Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Boxing, 'the poor man's sport', has long given kids from America's roughest neighborhoods an opportunity to escape violence with violence. But with success in the ring comes new fights for which there is no training: champions are made and broken in the blink of an eye, and young men thrust into the spotlight are often ill-equipped for the fame, fortune, and hangers-on that accompany a title belt". And for many, the toughest bouts are fought during retirement, when health and financial issues begin to mount. Built around the stories of heavyweight legends as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins, We will examine their lives in and out of the ring.

China's last empire, the Qing, lasted from 1644 to 1912. It began in violence and war as the Manchus swept down from the north, but invaders became emperors, with three generations of one family ruling the country. Among them, Michael Wood argues, was China's greatest emperor - Kangxi. Under the Qing, China doubled in size to include Xinjiang in the far west, as well as Mongolia and Tibet, creating the essential shape of China today. The new dynasty tolerated a diversity of cultures and religions, including Islam. In Kaifeng, Michael visits a women's mosque with a female imam, a delightful scene that ends with laughter and selfies! The Qing also undertook huge cultural enterprises. At a traditional printing house where the wood blocks are hand-carved, we see how the Complete Tang Poems were reproduced - all 48,000 of them. We travel through the wintry countryside to a remote village where a hardy audience watch open-air opera in the snow and visit a painter's studio, and 'storytelling' houses in Yangzhou. In the 18th century, China was arguably the greatest economy in the world, and we get a fabulous sense of the rich culture that came with prosperity. But then came the clash with the British, in the first Opium War, when a British expedition destroyed the Qing navy and extracted territory and trading rights. We leave with a glimpse of the future. 'Every dynasty has risen and declined,' says Michael, 'and has needed new life to regenerate, and this time the catalyst was the British.' Among the ports China ceded was an almost uninhabited island, Hong Kong, one of today's greatest financial centres, and Shanghai, a small town then but now one of the greatest cities in world.

In less than two years, Al Capone has risen from a humble bookkeeper to second-in-command of Johnny Torrio's criminal empire in Chicago. The empire is worth the modern-day equivalent of $35 million. Capone purchases a home for his family and moves them from New York to Chicago. Torrio and Capone expand their empire from Chicago's South Side to the North Side, which is controlled by Chicago's second largest gang, the Irish. Violence erupts as ruthless Irish gang leader Dean O'Banion protects his territory and bootlegging business from Torrio and Capone.

Every 17 minutes in America, someone is killed with a gun. Politicians can't seem to stop the violence. But epidemiologists, psychologists and big data crunchers are discovering that gun crime spreads like a virus -and science may be able to stop its spread.

'It's really about terror and intimidation and people basically fighting for survival and often committing extraordinary violence in order to protect themselves or to stay safe. It's kind of like the weak dog in the pack. If others spot weakness, they're gonna pounce on you for a couple of reasons. You pounce on that guy, that gives you a little more status. So, I had to ask myself, are you gonna be a victim? No, I ain't gonna be a victim. Well, that really only left me one choice in my mind. That means I gotta be the victimizer. At some point, for some reason, might be legitimate, might not be, someone's gonna test you.. Even if you lose, you're gonna have to stand up for yourself. '
'A guy comes over, and it's your day to get your package, and he tries to take your package from you that your people sent you, if you let him do it, there's gonna be 10 other dudes, oh, yeah, he let that guy take his package, I'm gonna go get his TV, right down the line until somebody's after your ass. But if you stand up that first time and they see you'll stand up for yourself, even if you lose, people will respect that. Oh, don't mess with him. There's easier prey. Why do you have to go and get that guy and get a couple lumps for it when he can go get that guy's stuff over there, don't cost you nothing. It usually only has to happen once or twice but just as importantly that you didn't go to the man for help... you're gonna be all right.'

Space isn't vast and empty space but a dynamic, cosmic storm. It's a storm that could kill us, but without it we wouldn't be here at all. This is a story about the weird connections, the near misses, the lucky breaks that created this amazing world. For 4.5 billion years our planet has been battered and bruised and punched and pummeled but we're still standing. It's actually the battle that's built us and this is the tale of the tape.
Ever wonder how our planet got here? It was born in a cosmic storm. The violence could have destroyed us, but instead it made us.