Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

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.

Jean-Michel Cousteau invites you to embark on a breathtaking underwater voyage to discover the ultimate predator: the shark. Experience an astonishing up-close encounter in 3D with the Lions and Tigers of the Ocean. Come face-to-face with a multitude of shark species, including the Great White, Hammerhead, and Whale Shark. Witness them as they really are: not wicked man-eating creatures, but wild, fascinating and endangered animals that have been in existence a million years before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Join a team of ocean explorers on a round-the-globe expedition documenting the life of the ultimate predator.

The third episode follows tigers, harpy eagles, chimpanzees, army ants and other predators as they rise to the challenge of hunting within the forest - a dense, confusing, three-dimensional world, one in which even finding prey is a maddening task. The prize for succeeding at nature's great game of hide-and-seek is one worth winning. Forests cover one third of the land surface, and concealed within are over half of the species on Earth.

The final episode of the series visits the frontline of the conflict with the world's top predators, meeting the scientists fighting to save them. Crossing five continents and combining landmark natural history footage with real-life human drama, it checks the pulse of the earth's iconic animals, including lions, tigers, polar bears and blue whales. With three-quarters of the planet's carnivores now in decline, can people find ways to live with predators before they disappear forever?

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.

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.