbon footprint of every single item on the menu and uncovering the latest research that can help us enjoy the food we love that doesn't cost the Earth.

From the frozen poles to the searing deserts, this episode shows how animals have come up with strategies to survive the uneven amounts of sunlight that fall on our planet over the course of a year. The exception is on the equator, where the duration of day and night remain the same throughout the year. Here, this guaranteed sunlight drives the great diversity of life in the tropical jungles.

As tides rise and fall twice a day, vast amounts of water swirl around the earth. This is a huge energy source that's currently largely untapped. An estimated 3000 gigawatts are available to be harvested globally, enough to power a third of the earth's homes. Yet compared to wind and solar, the technology needed to harness tidal power is still in its infancy. The power of the ocean’s tides is the last great untapped energy source on Earth. From sub-sea kites to floating platforms, teams of engineers are racing to perfect the technology to harness the vast flows of water.

Weather controls the distribution of freshwater on Earth. David Attenborough narrates how this uneven distribution has given rise to an incredible diversity of species and habits, from the driest desert to the lushest tropical rainforest. Featuring a colony of ants banding together into a raft every time its home in the Amazon floods, a rain frog that manages to eke out an existence in one of the world's driest habitats on Earth, and the last wild camels that survive the Gobi Desert's bitter winters by eating snow that blows in from Siberia.

The world's shipping industry is facing a major challenge. If global shipping were a country it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. At current growth rates, if we do nothing, those emissions could double or even triple by 2050. But shipping companies and engineers are creating remarkable new machines to make their industry greener, using a resource that has moved man across the world’s oceans for thousands of years…Wind.