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The Last Empire

   2016    History
China's last empire, the Qing, lasted from 1644 to 1912. It began in violence and war as the Manchus swept down from the north, but invaders became emperors, with three generations of one family ruling the country. Among them, Michael Wood argues, was China's greatest emperor - Kangxi. Under the Qing, China doubled in size to include Xinjiang in the far west, as well as Mongolia and Tibet, creating the essential shape of China today. The new dynasty tolerated a diversity of cultures and religions, including Islam. In Kaifeng, Michael visits a women's mosque with a female imam, a delightful scene that ends with laughter and selfies! The Qing also undertook huge cultural enterprises. At a traditional printing house where the wood blocks are hand-carved, we see how the Complete Tang Poems were reproduced - all 48,000 of them. We travel through the wintry countryside to a remote village where a hardy audience watch open-air opera in the snow and visit a painter's studio, and 'storytelling' houses in Yangzhou. In the 18th century, China was arguably the greatest economy in the world, and we get a fabulous sense of the rich culture that came with prosperity. But then came the clash with the British, in the first Opium War, when a British expedition destroyed the Qing navy and extracted territory and trading rights. We leave with a glimpse of the future. 'Every dynasty has risen and declined,' says Michael, 'and has needed new life to regenerate, and this time the catalyst was the British.' Among the ports China ceded was an almost uninhabited island, Hong Kong, one of today's greatest financial centres, and Shanghai, a small town then but now one of the greatest cities in world.
Series: The Story of China

The Spoils

       History
Rejected by Vorenus and Eirene and racked by guilt for the killing of Eirene's fiancé out of a jealous rage, Pullo has sunk to working as an assassin for the gangster Erastes. When Pullo gets arrested for killing one of Caesar's popular opponents, he condemns himself by refusing to name who hired him, despite Octavian's attempts to defend him.
Meanwhile, Vorenus finds his new official duties as magistrate tedious, especially when he gets caught between Caesar and the demands made by veterans' spokesman Mascias.
Series: Rome

The Flu That Killed 50 Million

   2019    Medicine
It is 1918 and the end of WWI. Millions have died, and the world is exhausted by war. But soon a new horror is sweeping the world, a terrifying virus that will kill more than fifty million people - the Spanish flu. Using dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony from doctors, soldiers, civilians and politicians, this one-off special brings to life the onslaught of the disease, the horrors of those who lived through it and the efforts of the pioneering scientists desperately looking for the cure.
Narrated by Christopher Eccleston, the film also asks whether, a century later, the lessons learnt in 1918 might help us fight a future global flu pandemic.

Leaving Neverland Part Two

   2019    History
Crucial and careful, the film gives empathetic breadth and depth to the complicated afterlife of child abuse as experienced by adult survivors.
At the height of his stardom Michael Jackson began long-running relationships with two boys, aged 7 and 10, and their families. Now in their 30s, they tell the story of how they were sexually abused by Jackson, and how they came to terms with it years later.
Series: Leaving Neverland

Leaving Neverland Part One

   2019    Culture
At the height of his stardom Michael Jackson began long-running relationships with two boys, aged 7 and 10, and their families. Now in their 30s, they tell the story of how they were sexually abused by Jackson, and how they came to terms with it years later.
Crucial and careful, the film gives empathetic breadth and depth to the complicated afterlife of child abuse as experienced by adult survivors.
Series: Leaving Neverland

Artificial Intelligence

   2018    Technology
Zachary Quinto embarks on a journey to understand how artificial intelligence may already be a threat to humanity. He visits Facebook headquarters where he learns about a failed AI experiment where two chat boxes created a language that only they could understand. Zach also gets a firsthand look at the world's latest technology, including life-like dolls programmed with advanced AI, robots that learn and communicate telepathically, highly intelligent drones of war, and Uber self-driving cars.
Series: In Search of