Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

In the second episode, Professor Iain Stewart discovers how flowers have transformed our planet. He journeys to the remote islands of the South Pacific to track down the earliest flowers. In the deserts of Africa and rainforests of Vietnam, he sees how they brought brilliant colour to the most barren landscapes and sculpted the earth itself. And he learns how they drove the evolution of all animals - kick-starting our human story.

Death is life's greatest certainty. But that may be about to change. Scientists have discovered an immortal animal that may hold the secret of endless regeneration. They're on the brink of editing our DNA so that we can cure ageing like a disease. Or is dying necessary for the survival of our species?

This is one of the most ambitious animated programmes ever attempted for broadcast TV, recreating every detail of these extraordinary animals in an entirely digital production that stretches the boundaries of broadcast 3D with a scale and ambition normally reserved for Hollywood feature films. Planet Dinosaur 3D is a thrilling and immersive journey into a lost world. Pulling together cutting edge research from around the world this programme uses the latest, stunning fossil evidence to chart the rise and fall of the 'Ultimate Killers'; from the iconic Spinosaurus, the largest predator ever to walk the Earth, to Microraptor and the feathered, flying dinosaurs from China. At last, thanks to the advances in technology, and for the first time ever, these monsters can be experienced in all their full, magnificent wonder.

David Attenborough continues his search for the origins of flying animals, as he charts the rise of new, larger creatures – extinct reptiles that flew on wings of skin, dinosaurs that sprouted feathers to become the ancestors of birds, and gliding mammals that emerged from a life in the trees to dominate the night as bats. His journey spans the globe – from the rainforests of Borneo to see bizarre gliding animals, to China and its new discoveries of dinosaur fossils. Stunning CGI brings to life creatures that disappeared over 200 million years ago, and new filming techniques bring us closer than ever to the secrets of flight itself.

Moving on to the Late Eocene period 36 million years ago and mammals have prospered and are now the largest creatures on land and sea. This is an era of animals like andrewsarchus, the biggest mammal carnivore ever to walk on land, and the brontotheres, small-brained herbivores. It is in the sea, however, that the most monstrous mammals of all can be found. We follow the fate of a female basilosaurus, a huge serpent-like early whale, but nothing like the gentle filter feeding whales of the 21st century. Four times the length of the great white shark, with jaws to match, she is every inch a killer.

Back one million years ago, South America was a continent of exotic oversized creatures found nowhere else on Earth - huge terror birds, giant ground sloths and spiky-tailed relatives of the armadillo as big as cars. The deadliest animal of them all was smilodon, the largest of the sabre-tooth cats, with canines like carving knives. The programme follows the fortunes of an individual male, Half Tooth. Ousted from his clan by a pair of rival males, his life suddenly becomes a struggle to survive in this alien world.