The BEST episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2016
Every episode of BBC Documentaries season 2016, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2016!
Documentaries produced by or for the BBC.
#1 - Attenborough at 90
Season 2016 - Episode 128 - Aired 5/8/2016
In celebration of his ninetieth birthday, Sir David Attenborough shares extraordinary highlights of his life and career with broadcaster Kirsty Young, including the inspiring people he has met, the extraordinary journeys he has made and the remarkable animal encounters he has had across the globe. Joined by colleagues and friends, including Michael Palin and Chris Packham, Sir David shares some of the unforgettable moments from his unparalleled career, from capturing unique animal behaviour for the first time to the fast-paced advances in wildlife filming technology, as well as stories of the wonder and fragility of the natural world - stories that Sir David has spent his life exploring and championing.
#2 - The Incredible Story of Marie Antoinette's Watch
Season 2016 - Episode 292 - Aired 10/6/2016
Nicholas Parsons, Just a Minute host, and stalwart of the entertainment world explores his life-long enthusiasm for clocks when he goes in search of the most valuable and famous watch in the world. The so called Marie Antoinette, once the target of one of the biggest museum heists in history, was the masterpiece made by 18th-century genius Nicholas Breguet, for that doomed queen. Tracing the enthralling story of Breguet's rise to fame, Parsons visits Paris and Versailles, and the vaults of today's multimillion-pound Breguet business. Exploring the innovative and dazzling work of the master watch maker, Parsons unravels the mystery behind the creation of his most precious and most brilliant work. Parsons heads to Irsael to discover how in the 1980s the world's most expensive watch was then stolen in a daring heist, and went missing for over 20 years. Revealing a little-known side of one of our favourite TV and radio hosts, the film offers a glimpse into Parsons's own private clock collection, whilst also telling an enthralling tale of scientific invention, doomed decadence and daring robbery.
#3 - Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur
Season 2016 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/24/2016
David Attenborough tells the story of the discovery and reconstruction in Argentina of the world's largest-known dinosaur, a brand new species of titanosaur. Measuring 37m long - close to four London buses put end to end - and weighing 70 metric tons, it now holds the record as the biggest animal ever to walk the Earth. In 2014, a shepherd spotted the tip of a gigantic fossil bone sticking out of a rock in La Flecha Farm in the Chubut Province in the Argentinian desert. Palaeontologists soon uncovered a massive 2.4m long (femur) thigh bone, the largest ever found. By the end of the dig they had uncovered more than 220 bones. As the programme reveals, these all belong to a new species of the giant plant-eating titanosaur. Filmed over the next two years, the documentary follows the twists and turns of this forensic investigation. Attenborough witnesses the uncovering and examination of these stupendous fossils and the dramatic construction of the complete skeleton. And using state-of-the-art graphics, the film also reveals the internal secrets of this dinosaur and what it means to be a giant.
#4 - Going Going Gone: Nick Broomfield's Disappearing Britain
Season 2016 - Episode 156 - Aired 5/25/2016
Two iconic British buildings are threatened with demolition and the intrepid Nick Broomfield is on the case. In a pair of documentaries, Broomfield profiles the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool and the Coal Exchange in Cardiff. The Wellington Rooms, built in 1815 by Edmund Aikin, was originally the social hub for the super-rich, slave traders, businessmen and the elite. The Prime Minister William Gladstone's family, themselves wealthy slave owners, invested heavily in this magnificent building with the most intricate detailing and proportions. A Wedgwood ceiling and sprung dance floor, with classical columns, create a building of love and light. Despite the depression in Liverpool's fortunes, it's a building that has brought enormous happiness to many different people over a couple of centuries. Countless people seem to have fallen in love and met their future partners in the assembly room. Now in a rundown state of faded glory, the question is - what to do with the Wellington Rooms? The Coal Exchange in Cardiff, built in 1883 by Edward Seward, is a magnificent celebration of the industry of coal and its immense wealth. A glass-ceilinged exchange room with galleries on three floors and a unique lowered floor are a remarkable monument to this time. Now in serious neglect, the whole building, the size of a city block, faces demolition. It signifies the serious lack of resourcefulness on the part of Cardiff Council to celebrate and regenerate not only this building but the whole area. The once great Butetown Docks and the magnificent buildings surrounding the Coal Exchange have also been allowed to crumble and disintegrate. Rather than redevelop the docks in a way that they have been so wonderfully done in Liverpool, the docks in Cardiff have been filled in. Magnificent warehouses have been torn down, and the whole history of coal and the uniqueness of this area have been almost obliterated.
#5 - The Mystery of Van Gogh's Ear
Season 2016 - Episode 209 - Aired 8/6/2016
Jeremy Paxman joins art sleuth Bernadette Murphy on her amazing quest to discover the truth about the December night in 1888 when Vincent van Gogh took a blade to his own ear.
#6 - Bublé at the BBC
Season 2016 - Episode 415 - Aired 11/3/2016
Claudia Winkleman meets Michael Buble in this entertainment spectacular. Michael performs classic tracks including Cry Me a River and Feeling Good alongside songs from his brand new album, including Nobody but Me. Michael also goes undercover as a sales assistant at a London department store to surprise a few unsuspecting fans.
#7 - Titanic's Tragic Twin: The Britannic Disaster
Season 2016 - Episode 349 - Aired 11/21/2016
The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 was a tragedy unlike any other. Surely it could never happen again? But it did. Incredibly, Titanic had a sister - Britannic - who suffered a near-identical fate. In the wake of the Titanic disaster, Britannic was re-engineered to be even stronger. And yet, on 21 November 1916, she sank in just 55 minutes - three times faster than Titanic. It's one of Britain's greatest untold disaster stories. Now on the 100th anniversary, presenters Kate Humble and Andy Torbet piece together exactly what happened in those 55 minutes. While Andy makes a dangerous dive to the wreck, Kate speaks to descendants of the survivors, tracked down for the very first time on TV. The characters she uncovers include Violet 'Miss Unsinkable' Jessops, who survived both Titanic and Britannic, Captain 'Iceberg Charlie' Bartlett and look-out Archie Jewell, who miraculously survived when those around him died. Using rarely seen and unpublished diaries and letters of the captain and crew, Titanic's Tragic Twin recreates what it was like for Britannic's survivors to fight for their lives and investigates how and why Britannic's victims died horribly - and avoidably.
#8 - The Hip Hop World News
Season 2016 - Episode 281 - Aired 9/30/2016
Embarking on an immersive authored journey, Rodney P reveals a fascinating alternative version of reality as seen from the perspective of a culture which was created in the black and Latino ghettos of 1970s New York, and has since evolved into a world-dominating cultural powerhouse. Whether it's chronicling life on the streets or offering a surprising twist on global events, hip-hop has given a voice to the powerless and dispossessed while also acting as a platform for ideas, opinions and sometimes controversial theories to be shared amongst its millions of followers. Looking at big issues such as power, conspiracy, education and money, Rodney meets iconic figures like Public Enemy's Chuck D, Def Jam's Russell Simmons, who created the template for the hip-hop mogul, and New York rapper Rakim, agreed by many to be the greatest MC of all time. Rodney's journey also gets to grips with contentious issues like police brutality, extreme language and the role of women in a culture some see as misogynistic, to provide a fascinating take on what the world really looks like with a hip-hop state of mind. As Rodney explores the important issues and powerful ideas through the lens of hip-hop, he learns more about the culture he himself has been part of for almost four decades while showing those who have never quite understood (and may even have dismissed it) just how surprising and rich that culture really is.
#9 - Louis Theroux - Savile
Season 2016 - Episode 294 - Aired 10/2/2016
In light of the unmasking of Jimmy Savile as a predatory sex offender, and 15 years on from the BBC documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, Louis Theroux sets out to understand how a man who was at the centre of British entertainment and charitable fundraising for decades was able to get away with a long litany of crimes. In this reflective 75-minute film, Louis talks to some of Savile's victims and to people who worked closely with him, and re-examines moments from the original film as well as footage that has never aired before on television.
#10 - Rubble Kings
Season 2016 - Episode 282 - Aired 9/30/2016
Documentary that tells the story of how hip-hop was vital to the truce that ended the near-apocalyptic level of gang violence in New York during the 1960s and 70s. Using interviews with hip-hop pioneers like Afrika Bambaataa (an ex-Black Spade gang leader) and Kool Herc, unseen archive footage of street gangs, and filmed over seven years, the film chronicles life during this era of gang rule, tells the story of how a few extraordinary, forgotten people did the impossible, and how their actions saved New York City and gave birth to the biggest musical genre on the planet - hip-hop.
#11 - Sir Chris Hoy: 200mph at Le Mans
Season 2016 - Episode 283 - Aired 10/9/2016
After London 2012, having become the first British Olympian to win six gold medals, track cyclist Sir Chris Hoy retired. But having spent 20 years at the top of his sport, Chris isn't about to settle for a quiet life. Instead, he swaps two wheels for four to pursue his boyhood dream of competing in the world's toughest endurance motor race, the Le Mans 24 Hours. We follow Chris as he attempts to prove himself on the race track as he has in the velodrome. By early 2016, he is poised to join the highly successful Le Mans race team - Greaves Motorsport. But Chris's hopes of a podium finish are crushed when the team has to withdraw their car. With less than three months until race day, he finds a seat with a rookie team who have never raced at Le Mans before. Chris has to learn a new car, battle with its teething troubles and work with a team whose operation is a world away from British cycling's obsessive attention to detail. As Le Mans 2016 begins in torrential rain, competitors are reminded of the danger - 22 drivers have died since it began in 1923 and cars crash out with frightening regularity. Can Chris's team even make it through the 24 hours? And when technical troubles flare less than an hour into the race, there is a good chance that he won't even get on the track. Will Chris and his team fail the ultimate test of man and machine?
#12 - Stacey Dooley: Hate and Pride in Orlando
Season 2016 - Episode 284 - Aired 6/24/2016
Stacey Dooley travels to Orlando in the aftermath of the Pulse Bar shootings. She attends vigils, marches and funerals to see how America responds to this latest atrocity and she’ll ask if this could be the one to finally make a difference. Stacey explores the levels of prejudice and homophobia faced daily by the LGBT community in America, levels that are often compounded if you belong to an ethnic or religious minority. With revelations that the shooter may himself have been gay, she will also try to track down and talk with gay Muslims to understand the conflict they face between their religion and their sexuality.
#13 - Hunting the Nazi Gold Train
Season 2016 - Episode 285 - Aired 10/2/2016
In August 2015 two amateur researchers declared they had found a lost Nazi train buried in a railway cutting near Walbrzych in Silesia, southern Poland. This followed decades of local folklore that a train, loaded with gold, had vanished after leaving Wroclaw in early 1945. Dan Snow follows the treasure hunters as they embark on the hunt, while also investigating this extraordinary story that leads all the way to Adolf Hitler himself and his secret plans for this remote corner of the Third Reich during the closing months of the Second World War.
#14 - Iron Maidens: The Female Fighters
Season 2016 - Episode 286 - Aired 8/12/2016
Full contact medieval fighting is really a thing, who knew? Angela Scanlon narrates this quirky documentary following a group of trailblazing female fighters as they armour-up, tool-up and step-up into the medieval ring, to compete in the first women's international tournament in this phenomenal new 'sport'. Move over Iron Man, here come the Iron Maidens.
#15 - Locked in My Body
Season 2016 - Episode 287 - Aired 8/22/2016
Imagine the terror of being fully awake but not able to communicate with the outside world. This is the living nightmare that Terry Newbury is experiencing - his life hangs in the balance. This short observational documentary tells Terry's story and his fight to communicate again.
#16 - Railway Nation - A Journey in Verse
Season 2016 - Episode 289 - Aired 10/1/2016
Following in the footsteps of WH Auden's classic 1936 documentary Night Mail, six of Britain's best poets take the train from London to Glasgow, discovering stories of love, loss and longing among the passengers today, and capturing the journey in verse. Maxine Peake narrates.
#17 - Reggie Yates: Life and Death in Chicago
Season 2016 - Episode 290 - Aired 10/4/2016
Against the backdrop of unprecedented gun violence, Reggie Yates travels to Chicago to investigate gun crime in President Obama's adopted hometown. There were 468 murders in 2015, and this year the murder rate has soared by 72 per cent. With many of the victims being young African-American men, who is to blame? Reggie hears first-hand the accusations of police brutality, but after attending the aftermath of a shooting and funeral of a young black man, he comes to realise an even bigger problem is that the majority of killings are perpetrated by young black men living in Chicago's poorest neighbourhoods.
#18 - A World Without Down's Syndrome?
Season 2016 - Episode 291 - Aired 10/5/2016
Documentary about Down's syndrome and the ethics of pregnancy screening fronted by Sally Phillips. This film explores the science and thinking around the proposed new screening test for Down's syndrome and its possible availability on the NHS. Driven by the experience of raising her son Olly, who has Down's syndrome, Sally explores some of the ethical implications of our national screening policy. By talking to experts in the Down's syndrome community, the world's top scientists and including people with Down's syndrome in the debate, Sally investigates a thorny subject that begs questions relevant to us all: what sort of world do we want to live in and who do we want in it?
#19 - Boy George's 1970s: Save Me From Suburbia
Season 2016 - Episode 293 - Aired 10/8/2016
British pop star Boy George recalls, revisits and assesses how the 1970s moulded the person and artist he has become. This is his musical, social and sexual coming of age when he discovered the power of his own sexuality before setting about turning that persona into a pop star. Set against a backdrop of social discord, disenfranchisement and sexual repression, the seventies was also conversely the decade that revelled in colour and creative chaos, giving the world glam rock, disco and punk, and the young George O'Dowd was at the birth of them all. The documentary includes contributions from contemporaries like Martin Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), Andy Polaris (Animal Nightlife), DJ Princess Julia and pop star Marilyn. This is, as George said, 'the last ever bonkers decade', and it totally and completely shaped him.
#20 - Reggie Yates: Touchdown USA
Season 2016 - Episode 269 - Aired 9/11/2016
Reggie Yates presents a look at America as seen through the eyes of the NFL. Reggie travels to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to meet the Green Bay Packers, visit a cheese factory and meet the superfans. The Packers are the only NFL team owned by their fans, and Reggie meets key local characters who epitomise the city's passion for the game. Travelling through the small town of Green Bay and the broader Wisconsin area, Reggie soon realises why they are considered to be the most hardcore supporters in the whole of the US.
#21 - Sir Terry Wogan Remembered: Fifty Years at the BBC
Season 2016 - Episode 280 - Aired 9/30/2016
An affectionate celebration on one of Britain's best-loved broadcasters, Sir Terry Wogan, with classic moments from Blankety Blank to the Eurovision Song Contest. The programme features fond and funny memories from people who knew him well, including Graham Norton, Fearne Cotton, Dermot O'Leary, Len Goodman, Alesha Dixon, Ken Bruce, Rob Brydon and many more.
#22 - Oasis: In Their Own Words
Season 2016 - Episode 279 - Aired 9/30/2016
Iconic, notorious, heroes, prats, legendary, diabolical: a lot can, and has been said about the Gallagher brothers and Oasis - but the harshest commentary often came from within. ‘Oasis in Their Own Words’ charts the band’s meteoric rise from a bunch of lads from Manchester to the biggest British band of their generation, as they saw it themselves. And all the Britpop hedonism and brotherly punch-ups that came along the way.
#23 - Britain's Star Men: Heroes of Astronomy
Season 2016 - Episode 278 - Aired 9/29/2016
Four British astronomers in their 70s reunite for a 50th anniversary trek in this deceptive documentary. For what begins as a nostalgic and impeccably polite road trip across America’s South West coalesces into something more profound. Each professor has his turn in the starlight – theoretician Donald, instrument maker Roger, visionary Nick and Wallace (Wal) the observer – as the film’s director Alison Rose gets them to open up about their lives, the universe, even faith. There is banter about parochial concerns such as class and career, and on the other hand explanations of quasars and irregular galaxies. It’s a powerful juxtaposition. An elegiac film amid stunning scenery, Star Men makes it easy to appreciate the beauty of our skies, while profiling four great scientific minds that are still active and enthusiastic. “Isn’t it amazing that we get paid to do this?” says Wal. But you get the nagging feeling you’re being led somewhere… and it’s somewhere, temporarily, very sad. Summary Four veteran British stargazers go on a road trip to celebrate 50 years of work and friendship, which represents a highly productive period in astronomy. Now in their 70s, they share their reflections on a life spent looking at the universe as they journey through the south-western United States, revisiting the places where they worked and the landscape they explored together as young men.
#24 - Being Black, Going Crazy?
Season 2016 - Episode 277 - Aired 9/26/2016
Documentary exploring mental health among black people in the UK, looking into why black people are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health condition which results in them being sectioned. Blogger and radio presenter Keith Dube, who is motivated by a personal experience of depression, wants to find out just why the black community is facing a mental health crisis. By spending time in a secure mental health unit, tapping into the thoughts and experiences of his 25,000 followers on Twitter and speaking to mental health experts and community leaders, Keith explores what might be behind the statistics. From racism to religion and social deprivation to stigma within the community, why do so many black people seem to be affected by mental health issues?
#25 - Kew's Forgotten Queen
Season 2016 - Episode 276 - Aired 9/26/2016
Emilia Fox tells the story of how Victorian rebel Marianne North changed the face of botanical research, propelling her to the top of a male-dominated world of science and exploration. With exclusive access to Kew Gardens and Marianne's wealth of personal memoirs, letters and paintings, this is a tale of a visionary who rejected marriage and social convention for a pioneering life of conservation and adventure.