Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Dr Adam Rutherford shows how decoding the genome has led us to begin to understand the very process by which our DNA makes us different; how it makes each one of us on earth unique and influences who we are and the traits we have. He reveals how, as we try and understand the relationship between who we are and our genes, we stand at the beginning of the most exciting scientific journey of all time.

The second episode tells the story of the trial of Hermann Goering, Hitler's charismatic and ruthless second-in-command. On trial for his life at Nuremberg, the unrepentant Reich Marshal turned the tables on the Allies. So much so that Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson began to wish the Allies had followed Churchill's suggestion and shot the leading Nazis out of hand. This documentary drama traces the behind-the-scenes story of Goering's attempt to re-ignite Nazism from the courtroom.

Episode three explores the mind of one of the most fanatical of all Nazis and the insight that gives into the psychology of dictatorship. Hess is brought to Nuremberg from the UK where he had flown 4 years earlier much to the bemusement of the British. Overy explains that they must have quickly realised he was not normal. In the intervening time Hess’s mental state has further deteriorated and when interviewed by Chief Interrogator Colonel John Amen proclaims amnesia. Chief Interpreter Richard Sonnenfeldt explains that they brought in Göring to confront Hess but that he too failed to make an impression.
Psychopathologist Prof. Edgar Jones proposes Hess’s behaviour patterns may be his way of escaping reality as he is forced to face the extent of the atrocities and choose between accepting his part of the blame or forsaking his Führer. However, as history Professor Robert Gellatel explains it is difficult to construct a case against Hess as he was imprisoned in England when the worst of the atrocities were carried out so British Prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones must argue a conspiracy charge linking the pre-1939 persecutions to the post-1939 atrocities and a crimes against peace charge proving the flight to Scotland was merely a ruse.

To our medieval forebears the world could appear mysterious, even enchanted. Sightings of green men, dog heads and alien beings were commonplace. The world itself was a book written by God. But as the Middle Ages grew to a close, it became a place to be mastered, even exploited.

From steamy jungles to dry deserts, amphibians have taken their first footsteps onto land using their bizarre life histories to break their ties with the water and invade the earth.
This episode delves into the extraordinary and intimate lives of the soft skinned amphibians. This includes the marsupial frogs, a peculiar species where the father carries his young in pouches and then gives birth. It also features warring giant salamanders over a metre long and show-off newts that offer displays just like underwater birds of paradise.

Dr Iain Stewart investigates the counter-attack that was launched by the global warming sceptics in the 1990s. At the start of the 1990s it seemed the world was united. At the Rio Earth summit the world signed up to a programme of action to start tackling climate change. Even George Bush was there. But the consensus didn't last.
Iain examines the scientific arguments that developed as the global warming sceptics took on the climate change consensus. The sceptics attacked almost everything that scientists held to be true. They argued that the planet wasn't warming up, that even if it was it was nothing unusual, and certainly whatever was happening to the climate was nothing to do with human emissions of greenhouse gases. Iain interviews some of the key global warming sceptics, and discovers how their positions have changed over time.