Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Be it foxes on city streets or wolves on the tundra, canines rely on sharp senses, athleticism and fierce determination to punch above their weight. But the real secret of their success is much more surprising. It's a story of their intimate side. It's what makes every dog, from pet pooch to wild dogs, one of the family.

Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastian Elcano set sail to gain control of the global spice trade, but end up becoming the first expedition to circumnavigate the earth. The yearslong voyage—along with the suffering, the violence and the loss of life and property—were all in pursuit of a shorter route to the so-called Spice Islands (now the Maluku Islands) and their much-coveted aromatics.
The film puts in perspective the 16th century—the Age of Exploration, the Age of Discovery and the Age, problematically, of Colonialism. It also was an age of heroes. As the documentary insists, the journeys undertaken by the men whose names we learned in grade school and whose exploits straddled the 1400s and 1500s—including Ponce de Leon, Vasco da Gama, Lope de Aguirre and even Columbus—were about money, sometimes trade, sometimes plunder. But just as advances in medicine have often been propelled by war, knowledge about the world has been a byproduct of profit-seeking. Likewise, heroism.

In changing seas and oceans, cephalopods like the cuttlefish and the giant Pacific octopus must rely on their remarkable intelligence to survive. Their alien appearance comes with astonishing resources, independence, and invention. And there's still so much to learn about these rarely seen legends of the deep.

A look at the life, passions, achievements and tragedies surrounding the famous Jacques Cousteau, featuring an archive of his newly restored footage. Its focus will be on the inventor-explorer-environmentalist-filmmaker revolution, i.e., giving mankind the resources to explore the ocean with the Aqua Lung, calling attention to ocean pollution, and his long-time collaboration.

The definitive story of cinema’s most iconic figure, from an impoverished childhood in London through a spectacular rise to fame, until his scandalous fall from grace and a self-imposed exile. His stage persona and incendiary media portrayal defined how he was perceived, but his private life has always been shrouded in mystery - until now. Never-before-heard recordings, intimate home movies and newly restored classic films reveal a side to Chaplin that the world never got to see.
Filmmakers Spinney and Middleton shed light on Chaplin’s family life, his contentious relation to the political commotions of the 20th century, and artistic genius.

Physicist Dr Helen Czerski journeys to the extremes of the temperature scale, where the everyday laws of physics break down and a new world of scientific possibilities begins. In the first part, Frozen Solid, Helen reveals how cold has shaped the world around us and why frozen doesn't mean what you think it does. She meets scientists pushing temperature to the limits of cold, driving technologies such as superconductors.
The second part, A Temperature for Life, explores the narrow band of temperature that has led to life on Earth, how life began where hot meets cold and how every living creature depends on temperature for survival. In the last part, Playing with Fire, Helen Czerski explores the science of heat. She reveals how heat is the hidden energy contained within matter with the power to transform it from state to state.