Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Pompey wants to find out what happened to the gold from the Roman Treasury and sends his son Quintus to Rome to find out what happened. Atia and her family have stayed behind when Pompey and others fled and she now throws a party for her triumphant uncle, Julius Caesar. She clearly has her sights set on the great leader and is puzzled when he sends her a guest list that includes Servilia of the Junii. She soon finds out why.

The Dutch Golden Age saw map-making reach a fever pitch of creative and commercial ambition. This was the era of the first ever Atlases - elaborate, lavish and beautiful. This was the great age of discovery and marked an unprecedented opportunity for mapmakers who sought to record and categorise the newly acquired knowledge of the world. Rising above the many mapmakers in this period was Gerard Mercator, inventor of the Mercator projection, who changed mapmaking forever when he published his collection of world maps in 1598 and coined the term 'Atlas'. The programme looks at some of the largest and most elaborate maps ever produced, from the vast maps on the floor of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, to the 24 volume atlas covering just the Netherlands, to the largest Atlas in the world, The Klencke Atlas. It was made for Charles II to mark his restoration in 1660. But whilst being one of the British Libraries most important items, it is also one of its most fragile so hardly ever opened. This is a unique opportunity to see inside this enormous and lavish work, and see the world through the eyes of a King.

In the last episode of the series, lavish imperial games at the Colosseum are highlighted by the emperor's bloody victories, but his paranoid abuses of power lead to a final betrayal.

The wartime contributions of five prominent Hollywood film directors during World War II are profiled. The documentary focuses on five directors – John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens – whose war-related works are analysed by modern filmmakers, respectively Paul Greengrass, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, and Lawrence Kasdan. In the first episode, John Ford's The Battle of Midway was approved directly by President Franklin D. Roosevelt while Frank Capra fights to get Why We Fight made.

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents' homeland, Hong Kong. Over the next two years, he'd complete four iconic films that would define his legacy, a legacy cut short when he died, stunningly, in the summer of 1973. He was 32 years old. Directed by Bao Nguyen, 'Be Water' is a gripping, fascinating, intimate look at not just those final, defining years of Lee's life, but the complex, often difficult, and seismic journey that led to Lee's ultimate emergence as a singular icon in the histories of film, martial arts, and even the connection between the eastern and western worlds.
The film chronicles Lee's earliest days, as the son of a Chinese opera star born while his father was on tour in San Francisco, and then raised in Hong Kong over what became an at times troubled childhood. Sent to live in America at the age of 18, he began teaching Kung Fu in Seattle, and established a following that included his future wife, Linda. His ambition ever rising, Lee eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where he strove to break into American film and television. There, despite some success as a fight choreographer and actor, it was clear Hollywood wasn't ready for an Asian leading man - and so he returned to Hong Kong to make the films that would in fact make him a legend, his international star skyrocketing just as his life was cut short.
'Be Water' is told by the family, friends, and collaborators who knew Bruce Lee best, with an extraordinary trove of archive film providing an evocative, immersive visual tapestry that captures Lee's charisma, his passion, his philosophy, and the eternal beauty and wonder of his art.

In this documentary series we will see how the real-life pirates of the Caribbean violently plunder, stealing and form a surprisingly egalitarian republic. The historical drama portrays the rise and fall of the eponymous early-18th century pirate republic based in Nassau, Bahamas.
The series begins in 1715, shortly after the close of the War of the Spanish Succession, which pitted England against Spain. England had waged the war on the cheap, resorting to the use of privateers rather than incurring the expense of fully funding the Royal Navy. The ending of this war leaved thousands of Caribbean privateers unemployed, when the wreck of a treasure fleet creates new opportunities.