The BEST episodes of Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries season 2012

#1 - Falklands' Most Daring Raid

Season 2012 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/18/2012

On 30 April 1982, the RAF launched a secret mission: to fly a Vulcan bomber to the Falkland Islands and bomb Port Stanley's runway, putting it out of action for Argentine fighter jets. The safety of the British Task Force depended on its success. However, the RAF could only get a single plane - a crumbling, Cold War-era Vulcan - 8000 miles south to the Falklands, because just one bomber needed an aerial fleet of 13 Victor tanker planes to refuel it throughout the 16-hour round-trip. At the time it was the longest-range bombing mission in history. From start to finish, the seemingly impossible mission was a comedy of errors, held together by pluck and ingenuity. On the brink of being scrapped, only three of the ageing nuclear bombers could be fitted out for war, one to fly the mission and two in reserve. Crucial spare parts were scavenged from museums and scrap yards - one vital component had been serving as an ashtray in the Officers' Mess. In just three weeks, the Vulcan crews had to learn air-to-air refuelling, which they hadn't done for 20 years, and conventional bombing, which they hadn't done for 10 years either. The RAF scoured the country for Second World War iron bombs, and complex refuelling calculations were done the night before on a £5 pocket calculator. With a plan stretched to the limit and the RAF's hopes riding on just one Vulcan, the mission was flown on a knife-edge: fraught with mechanical failures, unreliable navigation, electrical storms and lack of fuel. Of the 21 bombs the Vulcan dropped, only one found its target. But it was enough to change the outcome of the war. Astonishingly, this great feat has been downplayed into near obscurity by history, but this documentary brings it back to life, providing a thrilling and uncharacteristically upbeat account from the Falklands War: the Dambusters for the 1980s generation.

#2 - Terror at Sea: The Sinking of the Concordia

Season 2012 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/31/2012

The £400 million cruise ship - which got off to a bad start when the champagne bottle failed to break on its launch - fell prey to the omens when it sank on Friday 13 January 2012 off the Italian coast. This programme pieces together the mistakes that led to the disaster. With a capacity of 3780 passengers and at an impressive 290m long and 31m high, the ship was a palace of the ocean. So how did this boat, hailed as a glorious example of modern technology, sink? And why do some critics say the design of these mega-cruisers is dangerous? These are just some of the questions this programme examines as it tries to understand how, after a century of safety measures and technological advances since the Titanic, a ship with so many passengers can sink. Using CGI and testimonial, it recreates a minute-by-minute account of the timeline to tragedy, featuring exclusive interviews with survivors, rescuers and world-renowned experts.

#3 - My Daughter The Teenage Nudist

Season 2012 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/12/2012

Mollie and Alex are part of a growing group of teens and twentysomethings embracing the world of public nudity - a contemporary phenomenon that's been driven by social networking sites such as Facebook as well as niche websites like Naked Vegan Cooking. They are on a quest to normalise nudity, question the media's obsession with the body beautiful, and encourage other young people to liberate themselves by simply going naked - in the streets, in cafes or at art shows. The new nudists are keen to take the nudist lifestyle beyond the old fashioned naturist clubs. So why is this pastime increasing in popularity and what do the parents think about their child revealing all in the most public of places?

#4 - The Real Mans Road Trip: Sean and Jon Go West (Part 2)

Season 2012 - Episode 61 - Aired 12/10/2012

Sean and Jon might be titans of the stand-up circuit, but when it comes to lassoing long-horned cattle, playing the washboard, catching and eating bullfrogs and dancing the Cajun Two-Step, have they got what it takes?

#5 - The Three Rocketeers

Season 2012 - Episode 43 - Aired 9/12/2012

For his entire life, one man has nursed the dream of putting mankind into space. Inspired by the Dan Dare comic strip, Alan Bond first started building rockets as a teenager in his back garden. He started his career working on Britain's Blue Streak rocket, then HOTOL - the world's first attempt to build a 'single-stage-to-orbit' spacecraft. Each time, he was thwarted by lack of funding from the UK government, so, together with two colleagues, Richard Varvill and John Scott-Scott, he decided to go it alone. This documentary tells the story of how the three rocketeers defeated the Official Secrets Act, shrugged off government intransigence and defied all conventional wisdom to build a revolutionary new spacecraft - Skylon. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqv45

#6 - The Real Mans Road Trip: Sean and Jon Go West (Part 1)

Season 2012 - Episode 60 - Aired 12/3/2012

Sean Lock and Jon Richardson, team captains from 8 Out of 10 Cats, are heading to Louisiana to see how real men live. Down in the bayou they're bunking up with Creole cowboys and Cajun swampmen, men who wrestle 'gators and castrate bulls with their bare hands.

#7 - Is Our Weather Getting Worse?

Season 2012 - Episode 59 - Aired 12/11/2012

In Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception. It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse. The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought. In Aberdeen in March, temperatures soared to 23 degrees Celsius. But within four weeks, everything had changed. April 15 marked the beginning of our wettest summer on record. Towns such as Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were flooded not once, but twice, and by the end of August 4000 homes across Britain had been devastated by floods. But the strange events of 2012 are only part of the story. For the past decade, our weather has been so erratic that government scientists have begun to use words like 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinary'. This programme gets to the truth of our extraordinary decade of extreme weather. Blending dramatic archive footage, expert insight and cutting-edge graphics, the film investigates the most severe weather events to have struck Britain in recent memory and puts them into the wider context of climate change. Are the strange events of 2012 a one-off or an ominous sign of climate change in action? How does the changing global climate affect the British weather and what can we expect in the future? Is our weather getting worse?

#8 - How the Bismarck Sank HMS Hood

Season 2012 - Episode 58 - Aired 12/9/2012

The 'mighty' Hood was the pride of the British Navy for more than 20 years, revered around the world as the largest and most powerful warship afloat. But when it was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck off the coast of Greenland on 24 May 1941, its end was shockingly swift. For decades, no one has been able to discover why the Hood sank so quickly and two official Boards of Inquiry investigated but failed to explain the tragedy.

#9 - Alien Investigations

Season 2012 - Episode 57 - Aired 12/3/2012

Channel 4 explore four separate incidents in Mexico, Peru, Panama and Long Island, New York, where the remains of supposedly alien beings have been discovered in last five years, with a view to uncovering… the truth.

#10 - Gods In The Sky: Part 3

Season 2012 - Episode 56 - Aired 1/1/2012

In the third and final part of Professor Allan Chapman's unusual look at the history of astronomical religion, he travels to Rome and Cairo, and argues that, contrary to widely-held prejudice, it was the Christian church which was largely responsible for the rise of scientific astronomy. Starting with the Ancient Greeks and Romans, Chapman examines how the classical world used the stars to tell the time and navigate the globe, but shows that, despite their scientific achievements, classical astronomers never completely shook off their archaic pagan beliefs of 'gods in the sky'. Chapman shows how medieval Christian astronomer priests knew that the world is round; they knew how big it is, and even how far away the moon is (as did the Greeks).

#11 - Gods In The Sky: Part 2

Season 2012 - Episode 55 - Aired 1/1/2012

Professor Allan Chapman explores the world of the ancient Greeks, as the first great seafaring people they needed astronomy for navigation as well as time-keeping. And the freedom that came from trade allowed them to question and reason. As a result they became the greatest astronomers of the ancient world - the Greeks not only knew that the earth was round, they also knew its size, and even successfully calculated the distance of the moon from the earth.

#12 - Gods In The Sky: Part 1

Season 2012 - Episode 54 - Aired 1/1/2012

Mini 3 part series. Professor Allan Chapman travels to Egypt, where he tells the story of the ancient astronomer priests and their over-sexed gods. Visiting the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings, and aided by puppet animation, a man in a dodgy bird costume and with Sir Patrick Moore playing Ra, the Egyptian Sun God, Prof Chapman reveals how the star-gods helped us develop the 360° circle, the 12-month year, and the 24-hour day.

#13 - Captive: The Sex Slave Girl

Season 2012 - Episode 53 - Aired 11/30/2012

The astounding story of Tanya Kach made international headlines when she revealed she had been living in captivity for 10 years, just a stone's throw from her home. True Stories gains key insight into how a 14-year-old girl vanished without trace, only to resurface a decade later, still living within the same community. Her school security guard, Thomas Hose, a man 24 years her senior, had kept Tanya as his sex slave, occasionally letting her out of the house into town after four years, yet no one in their small community recognized her as the missing girl.

#14 - The Curious Case of the Clark Brothers

Season 2012 - Episode 52 - Aired 11/26/2012

What would you do if your adult children developed an age-defying disease that made them regress to childhood in front of your eyes? How would you cope with seeing them go from man to boy and looking after them 24 hours a day? This documentary tells the harrowing but brutally honest story of Tony and Christine Clark and their two sons Matthew, who's 39 and Michael, who's 42, as they live and cope with this dreadful condition; not once, but twice. Michael and Matthew Clark from Hull had lived normal lives until their late thirties. They were totally unaware their brains were carrying a deadly neurological time bomb: a rare and little known condition called Leukodystrophy. The condition causes a progressive loss of every neurological function - speech, memory, movement, sight, hearing, touch, eating, swallowing - and normally affects children. To discover a late onset strain is exceptional and what makes it even more astonishing to the Clark family is that it should attack two members of the same family. Christine and Tony thought their parenting days were over. They had taken early retirement and were enjoying a pleasant ex-pat life in Spain. When news of their sons' illness and rapid deterioration reached them, they had to abandon their life abroad and return to the UK. The family moved into a cramped one-bedroom flat and the parents were forced to look after and care for their two 'boys' 24 hours a day. This film follows the Clark family on their fascinating and traumatic journey as they struggle with their day-to-day life, trying to come to terms with watching their grown-up sons become young boys trapped in adult bodies.

#15 - Living with My Stalker

Season 2012 - Episode 51 - Aired 11/22/2012

When busy trainee doctor Alison Hewitt joined a dating agency in 2010, she had no idea that her actions would set in motion a terrifying chain of events that would threaten the lives of her and her family. She thought the man she was meeting was a respectable Canadian businessman living in London called Al Amin Dhalla. At first their relationship blossomed, but soon Alison's mother Pam grew suspicious of the man who seemed to harbour many dark secrets. Pam turned Miss Marple, hired a private investigator to find out more and soon realised that Dhalla's entire life story was based on lies. It was only when Alison finished the relationship however that the real Dhalla emerged. The family soon found out that Dhalla - classed as a narcissistic psychopath - would stop at nothing to win Alison back.

#16 - Jaws: The Great White Myth

Season 2012 - Episode 50 - Aired 10/6/2012

There are very few movies we can say truly changed the world, but Jaws is one of them. Audiences stood in lines that wrapped entire city blocks to watch the world's first summer blockbuster. Careers were made, fortunes were created, and ways of directing and scoring movies and shooting special effects were changed forever when it was released. But the impact the film had on the oceans and their inhabitants was as big as the audience it found, and at least as surprising. In the aftermath of the film's release, sharks were vilified and killed, leading to their near-disappearance from the east coast of America. At the same time, public fascination with sharks led to a golden age of shark science that completely changed our view of the ocean and how it works. And as the science began showing us how real sharks behave, it spurred a worldwide conservation effort whose earliest champion was Jaws author Peter Benchley. Jaws: The Great White Myth reveals the stories of how lives and the natural world were significantly influenced by this infamous movie monster from 1975.

#17 - American Road Trip: Obama's Story

Season 2012 - Episode 49 - Aired 10/25/2012

After nearly four years in power what do ordinary Americans think of President Barack Obama, the man many of his supporters once called 'Black Jesus'? Ahead of the crucial US election, Channel 4's Washington Correspondent, Matt Frei, takes a road trip through the heart of the Midwest. Traveling through some of the swing states that will decide President Obama's fate, Matt discovers what is really at stake in this election; in particular the fate of the increasingly endangered American middle class.

#18 - My Tattoo Addiction

Season 2012 - Episode 48 - Aired 10/18/2012

From a drunken dare to tattoo obsessions, My Tattoo Addiction seeks to discover what people's tattoos say about their lives and tells some of the compelling stories that lie beneath the surface of body art. This uplifting, warm and often eye-watering documentary discovers, through candid interviews, what leads people to go under the needle, and how fixing a bad tattoo can mean facing more than just the physical reminder of your past.

#19 - 9/11: The Miracle Survivor

Season 2012 - Episode 47 - Aired 9/10/2012

9/11: The Miracle Survivor reveals what could be the last untold survival story from the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Survivor Pasquale Buzzelli rode a blizzard of falling debris from a 22nd-floor World Trade Center stairwell and lived, miraculously, to tell his story. Pasquale recalls in extraordinary detail the full story of September 11, 2001. With exclusive access, the documentary follows an awe-inspiring account of events that led to Pasquale's survival against all odds, providing fresh inspiration from one of America's darkest days. His wife Louise talks candidly about her experiences dealing with this trauma when she was seven months pregnant on September 11. And two firefighters, Mike Morabito and Mike Lyons, also give first-hand accounts of the dramatic rescue they carried out, disobeying orders as they saved Pasquale. Home footage shows Pasquale and Louise making a video for their unborn child, who they had already named Hope. And the film also hears from a leading physicist who discusses the science behind Pasquale's survival; how did he survive the collapse of the North Tower by effectively surfing down it?

#20 - The Boy Who Can't Forget

Season 2012 - Episode 46 - Aired 9/25/2012

Can you remember what you were doing on 15 March 2003? Or what the weather was like on 30 May 2007? Twenty-year-old British student Aurelien can. This documentary explores the recently discovered phenomenon known as superior autobiographical memory. It looks into the theories of scientists trying to unravel the mystery in the UK and US, and the lives of the seemingly ordinary people who appear to have an extraordinary power we had no idea humans could possess.

#21 - The Plane Crash

Season 2012 - Episode 45 - Aired 10/11/2012

An international team of scientists, experts and elite pilots deliberately crash land a 170-seat Boeing 727 passenger jet to study the mechanics of a plane crash in real time.

#22 - Jimmy and the Whale Whisperer

Season 2012 - Episode 44 - Aired 9/23/2012

Jimmy Doherty travels to the Caribbean island of Dominica to meet Andrew Armour who befriended an injured sperm whale calf he nicknamed Scar ten years ago. Since then he has claimed he can communicate with Dominican Sperm whales. If Andrew is for real, Jimmy hopes he and top whale scientist Professor Joy Reidenberg can help him get close enough to these gigantic, intelligent and little-known animals to explore recent scientific findings that suggest whales play a crucial role in keeping our oceans healthy.

#23 - Food in England: The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley

Season 2012 - Episode 81 - Aired 11/6/2012

#24 - Gok Wan: Made in China

Season 2012 - Episode 71 - Aired 3/7/2012

China is a manufacturing colossus. Britons are surrounded by products sporting the legend 'Made in China'. Gok Wan returns to his ancestral home to explore the largely unseen world of Chinese mass production, meeting the people working in the factories that supply the West. He visits the village his father grew up in for the first time as part of a journey of discovery round a country that now produces one in every four man-made objects on the planet. Gok goes to 'Jeans Town', 'Bra Town', the factory that makes London cabs, and 'Thames Town', as well as to ultra-modern Shanghai, where he meets a stylist pushing the boundaries in Chinese fashion.

#25 - 2012: The Maya Apocalypse

Season 2012 - Episode 80 - Aired 1/7/2012

According to the ancient Maya of Central America, we are all doomed. The countdown to the apocalypse began several thousand years ago and time is running out. The Mayan understanding of astronomy was startlingly advanced, and some of the indications found in their calendar that a cataclysmic happening will come about in December 2012 are compelling. In this film, Paul Murton travels to America to explore how the phenomenon now better known as ‘2012' has swept across the internet with hundreds of websites featuring frightening predictions - all envisaging a different take on the impending world cataclysm. Murton examines how this terror has spawned ‘survival communities' in which people hoard food supplies, learn how to defend themselves and build bunkers to see them through the impending apocalypse. To discover who the Maya really were, he visits the ruins of the ancient Maya city of El Mirador in Central America to see where the civilisation was founded and gain an insight into why they believed the world would be on the threshold of destruction in 2012 - specifically 21st December at 12pm. Murton commented, ‘This city has been at the heart of vast and thriving civilisation thousands of years ago yet today it is covered by jungle. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that our own civilisation could meet a similar fate?'