Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

In the fifth episode Neil deGrasse Tyson explores questions that have baffled scientists for centuries. Can we know the universe? Are our brains capable of comprehending the cosmos in all of its complexity and splendor?. We don't yet know the answers because our brain remains almost as much of a mystery to that questions as the universe itself. An abandoned orphan's dream opened the way to understanding the architecture of thought.

Michael Pollan looks to the kitchens of India for a lesson in the value of pot cooking and examines the consequences of eating highly processed food.

Cannabis is the world's favourite drug, but also one of the least understood. Can cannabis cause schizophrenia? Is it addictive? Can it lead you on to harder drugs? Or is it simply a herb, an undervalued medicine? Addiction specialist Dr John Marsden discovers that modern science is finally beginning to find answers to these questions. John traces the cannabis plants' birthplace in Kazakhstan; finds the origins of our sensitivity to cannabis in the simple sea squirt; and finds out just what it does to our brains. He meets people who have been changed by this drug in drastically different ways - from those whose lives have been shattered to those who lives have been revived.

The film is a intimate diary of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of Britain, chronicling reactions as his tunes caught the nation off-guard, but ultimately won him critical acclaim and worldwide fame and fortune. Featuring interviews with various Sixties cult figures, including the man himself, his then-girlfriend Joan Baez and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Morgan Freeman narrates Island of Lemurs: Madagascar, the incredible true story of nature's greatest explorers - lemurs. Scientist Patricia Wright has a passion for preserving the life of one particular creature: the lemur. These lively animals found in Madagascar face all sorts of threats, just like so many other animals in a world in which they are increasingly crowded out by humans. Her passion for the subject is compelling and plainly evident, but it's the silent testimony of the animals themselves that really makes the case. Countless hours of footage are trimmed down to create this tapestry depicting the lives of these creatures of remarkable intelligence and ingenuity. Their daily routines and extraordinary adventures are awesome to behold, as is the way that the community functions. A full immersion into the world of the lemurs means great insights on these unusual animals.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian. In the first episode, he overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China. The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then Western Christianity would have been very different.