Origins: The Journey of Humankind

The Wonderful Machine

A long journey in 8 episodes to discover the human body, with Piero Angela who closely observes our organism, focusing each time on a theme: the eye, the ear, taste and smell, the stomach and the intestine, liver, bones, lungs and heart. How does our "wonder machine" work? To make each explanation direct and clear, the program uses films, animations and photographs developed with the scanning electron microscope.

Mankind: The Story of All of Us

"Mankind : The Story of All of Us" is an epic 12-hour television event about the greatest adventure of all time—the history of the human race. It takes 10 billion years for the ideal planet to form and 3 billion more for the right conditions to emerge before it finally happens: mankind begins. From there unfolds a fast-paced story told here through key turning points—stepping stones in our journey from hunter-gatherer to global citizen. It’s a tale of connections—why some ideas take hold and spread around the globe, and how the lives of people in one part of the world are shaped by events in another.

Human Planet

A cinematic experience bringing you the most amazing human stories in the world. Humans and wildlife surviving in the most extreme environments on Earth.

Body Invaders

The Fabulous History of Money

Invented 2700 years ago, closely linked to the destiny of empires and wars, money has changed the course of civilizations. From ancient Greece to contemporary America via ancient China and the French Revolution up to today's dematerialization of money initiated by Bitcoin, this documentary series deciphers the place it has played for millennia.

First Peoples

A five-part series that features the latest research exploring how early humans evolved. See how the mixing of prehistoric human genes led the way for our species to survive and thrive around the globe. Archaeology, genetics and anthropology cast new light on 200,000 years of history, detailing how early humans became dominant.

The Ascent of Money

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.

Money, Explained

We spend it, we borrow it, and save it. Now let's talk about money and its many minefields, from credit cards to casino, scammers to student loans.

David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities

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

Kingdom of Plants

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.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

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.

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

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

David Attenborough's Rise of Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates

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.

Walking with Cavemen

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

The Great Dyings

Life is a fragile thing. It changes and adapts so specifically to survive in the environment it's placed in. This ability to adapt is called evolution, and it's the reason that life has endured for the past few billion years. But evolution takes a long time, so when environments change too quickly for the inhabitants to keep up, the result is a drop in population or at the worst… extinction. And sometimes these changes can be so big that they affect the entire globe. Leading to some of the most catastrophic events in our planet’s history… mass extinctions. Content creator Angel of Death explores the five mass extinctions and the effects they had on life on earth in this five part miniseries.

Victorian Pharmacy

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.

Jon Richardson Grows Up

Comedian Jon Richardson and his friend Matt Forde face up to the adult realities of mortgages, marriage and parenthood.

Fatal Experiments: The Downfall of a Supersurgeon

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.

The Body in Question

The Body in Question is a landmark British medical documentary series of 13 shows made for the BBC. It was a groundbreaking show, being the first to ever televise an autopsy (in the final show on 29 Jan 1979). Dr Jonathan Miller considers the functioning of the body as a subject of private experience. He explores our attitudes towards our bodies, our ignorance of them, and our inability to read our body's signals. The first episode starts with vox populi asking where various organs in the body are located. By the final episode we are left in no doubt. Taking as his starting point the experience of pain, Dr Miller analyses the elaborate social process of "falling ill", considers the physical foundations of "disease" and looks at the types of individuals humankind has historically attributed with the power of healing. The series was nominated for two 1979 BAFTAs: Best Factual Television Series and Most Original Programme/Series.

Origins, a tale of light

Since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, light has sculpted the cosmos. It traverses the void, interacts with matter, and dances with shadows. It multiplies and proliferates, offering the world ever more complex and luminous structures. If it could speak, what would it tell us?