Richard Rudgley goes in search of evidence of the barbarians of the dark ages, people whose names have for 1500 years been bywords for mindless brutality. The real truth about the barbarians who marched across Europe during the Dark Ages is more shocking than what you may know. Where did they come from? Who are their descendants? Are any of their techniques and inventions still used? Richard discovers the secrets of forgotten empires, and of mighty clashes throughout Europe. The art, society and cultural legacy of the barbarians are shown to have shaped and moulded the destiny of Europe even more than the Roman Empire.
In the first part of the journey through the Dark Ages we will be tracing the legacies of the Huns, Vandals and Goths, to ask whether the 'dark ages' represent a resurfacing of much older tribal lines. Sites in Austria show how sophisticated pre-Roman communities had become with evidence of stunning craftsmanship and sophisticated farming techniques which defy the image of a mindless rabble we have come to accept without challenge.

In the fourth episode of the series, Clovis was the first Frankish king to acknowledge the Christian faith. This changed the direction of Europe's history.

In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism. MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.

We see how the Germans they lived, fought and worshippped their gods. Intricate 3d animation shows how they built their settlements, buried their kings, vanquished their enemies.

In the fourth episode of the series, Commodus defeats his sister's coup but withdraws from governing, allowing others to amass power while he engages in an affair and banishes his wife.

Since Caesar's days, Germanic warriors and Roman legionaries had often met in battle. Rome's power seemed invincible. But then, in the year 9 AD, the Germans mounted a rebellion.