The BEST episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2019
Every episode of BBC Documentaries season 2019, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of BBC Documentaries season 2019!
Documentaries produced by or for the BBC.
#1 - Climategate: Science of a Scandal
Season 2019 - Episode 236 - Aired 11/14/2019
Documentary that reveals the truth behind a data breach at the University of East Anglia in 2009 that suggested that scientists had manipulated data to exaggerate evidence of climate change.
#2 - The Trouble with Naipaul
Season 2019 - Episode 266 - Aired 11/26/2019
Shahidha Bari examines the life and work of controversial Booker Prize winner Sir VS Naipaul. Is his legacy compromised by his self-confessed violence towards women and views on race?
#3 - How to Go Viral: The Art of the Meme with Richard Clay
Season 2019 - Episode 42 - Aired 3/20/2019
Art historian Professor Richard Clay immerses us in the febrile world of viral media, exploring the popularity and meaning of internet memes, from LOL cats to emoji, pratfall videos to ‘dank’ alt-right satire. Playfully fusing the conventions of a BBC Four authored documentary with a throwaway YouTube video style, the film examines the rise and rise of this new visual language and asks what makes a few memes cut through and spread so intensely, while the vast majority fall quietly by the wayside.
#4 - Rich Hall's Red Menace
Season 2019 - Episode 227 - Aired 11/5/2019
2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.
#5 - Intersex Surgeries: Who Chooses My Body?
Season 2019 - Episode 15 - Aired 1/27/2019
All over the world, children with intersex traits are being operated on to be sex assigned at birth - sometimes with devastating consequences. The UN says as many as 1.7%% of the world have intersex traits - that's the same as the number of people with red hair. All over the world, children with intersex traits are being operated on to be sex assigned at birth - sometimes with devastating consequences. Megha Mohan explores the hidden world of intersex children.
#6 - Don McCullin: Looking for England
Season 2019 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/4/2019
Travelogue that follows photographer Don McCullin, now 83, documenting his country from inner cities to seaside towns, on a journey in search of his own nation. Sixty years after starting out as a photographer, McCullin returns to his old haunts in the East End of London, Bradford, Consett, Eastbourne and Scarborough. Along the way he encounters an array of English characters at the Glyndebourne Festival and Goodwood Revival and photographs a hunt and a group of saboteurs aiming to disrupt them. McCullin’s journey is punctuated by scenes in his darkroom, a place he is allowing cameras into for the first time.
#7 - Noel Gallagher: Reel Stories
Season 2019 - Episode 140 - Aired 6/23/2019
Looking back with a mixture of pride, curiosity and occasional bewilderment, Noel Gallagher relives moments of his life on TV - handpicked by Dermot O’Leary. From Maine Road to Downing Street, The Word to Newsnight – Noel has been ever present on our screens for the past 25 years. Now is his chance to watch it back. In characteristically revealing form, Noel talks about the early days of Oasis, their first TV appearances, his love of Top of the Pops, his role in Cool Britannia, the breakup of one of the world’s most successful rock groups, his own solo career – and how Don’t Look Back In Anger came to define his home town’s response to the Manchester Arena bombing.
#8 - Moonshot
Season 2019 - Episode 148 - Aired 7/16/2019
With July 2019 marking the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, eyes across the world will be turned to the skies. To celebrate this seminal event, Wales's NASA-recognised astro-photographer Alyn Wallace sets out to capture his ultimate moon images, taken in iconic locations around Wales. Along the way, Alyn will celebrate Wales's internationally recognised and protected 'dark skies'. In a time when light-pollution blights so much of the country Wales is blessed with a network of Dark Skies Reserves that astronomers have singled out as world-beating places to look at the night sky. Alyn will also explore Wales's connections to the moon and will get close to a piece of actual moon rock from the Apollo 12 mission (which is one of the most valuable exhibits in Cardiff Museum). He also visits Wales's most significant observatory in the Brecon Beacons Dark Sky Reserve. and discover the story of John Dillwyn Llewelyn, a Victorian photographic pioneer, who, from his home near Swansea, took one of the first ever pictures taken in Wales - a photo of the moon. Finally, Alyn attempts an ambitious shot of the rising full moon over the Brecon Beacons: bringing the story of the moon landings to an iconic Welsh landscape.
#9 - Meet Jim, Citizen of the World
Season 2019 - Episode 174 - Aired 8/17/2019
The captivating story of Jim Haynes, an extraordinary 83-year-old man who grabbed with heart and soul the spirit of the 60s and continued to carry it throughout his life. He dined with The Beatles and shacked up with the Rolling Stones. He rubbed shoulders with soul diva Mama Cass, folk troubadour Leonard Cohen and a fledgling Pink Floyd. He was a figurehead for a new generation of playwrights. After he was stopped at Munich airport with a bag full of blank ‘world passports’, he lectured bewildered German border police about the virtues of 'world government'. Today, at 83, Jim Haynes just won’t slow down. This ‘godfather of social networking’ organises open dinners every Sunday night in the Parisian artist studio that has been his home for the past 50 years. Total strangers, unknown both to him and to each other, meet in his living room and Jim’s friends show up to cook cheerfully for crowds of 60 or more. It’s simple: you sign up, you come over, you meet Jim. As he once said: 'My home is a world government embassy that never closes'. Meeting Jim composes an impressionistic portrait of Jim Haynes the man and the cultural phenomenon, as seen by the many and diverse people whose lives have been touched by his. The film is a hymn to the lasting spirit of the 60s, an inspirational living proof of how we can all choose to live on the bright side. To Jim, the choice is ready-made: 'Life is short. We have a duty to enjoy ourselves'
#10 - Spitfire
Season 2019 - Episode 196 - Aired 9/26/2019
The story of the fighter aircraft that became an international icon, told in the words of the last-surviving World War II veterans combined with stunning contemporary and historical aerial footage.
#11 - The Rise and Fall of Timex Dundee
Season 2019 - Episode 217 - Aired 10/15/2019
1993 - Scotland’s last full-blooded strike. Thousands of protestors, police and press outside the Timex Camperdown Factory. The furious death throes of an industry that had employed generations of Dundonians - the vast majority women. For most, working for Timex had been a source of pride, good pay and conditions. It would all end in betrayal and bitter disappointment.
#12 - Paddington: The Man Behind the Bear
Season 2019 - Episode 273 - Aired 12/26/2019
With readings by Hugh Bonneville, animation and contributions from celebrity fans, this film celebrates the beloved character of Paddington and tells the story of his unassuming creator Michael Bond.
#13 - Climate Change: The Facts
Season 2019 - Episode 60 - Aired 4/18/2019
After one of the hottest years on record, Sir David Attenborough looks at the science of climate change and potential solutions to this global threat.
#14 - 8 Days: To the Moon and Back
Season 2019 - Episode 130 - Aired 7/10/2019
Using dramatic reconstruction, declassified cockpit audio recorded by the astronauts themselves and film archive, this is the untold story of the first moon landing.
#15 - Jonathan Pie's American Pie
Season 2019 - Episode 7 - Aired 1/20/2019
This balanced mocku-documentary is Louis Theroux meets Alan Partridge. It is the US midterm elections, and spoof news reporter Jonathan Pie is sent across the pond on the campaign trail. Jonathan meets real people who don't normally have a voice as he sorts through the utter carnage of US politics and delivers an extremely entertaining, witty take on Trump's America. He talks to all sides: Republicans, Democrats and independents, while attempting to work out whether Trump is going to destroy the planet with his stance on climate change, his relationships with volatile countries or his twitter account. Pie comes away with a lot of his preconceptions blown out of the water but also with a few intact.
#16 - Ian Hislop's Fake News: A True History
Season 2019 - Episode 209 - Aired 10/7/2019
Ian Hislop's sharp, provocative take on 200 years of fake news and its consequences - from Victorians on the moon to 21st-century deepfake, and Hislop as never seen before.
#17 - A Fresh Guide to Florence with Fab 5 Freddy
Season 2019 - Episode 158 - Aired 7/27/2019
In this revelatory documentary, hip hop legend and art lover Fab 5 Freddy (aka Fred Brathwaite) saddles up to explore 15th-century Italian renaissance art in 15th-century style – on horseback. Amidst superstar artists such as Michelangelo, Giotto, Ghiberti and Carpaccio, Fab discovers groundbreaking images of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society that have slipped through the cracks of art history.
#18 - Woody Guthrie: Three Chords and the Truth
Season 2019 - Episode 67 - Aired 4/19/2019
Woody Guthrie is one of America’s legendary songwriters. A voice of the people, he wrote hard-hitting lyrics for a hard-hit nation. His is a tale of survival, creativity and reinvention. He is proof that there is always potential for change and even in 2019, more than fifty years after his death, he is challenging Donald Trump from beyond the grave. With enormous influence on successive generations of musicians like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Billy Bragg, this film proves he has a true place in 21st-century culture.
#19 - The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On
Season 2019 - Episode 26 - Aired 2/27/2019
The publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1988 sparked a culture war in Britain between those in the Muslim community, who considered the book blasphemous and called for the book to be banned, and those defending it as an expression of freedom of speech. Protests, which began in the north of England, soon spread across the UK and to the rest of the Islamic world, culminating in February 1989 with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa - a death sentence on the writer. Now, 30 years on, broadcaster and journalist Mobeen Azhar embarks on a journey, starting in his native Yorkshire where the protest first began, to examine the lasting effect the book has had on the Muslim community and how the events of 1989 continue to have an impact today. Mobeen hears from a range of people who were affected by the so called 'Rushdie Affair' - from the men who took an early stand against the book and organised the original protests to the writer who wrestled at the time of the book's publication with the complex questions of free speech and her own religious beliefs, and a former member of the National Front who claims that the furore over the book became a recruiting tool for them.
#20 - Undercover with the Clerics: Iraq's Secret Sex Trade
Season 2019 - Episode 205 - Aired 10/3/2019
In this undercover investigation, Nawal Al Maghafi exposes a secret world of sexual exploitation in Iraq. Some Shia clerics are using a controversial practice called 'pleasure marriage' to groom vulnerable girls and young women and pimp them out.
#21 - The Last Igloo
Season 2019 - Episode 288 - Aired 12/24/2019
Documentary that follows a lone Inuit as he hunts, fishes and constructs an igloo. It tells the story of skills that are disappearing and of how climate change is affecting the lives of Greenland's indigenous people. With its focus on the ingenious craft of igloo building before it becomes too late to record it, this is a meditative and poetic sensory immersion in a landscape of ice and snow, an elegy to a world that is melting away.
#22 - You Match The Description: Stop And Search
Season 2019 - Episode 276 - Aired 12/1/2019
Stop and search has increased by 32% in the last year with police forces across England and Wales able to carry out searches in designated areas without authorisation from a senior officer. What are the rights of people who are being stopped and searched?
#23 - Scuffles, Swagger and Shakespeare: The Hidden Story of English
Season 2019 - Episode 240 - Aired 11/12/2019
The man often given credit for the global triumph of English, and the invention of many of our modern words, is William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays first hit the stage four centuries ago, as the explorers of Elizabethan England were laying the foundations for the British empire. It was this empire that would carry English around the world. Language historian Dr John Gallagher asks whether the real story of how English became a global linguistic superpower is more complex. If you had stopped an Elizabethan on the streets and told them their language was going to become the most powerful one in the world, they would have laughed in your face. At the time the English language was obscure and England an isolated country. John's quest to find out how English became a global language sees him investigate everything from what it was like to be an immigrant in Elizabethan Britain to how new technology is transforming our understanding of Shakespeare.
#24 - The Fall of the Berlin Wall with John Simpson
Season 2019 - Episode 231 - Aired 11/7/2019
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the BBC's John Simpson goes back to examine his reports and consider why history did not turn out quite the way he expected.
#25 - The Battle of Skye Bridge
Season 2019 - Episode 223 - Aired 10/22/2019
After centuries of Bonnie Boats speeding Over the Sea to Skye, in 1995 a new bridge was built between the island and the mainland. Privately funded, this was to be a toll bridge. Not only that, it turned out to be the most expensive toll bridge in Europe.The locals, however, were having none of it. The Battle of Skye Bridge tells the story of the islanders' protests against the hated tolls, their struggles with the law, and after nearly a decade of dissent, their final, euphoric victory. This is a part of Scotland historically synonymous with rebellion, and the protests against the bridge tolls are a modern chapter in that proud history.Featuring never-before-seen footage from the period, contributions from protesters and authorities alike and explosive courtroom revelations about the legal process that are still being contested to this day.It is the ultimate David and Goliath story, told by those who were there, set against the stunning backdrop of Skye and the Highlands.