Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Our icy adventure begins with host Dr. Iain Stewart in the Alps, where he goes down an ice crevasse to show viewers how snowfall develops into expansive masses. Then, we see how ice can shape the earth's topography giving rise to features like Yosemite National Park and Manhattan Island, in NY. Finally, journey to Greenland and see how ice sheets and glaciers are melting at a phenomenal rate that is likely to accelerate over the coming years, changing the world as we know it.

D-Day: As It Happens is a 24-hour history event to be broadcast across TV, web, mobile devices and social media, telling the story of this pivotal event in 20th-century history in a completely new way. Using newly-analysed archive footage, viewers can track the progress of seven people who were there on the day, each of them a real participant in the 1944 invasion. And they can do so moment by moment in real time, encountering the twists and turns of the fighting at the same time as the D-Day seven did, and learning their fate as the action unfolds in parallel with the present, Narrated by Peter Snow, with Channel 4 presenter and former marine Arthur Williams, and experts including former British Army officer Colonel Tim Collins and front-line journalist Lorna Ward. The second programme reveals what happened to the seven real people the event is following in real time, and also rounds up the events of D-Day.

Tyson describes the discovery of cosmic rays by Victor Hess through high-altitude balloon trips. Swiss Astronomer Fritz Zwicky, in studying supernovae, postulated that these cosmic rays originated from these events instead of electromagnetic radiation. Also tells how Vera Rubin observed that the rotation of stars at the edges of observable galaxies did not follow expected rotational behavior leading to consider the existence of dark matter. This further led to the discovery of dark energy to account for the increasing rate of expansion of the universe. Tyson then describes the interstellar travel of the two Voyager probes. Tyson tells the Carl Sagan's role in the Voyager program, including creating the Voyager Golden Record to encapsulate humanity and Earth's position in the universe. Tyson concludes the series by emphasizing Sagan's message on the human condition in the vastness of the cosmos, and to encourage viewers to continue to explore and discover what else the universe has to offer.

It was the defining moment of the 20th Century - the scientific, technological, military, and political gamble of the world's first atomic attack. This drama-documentary attempts to do what no other film has done before - to show what it is like to live through a nuclear explosion, millisecond by millisecond. Set in the three weeks from the first test explosion in New Mexico to the eventual dropping of the bomb, the action takes viewers into the room where the crucial political decisions are made; on board the Enola Gay on her fateful voyage; inside the bomb as it explodes; and on the streets of Hiroshima when disaster strikes. Parallel storylines interweave, unfolding the action from both US and Japanese perspectives, and revealing the tensions and conflicts in the actions and minds of people who were making history. Special effects recreate the reality of the mission - even going inside the workings of the bomb - and archive film replays the horrific aftermath.

In the third programme of the series, Aleks gives the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonized the web - and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be 'free' sites and services in hidden ways. Joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today's web, including Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube), Bill Gates, Martha Lane Fox and Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix), Aleks traces how business, with varying degrees of success, has attempted to make money on the web. She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons. She also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today's web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services, including search, maps and video, that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for. Aleks explores how web advertising is evolving further to become more targeted and relevant to individual consumers. Recommendation engines, pioneered by retailers such as Amazon, are also breaking down the barriers between commerce and consumer by marketing future purchases to us based on our previous choices. On the surface, the web appears to have brought about a revolution in convenience. But, as companies start to build up databases on our online habits and preferences, Aleks questions what this may mean for our notions of privacy and personal space in the 21st century

On a trip to the fortified Moroccan village of Ait-Ben-Haddou in the Atlas Mountains, Professor Brian Cox reveals how by watching the stars' motion across the night sky, it is quite natural for man to think he is at the centre of everything. That view was held for many ages, but innate human curiosity has eventually led to an understanding of mankind's true place in space and time, and an appreciation that Earth is not a focal point but a mere particle of rock in a possibly infinite expanse of space, 13.8 billion years from the beginning of the universe.