Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

An elegantly filmed documentary, Planet Ocean takes us on a beautiful adventure into the strangest domains of our planet - the oceans. The film features both the magnificence and the exposure of Earth's oceans. The dangers that threaten the whole planet also threaten us. We are guided through various series of events (sailfish relying on mackerel; mackerel relying on zooplankton; zooplankton relying on marine prairie) it is not simply to demonstrate the function of a food chain, but to illustrate the way in which all life is intrinsically interconnected. What happens to our oceans happens to our selves.

Sir Roger Penrose is more than just a fan of MC Escher's mind-bending art. During the course of a long creative collaboration, the British mathematician and the Dutch artist exchanged ideas and inspirations. Some of Escher's most iconic images have their origin in Penrose's mathematical sketches - while the artist's work has served as a starting point for the professor's own explorations of new scientific ideas". To coincide with the first ever Escher retrospective in the UK, Penrose takes us on a personal journey through Escher's greatest masterpieces - marvelling at his intuitive brilliance and the penetrating light it still sheds on complex mathematical concepts.

Narrated by Ewan McGregor, Humpback Whales is an extraordinary journey into the mysterious world of one of nature's most awe-inspiring marine mammals. Set in the spectacular waters of Alaska, Hawaii and the remote islands of Tonga, this ocean adventure offers audiences an up-close look at how these whales communicate, sing, feed, play and take care of their young. Humpbacks were nearly driven to extinction 50 years ago, but today are making a slow but remarkable recovery. Join a team of researchers as they unlock the secrets of the humpback and find out why humpbacks are the most acrobatic of all whales, why they sing their haunting songs, and why these intelligent 55-foot, 50-ton animals migrate up to 10,000 miles round-trip every year.

For decades some have suspected that there might be others out there, intelligent beings capable of communicating with us, even visiting our world. It might sound like science fiction, but today scientists from across the globe are scouring the universe for signals from extraterrestrials. Horizon obtained exclusive access to film researchers at the Green Bank Telescope searching for radio signals from Tabby's Star, a star so mysterious that some scientists believe it might be surrounded by a Dyson Sphere, a vast energy collector built by advanced aliens.

Our lifespan is increasing by 2.5 years every decade - and a third of all babies born today can expect to live to 100. But living longer can come at a cost. Old age itself brings with it a range of debilitating illnesses, many of which are the result of accumulating damage during our lifetime. Three diseases in particular have become the main killers in the developed world - cancer, heart disease and dementia. But a revolution in bio-medicine is now offering new hope for the treatment of these ailments, and the potential to extend our lives still further. Methods such as gene editing and stem cell therapies are transforming the way medicine can conquer disease today. "How to Live Longer" counts with the guide of the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse, for whom the big question isn't just what science can do to fix our bodies and extend our lives, but whether it's right to use all the tools and techniques available.

Discoveries of new planets have revealed countless worlds much stranger than Earth. Some of these strange worlds don’t have stars; others are made out of diamonds. Will we ever find a planet like Earth, or are these distant worlds stranger than fiction?