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The Normans: Normans of the South

   2010    History
Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Normans on southern Europe and the Middle East. The Normans spread south in the 11th century, winning control of southern Italy and the island of Sicily. There they created their most prosperous kingdom, where Christianity and Islam co-existed in relative harmony and mutual tolerance. It became a great centre of medieval culture and learning. But events in the Middle East provoked the more aggressive side of the Norman character. In 1095, the Normans enthusiastically answered the Pope's call for holy war against Islam and joined the first crusade. They lay siege to Jerusalem and eventually helped win back the holy city from the muslims. This bloody conquest left a deep rift between Christianity and Islam which is still being felt to this day.

Last Human Standing

   2010    History
xamines the fate of the Neanderthals, our European cousins who died out as modern humans spread from Africa into Europe during the Ice Age. Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals or exterminate them? The program explores crucial evidence from the recent decoding of the Neanderthal genome. How did modern humans take over the world? New evidence suggests that they left Africa and colonized the rest of the globe far earlier, and for different reasons, than previously thought. As for Homo sapiens, we have planet Earth to ourselves today, but that's a very recent and unusual situation. For millions of years, many kinds of hominids co-existed. At one time Homo sapiens shared the planet with Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and the mysterious "Hobbits"–three-foot-high humans who thrived on the Indonesian island of Flores until as recently as 12,000 years ago. "Last Human Standing" examines why "we" survived while those other ancestral cousins died out. And it explores the provocative question: In what ways are we still evolving today?
Series: Becoming Human

City Maps

   2010    Culture
This is the story of three maps, three 'visions' of London over three centuries. The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the Great Fire of London. In 1746 John Rocque produced at the time the most detailed map ever made of London. Like Morgan's, Rocque's map is all neo-Classical beauty and clinical precision, but the London it represented had become the opposite. In engravings of the time, such as Night, the artist William Hogarth shows a city boiling with vice and corruption. Stephen Walter's contemporary image, The Island, plays with notions of cartographic order and respectability. His extraordinary London map looks at first glance to be just as precise and ordered as his hero Rocque's but, looking closer, it includes 21st century markings such as 'favourite kebab vans' and sites of 'personal heartbreak'.
Series: The Beauty of Maps

Ice

   2007    Nature
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.
Series: Earth, The Power of the Planet

Galapagos: Islands that Changed the World

   2006    Nature
From flightless cormorants hunting underwater to giant tortoises courting on the rim of an active volcano, a look at the hidden side of Galapagos, revealing why it is such a fascinating showcase for evolution.
Series: Galapagos

The Great Survivors

   2011    Science
The final episode explores dinosaurs' extraordinary ability to survive. Featured dinosaurs include the bizarre magyarosaurus, which lived in the shadow of the biggest flying animal - hatzegopteryx - and showed an amazing adaptation to island life; and the weird nothronychus, a carnivore that gave up meat eating. This astonishing capacity to evolve into ever more diverse and bizarre forms meant that dinosaurs not only spread throughout the world, but also dominated life upon it for more than 160 million years. It was only an unprecedented extraterrestrial event that finally saw the end of planet dinosaur.
Series: Planet Dinosaur
Chimp Empire

Chimp Empire

2023  Nature
Life Story

Life Story

2014  Nature
Planet Earth

Planet Earth

2007  Nature
In the Age of AI

In the Age of AI

2019  Technology
Life of a Universe

Life of a Universe

2017  Science