Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Reptiles and amphibians look like hang-overs from the past. But they overcome their shortcomings through amazing innovation. The pebble toad turns into a rubber ball to roll and bounce from its enemies. Extreme slow-motion shows how a Jesus Christ lizard runs on water, and how a chameleon fires an extendible tongue at its prey with unfailing accuracy. The camera dives with a Niuean sea snake, which must breed on land but avoids predators by swimming to an air bubble at the end of an underwater tunnel. In a TV first, Komodo dragons hunt a huge water-buffalo, biting it to inject venom, then waiting for weeks until it dies. Ten dragons strip the carcass to the bone in four hours.

The rise of alternative rock in the USA. From its early underground days where bands like Black Flag drew inspiration from the DIY ethos of punk. We explore why the bands that emerged from the underground offered an alternative both to the established music industry and the prevailing politics. Bands like R.E.M., The Pixies and Husker Du, REM breaking into the mainstream charts with 'Losing My Religion', Seattle 'grunge' scene, culminating in the success of Nirvana's 'Nevermind'

The BBC's definitive television history of the rise and fall of the Nazis. The Nazis - A Warning From History exposes the popular myths surrounding the rise and fall of the Third Reich. The series explores how the Nazis came to power, how they ruled, how they treated their occupied territories and, above all, how a cultured nation could be responsible for such acts of inhumanity. How could a political party as fundamentally evil and overtly racist as the Nazis come to power? This remains one of the most enigmatic questions of the last century. Acclaimed historian Laurence Rees examines what led a cultured nation at the heart of Europe to commit the atrocities it did. In so doing, he exposes popular myths and encourages understanding of the real forces that led to one of the darkest chapters in modern history. Was it simply the hypnotic power of Hitler's rhetoric? Did the Gestapo really impose themselves by terror on an unwilling population? Through interviews with witnesses and perpetrators, along with archive film and records, this six-part series unveils a more chilling reality.

It has taken 4.6 billion years for the Earth to evolve from a barren rock into the world we know today. Explore the forces beyond our planet that have determined Earth’s destiny -- forces of destruction and regeneration in the solar system that created the planet and still protect it. And now the remarkable planet is facing a new challenge: humankind. The question is, how will it survive?

Professor Brian Cox travels from the fossils of the Burgess Shale to the sands of the oldest desert in the world to show how light holds the key to our understanding of the whole universe, including our own deepest origins. To understand how light holds the key to the story of the universe; you first have to understand its peculiar properties. Brian considers how the properties of light that lend colour to desert sands and the spectrum of a rainbow can lead to profound insights into the history and evolution of our universe. Finally, with some of the world's most fascinating fossils in hand, Brian considers how but for an apparently obscure moment in the early evolutionary history of life, all the secrets of light may have remained hidden. Because although the universe is bathed in light that carries extraordinary amounts of information about where we come from, it would have remained invisible without a crucial evolutionary development that allowed us to see. Only because of that development can we now observe, capture and contemplate the incredible wonders of the universe that we inhabit.

Humans are so clever they’ve built their own habitat, designed to keep wild nature out. Yet as we discover the urban environment is totally dependant on the natural world. Over the three years of filming for Human Planet, the teams have spent time with over seventy different communities in countries across the planet. Despite seeing many different ways of living, there are some aspects of family life that remain the same whether you live in a tree house in West Papua, or a brick house in Bolton. These similarities became very clear when the urban team went to film on a rubbish dump in Kenya. Here on the Kibarani dump on the outskirts of Mombasa, Ali, Ashe and their family live and survive amongst the rubbish, and even here, just like anywhere on the planet, everything stops for a nice cup of tea!