African Cats

African Cats is a nature documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, about several lions and cheetahs trying to survive on the African savannah. African Cats captures the real-life love, humour and determination of the majestic kings of the savannah. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a rival lion and his sons.

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The Great Rift - Africa's Wild Heart

Zambezi (BBC Natural World)

Africa's wildest river is home to the most spectacular wildlife. Hippos fight for territory while herds of elephant, water buffalo and zebra depend on it for life. In the wet season the rains burst the riverbanks and everyone, including people, must move whilst fish swim through the villages. In the dry season the creatures fight over the few pools of water while predators prowl. At its heart it plunges over Victoria Falls and into wild ravines before draining into the Indian Ocean, where storm clouds cycle the water back into the heart of Africa.

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Wild Africa

Do You Want to Live Forever?

Do You Want to Live Forever? is a Channel 4 Documentary following the revolutionary life-extension and immortality ideas of this somewhat eccentric scientist, Dr. Aubrey de Grey. This show is all about the radical ideas of a Cambridge biomedical gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey who believes that, within the next 20-30 years, we could extend life indefinitely by addressing seven major factors in the aging process. He describes his work as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).

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DNA (PBS Documentary)
Miracle Cure? A Decade of Human Genome

How Big is the Universe? (BBC Horizon)

It is one of the most baffling questions that scientists can ask: how big is the Universe that we live in? Horizon follows the cosmologists who are creating the most ambitious map in history - a map of everything in existence. And it is stranger than anyone had imagined - a Universe without end that stretches far beyond what the eye can ever see. And, if the latest research proves true, our Universe may just be the start of something even bigger. Much bigger.

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Hunting the Edge of Space

After Life: The Strange Science of Decay

Ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away, and everything inside was left to rot? The answer is revealed in this fascinating programme, which explores the strange and surprising science of decay.

For two months in summer 2011, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, presenter Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old. Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by. But as the programme shows, it's a process that's vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty.

The Revelation of the Pyramids

Narrated by Brian Cox, Revelation of the Pyramids takes an in-depth look into one of Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Pyramids of Egypt. For centuries, the Great Pyramids have fascinated Mankind; every year brings a batch of new theories, from the plausible to the absolutely bizarre. One lone seeker, after more than thirty-seven years of study and research, has at last managed first to understand and then to prove what lies behind this greatest of archaeological mysteries: a message of paramount importance for all mankind, through time and space. Its key - and its heart - are the Great Pyramids of Egypt. From China to Peru, from Egypt to Mexico, throughout the Middle East - through the world's oldest, most enigmatic and often most beautiful sites - the director has spent six years of investigation, guided by his anonymous informant, verifying his discoveries one by one, and meeting the planet's most eminent scientific and technical specialists. The result will shake the history of mankind as it is taught to its very core, and revolutionize Egyptology entirely. A great odyssey along a breathtaking route rich in staggering imagery, an extraordinary scientific leap and finally a revelation as unexpected as it is spectacular: the message bequeathed to future generations by these mysterious builders.

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Egypt: Engineering an Empire
Ancient Megastructures

The Great Inca Rebellion (PBS documentary)

Through a mix of crime-lab science, archeology, and history, this film presents new evidence that is changing what we know about the final days of the once-mighty Inca Empire. This probing story of archaeological discovery begins in a cemetery crammed with skeletons that offer tantalizing clues about a fierce 16th-century battle between warriors of the collapsing Inca Empire and Spanish invaders. Now, the long-accepted account of a swift Spanish conquest of the Inca - achieved with guns, steel, and horses - is being replaced by a more complete story based on surprising new evidence, including what may be the first gunshot wound in the Americas.

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Machu Picchu: Road to the Sky
Lost Kingdoms of South America

Machu Picchu: Road to the Sky

The city in the sky - Machu Picchu - is one of the most beautiful World Heritage Sites and the main symbol of the Inca Empire. The continuing excavations at Machu Picchu have brought to light many of the secrets of Incan prosperity. The city itself is built on a steep Andean mountain ridge, and scholars have often wondered how and why the Incans built it in this harsh environment. This film explores the Incan secrets in building this magnificent city.

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The Great Inca Rebellion
Lost Kingdoms of South America

Smartest Machine on Earth (PBS NOVA)

"Watson," an IBM computing system, is gearing up for a first-of-its-kind challenge - taking on human contestants on the game show Jeopardy! With a brain the size of 2,400 home computers and a database of about 10 million documents, will Watson be able to compute its way to victory? Win or lose, the difficulty of mimicking the human thought process with software is showing artificial-intelligence researchers that there's more than one way to be "intelligent."

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The Machine That Changed the World