The BEST episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2017
Every episode of BBC Documentaries season 2017, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2017!
Documentaries produced by or for the BBC.
#1 - The Passengers That Took on the Train Line
Season 2017 - Episode 149 - Aired 6/14/2017
In 2016, with the contract for Southeastern trains due to expire in six months, a group of dissatisfied but determined passengers come together to try to take a railway franchise into their own hands. Jacques Peretti follows the group as they set about executing their revolutionary plan. Is their dream far-fetched, or will the Department for Transport, looking for fresh ideas, see this new passenger-run company as a viable option for the franchise?
#2 - Britain's Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story
Season 2017 - Episode 110 - Aired 5/3/2017
In 1957, Britain exploded its first megaton hydrogen bomb - codenamed Operation Grapple X. It was the culmination of an extraordinary scientific project, which against almost insuperable odds turned Britain into a nuclear superpower. This is the inside story of how Britain got 'the bomb'. The BBC has been granted unprecedented access to the top-secret nuclear research facility at Aldermaston. The programme features interviews with veterans and scientists who took part in the atomic bomb programme, some speaking for the first time, and newly released footage of the British atomic bomb tests.
#3 - Gravity and Me: The Force that Shapes Our Lives
Season 2017 - Episode 73 - Aired 3/28/2017
Physics professor Jim Al-Khalili investigates the amazing science of gravity. A fundamental force of nature, gravity shapes our entire universe, sculpting galaxies and warping space and time. But gravity's strange powers, discovered by Albert Einstein, also affect our daily lives in the most unexpected ways. As Jim tells the story of gravity, it challenges his own understanding of the nature of reality. The science of gravity includes the greatest advances in physics, and Jim recreates groundbreaking experiments in gravity including when the Italian genius Galileo first worked out how to measure it. Gravity science is still full of surprises and Jim investigates the latest breakthrough - 'gravity waves' - ripples in the vast emptiness of space. He also finds out from astronauts what it's like to live without gravity. But gravity also directly affects all of us very personally - making a difference to our weight, height, posture and even the rate at which we age. With the help of volunteers and scientists, Jim sets out to find where in Britain gravity is weakest and so where we weigh the least. He also helps design a smartphone app that volunteers use to demonstrate how gravity affects time and makes us age at slightly different rates. And finally, Jim discovers that despite incredible progress, gravity has many secrets.
#4 - The Search For A New Earth
Season 2017 - Episode 232 - Aired 9/11/2017
Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive. With climate change, pollution, deforestation, pandemics and population growth, our own planet is becoming increasingly precarious. Planet Earth has been home to humankind for over 200,000 years, but with a population of 7.5 billion and counting and limited resources, this planet might not support us forever. In this landmark film Professor Hawking, alongside engineer and radio astronomy expert Professor Danielle George and a former student, Christophe Galfard, join forces to find out if, and how, humans can reach for the stars and relocate to different planets. Travelling the globe, they meet top scientists, technologists and engineers who are working to answer our biggest questions: is there another planet out there that we could call home? How will we travel across the vast distances of space to get there? How will we survive the journey? And how will we set up a new human civilization on an alien world? Taking in the latest advances in astronomy, biology and rocket technology from the Atacama Desert to the wilds of the Arctic, viewers will discover a whole world of cutting edge research. This programme shows that Professor Hawking’s ambition isn’t as fantastical as it sounds - and that science fiction is closer to science fact than we ever thought.
#5 - The Paper Thistle: 200 Years of The Scotsman
Season 2017 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/17/2017
For two centuries The Scotsman newspaper has been at the heart of the nation, uncovering corruption, skewering politicians, celebrating the arts and prepared to robustly defend its trenchant views, even at the point of a pistol. The programme tells the fascinating story of one of Britain's most famous newspapers and how over two centuries it has both reflected and shaped the nation.
#6 - Annie Mac: Who Killed The Night?
Season 2017 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/18/2017
Almost half of the UK’s nightclubs have closed down over the past decade. In this film, broadcaster and international DJ Annie Mac investigates who is killing our nightlife. Is it property developers, the police or local councils who are contributing to the decline? Or is it just the fact young people are changing the way they go about partying, with the advent of all-day parties, illegal raves and the internet?
#7 - The Teens Taking On Deliveroo
Season 2017 - Episode 269 - Aired 10/15/2017
As Britain's gig economy continues to grow and employ more young people, two teenagers decide to challenge the practices of one of the biggest takeaway delivery companies in the sector
#8 - Reagan's Last Movie
Season 2017 - Episode 242 - Aired 7/29/2017
He's Trump's idol - the new President took his 2016 slogan 'Make America Great Again' straight from Ronald Reagan's barnstorming 1980 campaign. But like Trump, Reagan had a long past in entertainment - and one that might have scuppered his political career before it really took off. For BBC World News, historian Adam Smith tells the extraordinary story of Reagan's last movie. In The Killers (1964), Reagan played a criminal for the first time, and portrayed California businessmen as corrupt and violent - just months before real California businessmen launched him into national politics. But why did he do it? And what might have happened if The Killers had been shown on TV as planned?
#9 - Stop All the Clocks: WH Auden in an Age of Anxiety
Season 2017 - Episode 251 - Aired 9/30/2017
Why does the poet who began as the golden boy of the 1930s and ended up as the craggy-faced laureate-we-never-had have a greater hold on our imaginations than ever before? Thirty-five years after his BBC film The Auden Landscape, director Adam Low returns to the poet and his work. Following Auden's surges of popularity from featuring in Four Weddings and a Funeral to being the poet New Yorkers turned to after 9/11, Low reveals how Auden's poetry helps us to have a better understanding of the 21st century and the tumultuous political climate in which we now live. Writers Alan Bennett, Polly Clark, Alexander McCall Smith and Richard Curtis, and poets James Fenton and Paul Muldoon share their passion for Auden and celebrate the potent impact of his work.
#10 - MND and 22-Year-Old Me
Season 2017 - Episode 243 - Aired 8/1/2017
The youngest person with motor neurone disease in Scotland, Lucy Lintott, is becoming paralysed - she can no longer walk unassisted and she is losing her voice - not great for a chatterbox like Lucy. Even though she has been given only a few years to live, Lucy is determined to do what 22-year-olds do - including dating. Over a six-month period, this lover of food and country music reveals how she is struggling to hold on to her personality and her infectious laugh. Lucy visits Newcastle, where she meets a stand-up comedian who can still crack a joke even though he can't speak. At a clinic in Edinburgh, Lucy's voice is recorded with her sister's to create a personalised synthetic voice. And in an emotional photographic sitting with portrait photographer Rankin, Lucy confronts two polarised parts of herself - the perfect Lucy pre-diagnosis and the broken Lucy three years after diagnosis.
#11 - Kidnapped! Saudi Arabia's Missing Princes
Season 2017 - Episode 244 - Aired 9/9/2017
In the last two years, three Saudi princes in Europe have disappeared. All were critical of the Saudi government and there is evidence they were abducted and flown to Saudi Arabia.
#12 - Diabulimia: The World's Most Dangerous Eating Disorder
Season 2017 - Episode 245 - Aired 9/24/2017
More than 750,000 people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder – but what happens when you’re a type 1 diabetic and misuse insulin in order to dramatically lose weight? In this documentary produced by BBC Three and BBC Newsbeat, we meet three young sufferers who are risking their eyesight, limbs, fertility and lives in order to be thin. We follow one young girl whose parents know she’s skipping her insulin but are struggling to understand the mental health aspect of her condition; a young mum who is not receiving the appropriate healthcare due to the lack of awareness and expertise on how to treat diabulimia; and a young woman who was saved from the brink of death and is now beginning to rebuild her life, despite the illness leaving her with physical disability.
#13 - Football Abuse: The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game
Season 2017 - Episode 246 - Aired 4/10/2017
Documentary examining the historical child sexual abuse scandal engulfing football. Reporter Mark Daly reveals fresh allegations of sex abuse and cover ups in Scottish football's most notorious paedophile scandal, at Celtic Boys' Club. He also hears powerful accounts from former footballers who talk for the first time about the abuse they say they suffered as boys in the sport.
#14 - The Gap Year Paedophile
Season 2017 - Episode 247 - Aired 9/25/2017
Reporter Bronagh Munro investigates how a teenage gap year student became one of Britain’s worst ever paedophiles. In 2016, thirty year old Richard Huckle was imprisoned after being convicted at the Old Bailey of abusing twenty three children in Malaysia and Cambodia. Working as an English teacher and posing as a Christian, Huckle raped and sexually assaulted vulnerable and poor children of all ages, from babies to young teenagers. On the dark web, he shared tens of thousands of images of his crimes, boasted about them and even published a manual for paedophiles. This film investigates how Huckle escaped detection for nearly a decade and reveals that he could have been stopped earlier. Following Huckle’s trail to India, where his movements have not been investigated by the authorities, Munro uncovers previously undetected crimes. The film asks whether Huckle also abused children in Britain and reveals that the true count of his victims is likely to number into the hundreds.
#15 - Concorde: A Supersonic Story
Season 2017 - Episode 248 - Aired 9/29/2017
The life of the most glamorous plane ever built - told by the people whose lives she touched. We uncover rare footage telling the forgotten row between the French and British governments over the name of Concorde which threatened to derail the whole project. Ahead of the opening of Bristol's multimillion-pound aerospace museum, a host of engineers, flight technicians and frequent fliers tell the supersonic story, aided by Lord Heseltine and Dame Joan Collins. And we meet the passenger who shared an intimate moment with The Rolling Stones. Narrated by Sophie Okonedo
#16 - The Last Pirates - Britain's Rebel DJs
Season 2017 - Episode 249 - Aired 9/29/2017
In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations exploded on to Britain's FM airwaves. Unlike their seafaring swinging 60s forerunners, these pirates broadcast from London's estates and tower blocks to create a platform for black music in an era when it was shut out by legal radio and ignored by the mainstream music industry. In the ensuing game of cat and mouse which played out on the rooftops of inner-city London across a whole decade, these rebel DJs used legal loopholes and technical trickery to stay one step ahead of the DTI enforcers who were tasked with bringing them down. And as their popularity grew they spearheaded a cultural movement bringing Britain's first multicultural generation together under the banner of black music and club culture. Presented by Rodney P, whose own career as a rapper would not have been possible without the lifeblood of pirate radio airplay, this film also presents an alternative history of Britain in the 1980s - a time of entrepreneurialism and social upheaval - with archive and music that celebrates a very different side of Thatcher's Britain. Featuring interviews with DJs, station owners and DTI enforcers - as well as some of the engineers who were the secret weapon in the pirate arsenal - this is the untold story of how Britain's greatest generation of pirate radio broadcasters changed the soundtrack of modern Britain forever.
#17 - Race and Pace: The West Indians in East Lancashire
Season 2017 - Episode 250 - Aired 9/30/2017
Sir Viv Richards, Sir Wes Hall and David Lloyd recall the impact West Indian players made on the Lancashire Cricket League over the last 90 years. A story of how initial reticence and racism turned into an unlikely cricketing love affair, which has had a huge impact on both sides of the Atlantic.
#18 - Great War Horses
Season 2017 - Episode 230 - Aired 9/5/2017
The horses that provided the backbone of the Australian Light Horse regiments in World War I were popularly known as Walers. Bred for Australia's tough Outback conditions, Walers were well-equipped for the harsh climate and terrain of the Middle East, where the ANZAC forces faced the armies of the Ottoman Empire. Great War Horses is a powerful, moving account of the men and horses of the Australian Light Horse and the pivotal role they played in World War I at the Battle of Romani (1916), the celebrated Light Horse charge at the Battle of Beersheba (1917) and the capture of Damascus in 1918.
#19 - Through the Lens of Larkin
Season 2017 - Episode 241 - Aired 9/20/2017
Through the Lens of Larkin explores the relationship of one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets, Philip Larkin with photography. It looks at the relationship between Larkin's photography and his work, family and lovers - seen through the thousands of photographs he took, including the many “selfies” in his collection. Presented by poet and academic John Wedgwood Clarke, the documentary studies some of the pictures he took of his loved ones, his adopted city, and of himself - charting his life from childhood to death.
#20 - Famalam
Season 2017 - Episode 240 - Aired 9/20/2017
Famalam shines a comedic light on everything - from alien encounters in the outer reaches of the galaxy, to what happens when a man is left on his own in a house for ten minutes holding only a phone and a remote. With a dazzling array of accents, cultural observations and colourful costumes, Famalam gives us a glimpse of the latest Nollywood blockbuster, reveals who might be responsible for internet spam and introduces us to latest TV detective - but be warned - his methods are, well, unorthodox...
#21 - Letters from Baghdad
Season 2017 - Episode 239 - Aired 9/18/2017
The extraordinary and dramatic story of Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. She shaped the modern Middle East after World War I in ways that still reverberate today. More influential than her friend and colleague Lawrence of Arabia, Bell helped draw the borders of Iraq and established the Iraq Museum. Using never-seen-before footage of the region, the film chronicles Bell's extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power. With unique access to documents from the Iraq National Library and Archive and Gertrude Bell's own 1,600 letters, the story is told entirely in the words of the players of the day, excerpted verbatim from intimate letters, private diaries and secret communiques. It is a unique look at both a remarkable woman and the tangled history of Iraq.
#22 - Fallout
Season 2017 - Episode 238 - Aired 10/9/2017
Globally today, well over 1,000 wrongly convicted, incarcerated and exonerated people, exonerees, are trying to put their stolen lives back together. Wrenched from their families, homes and communities, the wrongfully convicted suffer many forms of psychological trauma as a result of their imprisonment. Their problems are exacerbated upon release, where they struggle to reintegrate into society, reclaim normality and carve out a stable existence. They return only to face poverty, employment discrimination, societal discrimination, alcohol and substance abuse and broken relationships. The long-term effects are much worse for exonerees than for guilty prisoners. There are presently no post-prison services available for exonerees in many countries, yet the guilty have every service imaginable at their disposal on leaving prison. Sunny Jacobs served 17 years on death row in the USA. Peter Pringle was the last person sentenced to death in Ireland and served 15 years. They are the only married, exonerated, death-sentence couple in the world. Paddy Joe Hill is known as one of the Birmingham Six and served 16 years. Robert Brown served the longest sentence of 25 years before being declared innocent.
#23 - Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum
Season 2017 - Episode 237 - Aired 9/17/2017
From the day it was created in 1947, Magnum Photos has represented some of the most famous names in photography whose pictures have come to define their times. But Magnum's work also includes more surprising images - pictures of cinema. This film recounts this remarkable collaboration - from Robert Capa's photos of Ingrid Bergman and Eve Arnold's intimate relationship with Marilyn Monroe, up until today with Paolo Pellegrin's portraits of Kate Winslet, providing an essential history of both cinema and photography.
#24 - Marc Bolan: Cosmic Dancer
Season 2017 - Episode 236 - Aired 9/15/2017
This intimate biography, narrated in Marc Bolan's own words, marks the 70th anniversary of his birth and the 40th of his death. The film traces Bolan's remarkable journey from Hackney's own 'king of the mods' to Tyrannosaurus Rex, as he evolved into the artist known as 'the hippie with a knife up his sleeve'. With the dawn of the '70s and the breakup of The Beatles, Bolan became the gender-bending glam rocker whose band T. Rex revitalised the British music scene. But director Jeremy Marre - incorporating unseen movies shot by record producer Tony Visconti and Marc Bolan himself - reveals a far more complex and driven figure whose life was tragically cut short, aged 29. Featuring those who were closest to Marc, his friends, colleagues, family, partner Gloria Jones and producer Tony Visconti.
#25 - Our Wild Week in Croatia
Season 2017 - Episode 235 - Aired 9/8/2017
Young Brits are choosing to spend money on amazing experiences over saving for their future. Escaping their jobs and looking to have the time of their lives, five different groups from the UK head to the brand new party mecca of Zrce Beach on the island of Pag in Croatia. Adventure awaits them at one of Europe's biggest new festivals, Sonus.