The tale of one of China's most famous dynasties begins with the amazing story of Hongwu, a peasant rebel who founded one of greatest eras in Chinese history. The film takes us to his great capital Nanjing, with its 21 miles of walls, each brick stamped with the name of the village that made it. Following the trail, we go to the Bao family village and see the villagers act a Ming murder story.
Like many authoritarian states, the Ming were obsessive about architecture. We see the giant fortifications of the Great Wall, the ritual enclaves of the Forbidden City in Beijing and travel with bargeman Mr Hu down the Grand Canal, China's great artery of commerce right up to the present day. We then hear about Admiral Zheng He's voyages to Africa and the Gulf decades before Columbus, watch the construction of an ocean-going wooden boat 250ft long, and hitch a ride on a replica Ming junk in the South China Sea.
As state prosperity grew, so did a rising middle class. Wood looks at Ming culture in Suzhou, the 'Venice of China'. Staying in a merchant's house, he discovers the silk, ceramic and lacquer-making industries, and visits one of the most beautiful gardens in the city. Then on to Macao and the arrival of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who hoped to convert China to Christianity. In the cathedral in Beijing, we learn more about these fateful exchanges with the west. Finally in Shaoxing, we visit the house of the 'Ming Proust' and at grassroots the Zhao family in Fujian where the film ends in an elegiac mood with the fall of the Ming in 1644.

Caesar has been murdered, Mark Antony emerges from the Senate in shock, only to face Quintus Pompey and his thugs, who immediately follow him to try to kill him. Brutus returns home shaking after the murder. His mother is already plotting the return of the Roman Republic. Titus Pullo asks Eirene to marry him and she accepts. Erastes Fulmen kidnaps Lucius Vorenus' children and sister-in-law.
Mark Antony proposes an amnesty to the rest of the senate to keep the peace and allow the Republic to continue. Vorenus says goodbye to Niobe while Rome says goodbye to Caesar. Vorenus and Pullo track down Fulmen to a bath house, where he tells them he killed Vorenus' family.

Caesar pursued Pompey to Greece but the tide has turned and it's Caesar who is on the run. He contacts Mark Antony, who he left in charge in Rome, to come and join him with the 13th Legion but Antony seems to be in no hurry.
Vorenus has re-enlisted in Antony's Legion and he and Niobe have begun to renew their marital relationship. The presence of Niobe's sister is the only sour note in their house. Pullo meanwhile continues to train young Octavian in the use of arms and the boy's mother Atia is so pleased with his development that she decides he should take another.

Zachary Quinto explores the unpredictable and terrifying phenomenon of sinkholes to determine just what causes them. He visits a Florida man whose brother was killed when their family home was literally swallowed whole by the Earth as well as a series of sinkholes that are forming a series of caves right below the houses of a quaint suburban neighbourhood.
Whether they be a part of some biblical prophecy or further evidence of mankind's effect on our planet, he's alarmed to discover that all the same, they can strike anywhere in the world, at any time.

Meet Tim Raue, the lauded German chef who went from gang life to fine dining. After leaving the streets, he defied all odds with explosive creativity, but also the knack for running several lucrative restaurants. For a high school dropout once told he could only be a house painter, gardener, or cook, it's a culinary story that does seem to be written in the Michelin stars.

Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive?
A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon. Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the to river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house. Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.