Origins: The Journey of Humankind

Historian Niall Ferguson tells the story of money and the rise of global finance. Bringing context and understanding to the current economic crisis, he reveals how the history of finance has been punctuated by gut-wrenching crashes.

Andrew Marr explores how Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has taken on a life of its own far beyond the world of science.

Nowhere else in the world is so regularly ravaged by infernos of the intensity, scale and destructive force of the Australian bushfire. As our population grows and spreads and as the effects of climate change are felt, the danger to loss of life and property escalates. What do we know about bushfires and how can we prevent their devastating consequences? Not surprisingly, Australia is a world leader in fire research and the complex and technologically sophisticated job of fire fighting and prevention. Inside The Inferno takes us into the terrifying heart of major fire events, unfolding the research that explains how fires start, grow and change; and how we predict them, prevent them, fight them and hopefully survive these violent natural disasters. Inside The Inferno explores not only the devastating mega fires such as Black Saturday in Victoria 2009 and the Canberra fires of 2003, but also major fire-fronts that received little attention.

This three-part series lays bare the secrets of why we buy what we buy. Jacques Peretti investigates what keeps us hooked on spending, and confronts some of the men behind bestselling products and sales strategies that get inside our head.

Professor Robert Winston meets Lucy, the first upright ape, and follows her ancestors on the three-million-year journey to civilisation.

Carl Sagan covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

Mankind Decoded is the intriguing story of how 12 timeless forces have shaped human history in extraordinary ways. Find out how the implacable forces of nature have compelled us to adapt or die; how new technologies have transformed our existence; how our need for food brought forth civilization; and the desire for luxuries changed our world.

Bill meets wildlife in Borneo and Indonesia to tell the story of Darwin's rival Wallace.

In this "entertaining medical series" (The Sunday Times, U.K.), Dr. Michael Mosley shows how drugs have revolutionized medicine and changed the course of human history. Unfolding over a period of 200 years, it's an extraordinary tale of daring, self-experimentation, revelation, genius, and outright luck.

With the 00s now firmly in our rear view mirror, the decade is ripe for re-evaluation. From 9/11 to the financial crisis, the decade shows not only a period of turmoil in the United States but its also a golden age when the Internet hadnt been colonized by corporations, when social media was still young and fresh and when it was easy to make money.

Brennpunkt: Millioneventyret

Which of the great primates of 25 million years ago is our common ancestor? Is it pierolapithecus? Follow the journey of primates developing into Homo erectus and then to Homo sapiens through the millions of years of evolution and the thousands of miles of migrations.

Sir David shines the spotlight on some of nature’s evolutionary anomalies and reveals how these curious animals continue to baffle and fascinate.

Sir David discovers a microscopic world that’s invisible to the naked eye, where insects feed and breed, where flowers fluoresce and where plants communicate with each other and with animals using scent and sound.

David Attenborough embarks on a remarkable 500 million-year journey revealing the extraordinary group of animals that dominate our world, and how their evolution defines our human bodies.

All the incredible diversity of animal life sprang from a single organism. Every animal, no matter how weird, is related to every other. And behind each species is an incredible story of the millions of generations that gave rise to it - every animal we know and love today sprang from creatures that looked nothing like it.

Traveling to the far corners of the world, we discover the extraordinary ways animals are adapting to our rapidly changing planet. We witness nature’s remarkable resilience, as our perception of evolution and its potential is forever transformed.

Victorian Pharmacy is a historical documentary TV series in four parts, first shown on BBC Two in July 2010. It was made for the BBC by independent production company Lion Television. It was filmed at Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire. It is a historical documentary that looks at life in the 19th Century and how people attempted to cure common ailments. Since some of the ingredients of Victorian remedies are now either illegal or known to be dangerous, Nick Barber often uses his modern pharmaceutical knowledge to produce similar products without those ingredients. The other main presenters are Tom Quick, a PhD student, and Ruth Goodman, a domestic historian who also appeared in Tales from the Green Valley, Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm.

Taste: The Flavor of Life

The series investigates Paolo Macchiarini’s claims to have invented a ground-breaking method to create new organs. His method using plastic tracheas sown with stemcells has been operated on patients in the US, Russia, Sweden and the UK. So far, unfortunately, the track record of his plastic organs is not very good. Almost all patients are dead. And several of his former surgeon colleagues in Sweden claim that not only does the method not work, but that his scientific claim to fame is based on falsified and misrepresented data. Some even claim that his patients have been used as human guinea-pigs.