Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Take a ride through the formation of the third planet from the Sun, Earth. A survivor of one of the most violent neighbourhoods in the universe, learn how earth was created and discover what creatures hold clues to how life began. What evil forces threaten the demise of Earth?

Meet Perseverance, NASA's latest rover, as it heads to Mars to answer one question: did life exist on the red planet? On the way, it will lay the foundation for human exploration of our closest neighbour.
Today, Mars is hostile to life. It's too cold for water to stay liquid on the surface, and the thin atmosphere lets through high levels of radiation, potentially sterilizing the upper part of the soil. But it wasn't always like this. Some 3.5 billion years ago or more, water was flowing on the surface. It carved channels still visible today and pooled in impact craters. A thicker carbon dioxide atmosphere would have blocked more of the harmful radiation. The Mars 2020/Perseverance rover is designed to better understand the geology of Mars and seek signs of ancient life. The mission will collect and store a set of rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth in the future. It will also test new technology to benefit future robotic and human exploration of Mars, as the Ingenuity Helicopter.

Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain's radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation. On his journey through 18th-century fiction, Hitchings reveals how the novel was more than mere entertainment, it was also a subversive hand-grenade that would change British society for the better. He travels from the homes of Britain's great and good to its lowliest prisons, meeting contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow on the way.

Japan's landscapes range from snowy mountains to subtropical warmth. They are full of wildlife - and animals' and people's lives often cross as they adapt to these extremes. The central island of Honshu is home to over 100 million people, and its biggest city, Tokyo, is one of the largest urban metropolises on earth. But it has a wild heart - most of Honshu is mountainous. This wilderness is home to an astonishing range of wildlife - black bears, monkeys, exquisite fireflies and even cow demons. But all across this island, from the mountains to the edge of the sea, people and nature are drawn together in the most unexpected ways.

It walks through the making of the film, the hurricane during shooting, and how it helped change the world of special effects. All interviews for these retrospective documentaries come with comments from Spielberg, Johnston, Neill, Dern, Goldblum, the effects crews, the child actors, and Peter Stormare. This is a extra for the Jurassic Park Trilogy and is broken into three parts: Dawn of a New Era (25 min) Making History (20 min), and the Next Step in Evolution (15 min)

Dr Adam Rutherford takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride as he explores the consequences of one of the biggest scientific projects of all time - the decoding of the entire human genome in 2000. In The Book of Life Adam discovers that every human carries the entire story of life on earth hidden in his or her DNA and sees how we are all linked directly to the origins of life and to the first creatures with backbones. He also investigates the implications of the fact that for much of its existence, the human race was an endangered species.