The Housemartins return to Hull during their breakthrough year of 1986 and revisit the places where the band began. Paul Heaton, Stan Cullimore, Norman Cook and Hugh Whitaker talk about forming the group, their sudden success and their determination to remain rooted in ordinary life despite growing fame. The film follows them through Hull, mixes informal conversations with rehearsals and performances, and includes songs such as Happy Hour, Sheep, Think for a Minute and Caravan of Love. The members also speak openly about their socialist views, religion, money and their distrust of the music industry, revealing the ideas behind their deliberately unglamorous image and sharply observant lyrics. Ending with a concert for their home audience, this documentary captures The Housemartins at the moment they were becoming nationally famous while still maintaining the humour, friendship and political convictions that defined the band.
Across two continents and from one pole to the other, this spectacular wildlife series explores the wonders, mysteries and fragilities of the Americas. Narrated by Tom Hanks, it reveals extraordinary animal behaviour, dramatic struggles for survival and some of the planet’s most varied landscapes, from frozen wilderness and ancient forests to deserts, tropical seas and vast grasslands. Filmed over five years and more than 180 expeditions, the series combines intimate wildlife stories with remarkable natural spectacles, showing both the resilience of life and the delicate balance on which these ecosystems depend. In the first three episodes, the journey begins along the Atlantic Coast, where wild horses battle, bald eagles pursue ospreys, sharks move among great shoals of fish, raccoons adapt to city life and black bears search ancient forests for food. It then heads south into Mexico, where deserts meet the tropics and pygmy owls, hunting orcas, orchid bees and mysterious creatures in flooded caves reveal a hidden world of astonishing diversity. Finally, the Wild West brings an even harsher test of survival, as coyotes face a snowbound Yellowstone, hundreds of rattlesnakes emerge from their winter refuges, woodpeckers compete to store food, bison clash across the Great Plains and immense gatherings of cranes continue one of nature’s most ancient migrations.
What begins as a dream Mediterranean holiday turns into an unimaginable fight for survival. On the night of January 13, 2012, passengers aboard the luxurious Costa Concordia are dining and putting children to bed when the ship sails dangerously close to the Italian island of Giglio and strikes underwater rocks. As the vessel loses power and begins to flood and tilt, confusion spreads through its glittering corridors. Passengers are initially told there is only an electrical problem, while precious minutes pass before an evacuation is ordered and lifeboats become increasingly difficult to launch. Through extraordinary footage recorded by those on board, black-box communications and deeply personal survivor testimony, the disaster unfolds almost minute by minute: Families desperately searching for a way off the ship, crew members risking their lives to help strangers, passengers trapped as corridors become walls, and rescuers entering the enormous wreck while it threatens to shift beneath them. Behind the terrifying struggle to survive emerges an equally disturbing question—how could a modern cruise ship carrying thousands of people end up on its side just metres from shore? The deaths of 32 people, the actions of Captain Francesco Schettino and the investigation that followed transform one catastrophic night at sea into a gripping story of human courage, fatal decisions and the consequences of failure when every second matters.
In the final three episodes of the series, Chris Packham follows three extraordinary evolutionary journeys to discover how the relentless demands of survival transformed simple early animals into some of the most remarkable creatures alive today. In Borneo, the voracious appetite of the bat leads back more than half a billion years to the origins of the through-gut, the first anus, heads and jaws, revealing how the need to find and consume food helped reshape animal life and ultimately produced the bat’s extraordinary powers of hearing. In the Bahamas, the intelligence of dolphins opens an even deeper story: from ancient cells able to sense light to the evolution of eyes, complex brains, sophisticated senses and the remarkable minds of modern dolphins. The journey culminates with one of nature’s supreme athletes. Tracing the horse’s ancestry through hundreds of millions of years, Packham reveals how primitive muscle cells evolved into increasingly powerful systems for movement, how beating hearts supplied those muscles with oxygen, and how limbs became ever more effective tools for locomotion. Slithering, swimming, walking and running eventually converge in an animal built for extraordinary speed and endurance. Together, these final episodes reveal a breathtaking truth: hunger, perception and movement were not merely necessities of survival—they were powerful evolutionary forces that helped create the astonishing complexity of animal life.
From ordinary mounted warriors to the legendary figures who came to embody courage, honour and chivalry, medieval knights dominated European life for centuries. Through dramatic reconstructions, historical experiments and surviving evidence, this series reveals the harsh reality behind the romantic image: brutal battles and personal feuds, swordsmanship and tournaments, the construction and defense of castles, courtly love and the strict codes of honour that could turn an insult into a fight to the death. It also follows knights to the Holy Land, where crusaders risked everything in pursuit of glory, wealth and salvation, while figures such as John of Bohemia and Joan of Arc show how courage and legend became inseparable from the medieval warrior. Presented here as all three episodes consecutively in a single video, the complete story also reveals how the world that created the knight eventually destroyed him. The rise of robber knights such as Götz von Berlichingen, the spread of mercenary warfare and increasingly spectacular tournaments mark the final years of an old order, while longbows, cannon, artillery and massed infantry transform the battlefield forever. Emperor Maximilian, celebrated as the “Last of the Knights,” embraces these new weapons even as he glorifies the traditions of chivalry. By the end, the armoured horseman who had ruled castles, battlefields and entire communities for centuries has become obsolete in war—but immortal in legend.
In the final two episodes, Dean Potter’s dream of pushing free solo climbing beyond anything seen before collides with the arrival of Alex Honnold, a younger climber capable of taking the sport into terrifying new territory. As both men circle the impossible challenge of El Capitan, Dean is forced to confront not only a rival, but the fear that his place at the edge of climbing history may be slipping away. What begins as a battle for greatness becomes something far more personal: A struggle with ego, identity, isolation and the dangerous need to keep proving himself when the world is already watching. As Dean’s mental health declines and some of his closest supporters begin to drift away, he takes a risky job in China and seems to move even closer to the edge. But a new relationship gives him a fragile sense of grounding, and his lifelong dream of flight finally comes into focus through the radical world of wingsuit flying. The final chapters become both breathtaking and haunting, following a man who searched for freedom in the air, in the mountains and in the spaces where fear becomes almost spiritual. Intimate, tense and deeply emotional, they reveal the beauty and tragedy of a life lived in pursuit of the impossible.
The members also speak openly about their socialist views, religion, money and their distrust of the music industry, revealing the ideas behind their deliberately unglamorous image and sharply observant lyrics. Ending with a concert for their home audience, this documentary captures The Housemartins at the moment they were becoming nationally famous while still maintaining the humour, friendship and political convictions that defined the band.