The architectural design of Beijing's ancient complex of palaces and temples enabled it to survive centuries of earthquakes. The Forbidden City is the world’s biggest and most extravagant palace complex ever built. For five centuries, it was the power center of imperial China and survived wars, revolution, fires, and earthquakes. How did the Ming Emperor’s workforce construct its sprawling array of nearly 1,000 buildings and dozens of temples in a little over a decade?

They've discovered water on other planets, and snatched the actual building blocks of life from a comet's tail. But can space probes find a new Earth...and even make contact with alien life? In the 21st century, space probes are photographing, drilling and even sniffing new worlds in the quest for life, and scanning thousands of distant suns trying to detect Earth-like planets. It's only a matter of time before space probes unlock the secrets to extra-terrestrial life and the universe itself.

The natural world is full of colours. For us, they are a source of beauty, but for animals they are a tool for survival. David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals use colour: to win a mate, to fight off rivals and to warn enemies. New camera technologies - some developed especially for this series – also allow us to see colours and patterns usually invisible to human eyes.
Ultraviolet cameras reveal bright signals on a butterfly’s wings and facial markings on yellow damselfish that are used as secret communication channels. Some animals can also detect polarized light, and specialist cameras can now show us how fiddler crabs see the world, and how mantis shrimp have strange polarization patterns on their bodies to signal to a mate or rival.

Ten years after waging a bloody campaign to gain control over his own province, powerful samurai warlord Oda Nobunaga has seized much of Central Japan, including the nation’s capital, Kyoto. Now, driven by a towering ambition, he dreams of crushing the powerful clans who still oppose his rule. And for the first time in over a century, uniting all of Japan under one banner. But Nobunaga’s legendary brutality has caused widespread anger. Across the nation, powerful enemies now plot his demise.

Hanging in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Seurat’s Les Poseuses is probably his least-known painting. It is also a picture brimming with codes and hidden meanings. It shows three nudes in the artist’s studio, but included in the background is Seurat’s famous masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Why is it there? What is it trying to say? Why two pictures at once? Waldemar Januszczak investigates.

The most spectacular moments from the Seven Worlds, One Planet series that highlights the incredible rich and wonderful diversity of life found on our planet's seven unique continents. Millions of years ago incredible forces ripped apart the Earth's crust creating our seven continents - each with its own distinct climate, its own distinct terrain and its own unique animal life. Narrated by David Attenborough.