BBC Documentaries Collection

BBC Rowan Atkinsons Guide To Visual Comedy (1992)



VHSrip | Xvid | 680x480 | 25fps | 1185kbps | MP3 | 44.1kHz | 128kbps | ~48m

Rowan Atkinson, the master of visual comedy, presents a collection of visual comedy clips from the archives, including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses and Spitting Image.

Subs: Swedish (hardcoded)


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BBC Revealing Anne Lister (2010)



XviD | 720x400 | 58 min | 752MB

Early 19th century England is usually seen through the eyes of Jane Austen and the Brontsisters. Sue Perkins explores a dramatically different version, as lived and recorded by Anne Lister.

A Yorkshire landowner, she kept a detailed, partly coded diary, revealing graphic details of her love affairs with women. Regency England was surprisingly tolerant of Annes chosen lifestyle, and it was only when Anne sought to sink a coal mine on her land that criticism of her private life became public.




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BBC The Private Life of (2010)



Xvid | 704x400 | 59mins/ep | Parts:3 | Part:746MB

The Private Life of?
Jimmy Doherty investigates the hidden lives of the farmyard animals which are so often taken for granted

Part 1: Cows
He visits a farm in Devon to find out about cows. They are taken for granted but what really goes on inside their brains? Jimmy tries to find answers to questions such as how does a cow work out who is the boss? Why have 1,000 people been injured by cows in the last ten years? And why are cows so sensitive to sudden movement? The show will also visit Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, where a herd of cows has been left naturally to run wild for over 700 years. Are cows really “one of the most successful species on the planet? If you define success in terms of being escorted down to the abattoir at the age of six months or having your teats squeezed dry to make our Coco Pops more palatable, presenter Jimmy Doherty probably had a point. But Jimmy didnt stop there, even claiming we have a “special relationship with our bovine friends. Im not convinced: We give them a decrepit old shed, an occasional change of hay and an electric fence; they give us a few gallons of milk and a couple of kilos of sirloin in return. It all seems slightly one-sided.

Part 2: Chickens
He finds out about chickens: often taken for granted, what really goes on inside their brains? On a farm in Devon he finds out how chickens decide the pecking order. He also tries to find answers to questions such as how do chickens communicate with their chicks? How can chickens look in two directions at once? And can hens really change sex?

Part 3: Pigs
There are five and a half million pigs in Britain and we spend, as a nation, ?9 billion a year on pork products. But surely, wonders farmer Jimmy Doherty, there must be more to pigs than their taste. Jimmy visits a farm in Dartmoor to find out about pigs. How sensitive is a pig’s nose? Why can they find truffles underground? How do piglets find the right teat to feed from? Pigs are very intelligent, but can they recognise themselves in a mirror? Not only do some pigs have straight tails and stripy fur coats, Jimmy Doherty proves their intelligence in a series of challenges before introducing you to the wild boar, the SAS of the pig world. Worth watching purely to see Jimmy learn how to converse in pig, this is probably the only time you will ever see a pig and its corkscrew todger work its way towards “what must be the worlds longest ejaculation.


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Sample Screens

BBC Our World Brazil s Child Prostitutes (2010)



Xvid | 704x400 | 22mins | 350MB

Brazils Child Prostitutes
In this shocking episode of Our World, Chris Rogers goes undercover, posing as
one of the millions of so-called sex tourists who visit Brazil.
As Brazil prepares to host the next World Cup, its people are confronted with
the growing problem of child prostitution. The countrys relaxed attitude to
buying sex has long attracted millions of tourists, particularly men.
But now the worlds oldest industry is recruiting the worlds youngest
workers. UNICEF estimates there are 250,000 children forced into prostitution
across Brazil. In this shocking episode of Our World, Chris Rogers goes
undercover, posing as one of the millions of so-called sex tourists who visit
the South American country in search of cheap sex, often with children as
young as seven years old.


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BBC Nixon in the Den (2010)



Matroska | (H264) | 1024x576 | 1800 Kbps | AAC | 59 min | 801MB

Leading historian David Reynolds takes a fresh look at the controversial career and embattled presidency of Richard Nixon.
Reynolds argues that Nixon was genuinely successful as an international statesman, with his historic visits to communist China and the Soviet Union helping to thaw the Cold War. Yet behind the scenes, Nixons diplomacy was a story of intrigue and rivalry. The methods that won him acclaim on the international stage also doomed his presidency in the infamous Watergate scandal.
An intimate psychological profile, the film reveals how Nixon was driven by a deep inferiority complex and ruthless ambition to escape a loveless, impoverished background. Nixon clawed his way to the most powerful job in the world yet could never shake off this past.
With the help of Nixons scribbled memos, audio recordings and rarely seen home movie footage and photos, the film throws new light on Nixons obsessive secrecy, relentless deception and paranoid mistrust of key aides, especially his foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger.
Shy and tortured, Nixon ran his presidency largely from a hideaway office across the road from the White House. The film recreates this, his , the place where Nixon dreamed of greatness but was haunted by his demons.


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Subtitles: eng

BBC Natural World Echo An Unforgettable Elephant (2010)



Xvid | 704×400 | 59mins | 745MB

Echo An Unforgettable Elephant

A celebration of the life and legacy of Echo, the worlds most famous elephant, who was born in 1945 and died in 2009, and who Natural World followed for the last 20 years of her life.
The timing of Echos death could not be worse. The wise old matriarch had guided her family for half a century but the cruellest drought in living memory devastated her home under the shadow of Kilimanjaro. Will her 38-strong band of relatives and descendants overcome the loss of their leader, hunger and poachers to survive?



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BBC Prehistoric Park (Complete)



XviD | 704x400 | 48mins/ep | Part~700MB

Prehistoric Park is a six part television series in documentary style, from Impossible Pictures Limited, each episode is an hour long including commercial breaks.
The programme is narrated by David Jason and presented by Nigel Marven. The fictional component is the theme that Nigel goes back to various geological time periods through a time portal, and brings back live specimens of extinct animals back to the present day, where they are exhibited in a wildlife park named Prehistoric Park, which is a big area between high steep mountains and ocean (which serve to help confine any escapes) with varied environments.

Episode 1: T. rex Returns

In the first episode, Nigel goes back 65 million years to track down the devastating predator and king of the dinosaurs: the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Not only does Nigel manage to transport back a herd of Ornithomimus Velox and a teenage Triceratops back to Prehistoric Park, but also two young T. rex, just moments before the catastrophic impact of the meteorite that destroys around 80% of all species on Earth!

Episode 2: A Mammoth Undertaking

This time Nigel not going quite so far back just 10,000 years – to the end of the Great Ice Age, when Britain was still attached to Europe. And looking for an Mammuthus primigenius (Ice Age Woolly Mammoth)!
Whilst searching for a mammoth, Nigel disturbs a Ursus spelaeus(Cave Bear), just emerging from hibernation! It stands an impressive 3.5m tall on its hind legs but like the mammoths, it too will soon become extinct.

Episode 3: Dinobirds

For episode 3, Nigel decides to pay a visit to the China of 130 million years ago. It was here that experts made a recent and extraordinary discovery: a tiny fossilized dinosaur with feathers! They named it the Microraptor gui, giving the scientific community even stronger evidence so far that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs.
Nigel and team, ready with their bird net, try to get the smallest known dinosaur back to Prehistoric Park. And, while escaping a cloud of lethal volcanic ash, a few of the largest too!

Episode 4: Saving The Sabretooth

In episode four, Nigel tries to rescue the most famous extinct prehistoric feline of all: the Smilodon populator (Sabre Tooth Cat). You might have heard this creature called a Sabre Tooth Tiger but this is wrong because it was not a tiger at all!
Nigel sets up the time portal and as his Jeep travels three million years back in time it plunges right through a herd of Toxodon platensis- and they dont take kindly to his presence!
Then, helped by big cat expert, Saba Douglas Hamilton, Nigel goes a million years later to rescue the last of the Sabre Tooth Cats.

Episode 5: The Bug House

Nigel sets off through the time portal, further back than he has ever ventured before, straight into a Carboniferous swamp. At this stage in Earths development dinosaurs, birds and mammals had not even evolved.
He comes across a 10-foot Arthropleura with large mandibles (chewing mouth parts) and a surprising turn of speed, and then a lake fizzing with Meganeurid- giant dragonflies.
An overnight camp introduces Nigel and his team to a giant scorpion yet another great find for Prehistoric Park.

Episode 6: Supercroc

For episode 6, and his most dangerous mission so far, Nigel decides to travel back through the time portal to prehistoric Texas 75 million years ago. His aim is to find and bring back a colossal 40-foot long Cretaceous crocodile: Deinosuchus.
He finds his target, and a short cut through the forest introduces him to another reptile hes always wanted to meet: a Troodon formosus. These are meat eaters and they were one of the first American dinosaurs ever to be described.



Sample Screens

BBC Museum of Life Series 1 (2010)



Xvid| 608x336 | 59mins/ep | Parts:6 | Part~500MB

Museum of Life

What happens behind the scenes at the Museum? Why is it important to preserve the 70 million specimens in the collections? And how relevant is the research of Museum scientists to todays challenges, like biodiversity loss and the spread of tropical disease?

The BBC documentary, Museum of Life, will answer these questions, and many more.

Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to join the people who are uncovering secrets, solving mysteries and making discoveries among the historic collections.

Presenters: Kate Bellingham, Chris van Tulleken, Jimmy Doherty, Mark Carwardine, Liz Bonnin

Episodes:
1. Museum in a Modern World.
2. Digging up the Past.
3. All Creatures Great and Small.
4. Discovery.
5. The Power of Insects.
6. A Collection for the Future.

Episode 1 Museum in a Modern World

Air date: 18th March 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to join the people who are uncovering secrets, solving mysteries and making discoveries among the 70 million items in the historic collections. In the first of this new series, Jimmy gets to grips with Darwin’s finches, Dippy the Diplodocus and a radical project aiming to hold back extinction.

Episode 2 Digging up the Past

Air date: 25th March 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to find out about the discovery of a new dinosaur, the latest thinking on the personality of a T Rex, and what scientists are learning from a human skull over a hundred thousand years old.

Episode 3 All Creatures Great and Small

Air date: 1st April 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see work taking place on animals. They explore projects from the construction of a life-sized whale to a life-saving trip to Uganda. The true image of a dodo is revealed, and a nine-foot sturgeon turns up with the strangest tale of any object in the museum.

Episode 4 Discovery

Air date: 8th April 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to discover the lengths people go to to add new and rarely studied species to the collection. A colossal squid turns up at the museum, a team of scientists push through unexplored jungle in Panama and a pioneering project finds a new species at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Sweden.

Episode 5 The Power of Insects

Air date: 15th April 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to enter the extraordinary world of insects. They explore the great butterfly collection, meet the most stung man in the museum and discover how the museum is using insects to help at murder scenes.

Episode 6 A Collection for the Future

Air date: 22nd April 2010

Synopsis: Jimmy Doherty and the team go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum to see how science taking place today will impact on all of us in the future. Beetles inspire new technologies, the latest scanner allows scientists to take a trip inside a shark, and ancient specimens are called into the battle to help prevent extinction.



Sample Screens

BBC If Drugs were Legal



DVDrip | English | MP3 @ 128kbps | 480x272 | Xvid @ 666kbps | PAL (25 fps) | 59mn:54s | 520 MB

Evidence from Switzerland suggests that prescribing heroin can reduce crime and increase levels of employment among addicts. While still illegal in the UK, cannabis was downgraded to a category C drug.
Would drug legalisation really reduce crime overall, and would it make drug use any safer?

The IF series of drama-documentaries examines the existing problems with drug prohibition and hears the arguments in favour of legalisation.
Based on rigorous research and interviews with experts, the programme hears the arguments for leaving the most dangerous drug of all crack cocaine illegal, and examines how a legal and regulated system of drugs would work.



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BBC Kew The Garden that Changed the World (2009)



As the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew prepare to celebrate their 250th anniversary, Dan Cruickshank unearths some of the surprising stories that shaped the famous gardens. His travels take him from the royal gardens to the corridors of power and the outposts of the Empire as he pieces together Kews story, uncovering tales of bravery, high adventure, passion and drama.



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BBC How to Build a Human



English | Xvid | 700x404 | MP3 | 128kbps | Part ~ 700MB

Program One: Creation

The ability to genetically engineer human beings will change the human race forever. The secrets of DNA, the genetic code for life, are being unraveled. How are scientists learning to manipulate it to create new human beings – or parts of human beings?

This film has access to the creation of the first cloned human embryo, and the people behind it. It gives us a glimpse of a future in which we will be able to bump into younger versions of ourselves in the street, replace every damaged organ with a new one that contains 99% of our own DNA, and nurture our offspring in artificial wombs.

Program Two: The Predictor

More and more we are finding that the unique characteristics that make each one of us an individual, from our basic physical attributes to the complexities of our personality, can be traced back to the subtle mix of genes we received at the moment of conception.
But how much do these genes actually predict our destiny? And how much can that destiny be changed throughout our lives? Is it nature or nurture that builds us? The genetic age has opened up a huge realm of possibilities. Will we be able to read our own lives before we live them, predict our deaths and rewrite the story that is written in our genes?[/b]

Program Three: The Secret of Sex

Before science put it under the microscope, sex was a simple, uncomplicated thing. You couldn’t build humans without it. All you needed was a man, a woman, a liberal sprinkling of lust and Mother Nature did the rest. But is that now a terribly old-fashioned way of making new humans?

In the future we’ll be able to build humans in tanks, make copies of ourselves in labs and even have the power to change the course of our genetic destiny by turning women into men.

If kissing is nothing more than a way of sniffing out compatible genes, what is the point of sex, and will it ever be the same again?

Program Four: Forever Young

Imagine yourself 150 years old, pregnant and still going strong. Is this scenario the stuff of science fiction? Scientists predict that in fifty years time every organ in the body, except the brain, will be replaceable. Even the heart can be renovated.

The future won’t just be a healthier short life. The search for eternal life is now being taken seriously. A number of tantalising and remarkable discoveries indicating how to stop the human body ageing are about to turn science fiction into reality. The key lies inside every cell in our body. Scientists now believe they will be able to extend the human life span to 150 years. Is this the first step to immortality?




Sample Screens

BBC Geisha Girl (2009)



XviD | 704x400| Runtime: 58:49min | 746MB

Documentary following 15-year-old Yukina as she leaves home and moves to Kyoto to embark on the arduous training needed to become a geisha.

The profession has always been shrouded in controversy, with some believing geisha are little more than high-class prostitutes. At such a young age, does Yukina really understand what this ancient profession has in store for her?


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BBC How Earth Made Us (Complete Series)



Xvid | 608x336 | 59mins | Parts:5 | PArt~560MB

How Earth Made Us is a five-part BBC documentary television series in which Professor Iain Stewart tells the epic story of how geology, geography and climate have influenced mankind.

Episode 1 Deep Earth

Air date: 19th January 2010

Synopsis: Professor Iain Stewart tells the epic story of how the planet has shaped our history. With spectacular images and a compelling narrative, the series discovers the central role played in human history by four different planetary forces. In this episode, Iain explores the relationship between the deep Earth and the development of human civilisation. He visits an extraordinary crystal cave in Mexico, drops down a hole in the Iranian desert and crawls through ancient tunnels in Israel.

Episode 2 Water

Air date: 26th January 2010

Synopsis: Professor Iain Stewart continues his epic exploration of how the planet has shaped human history. This time he explores our complex relationship with water. Visiting spectacular locations in Iceland, the Middle East and India, Iain shows how control over water has been central to human existence. He takes a flight in a paraglider to experience the cycle of freshwater we depend on, and discovers how villagers in the foothills of the Himalayas have built a living bridge to cope with the monsoon.

Episode 3 Wind

Air date: 2nd February 2010

Synopsis: Professor Iain Stewart sets sail on one of the fastest racing boats ever built to explore the story of our turbulent relationship with the wind. Travelling to iconic locations including the Sahara desert, the coast of West Africa and the South Pacific, Iain discovers how people have exploited the power of the wind for thousands of years. The wind is a force which at first sight appears chaotic, but the patterns that lie within the atmosphere have shaped the destiny of continents.


Episode 4 Fire

Air date: 9th February 2010

Synopsis: Professor Iain Stewart explores mans relationship with fire. He begins by embarking on an extraordinary encounter with this terrifying force of nature – a walk right through the heart of a raging fire. Fire has long been our main source of energy and Iain shows how this meant that the planet played a crucial role in Britain’s industrial revolution, while holding Chinas development back. Along the way he dives in a mysterious lake in Oregon and climbs a glacier of salt.

Episode 5 Human Planet

Air date: 23rd February 2010

Synopsis: Series in which Professor Iain Stewart looks at how four geological forces have shaped human history. He explores the most recently established force, humans. Its easy to think of the human impact on the planet as a negative one, but as Iain discovers, this isn’t always the case. It is clear that humans have unprecedented control over many of the planets geological cycles; the question is, how will the human race use this power?



Sample Screens

BBC Hamlet (2009)



XviD | 608x336 | Runtime: 3hrs | 1.5GB

David Tennant stars in the Royal Shakespeare Companys award-winning production of Shakespeares great play. Director Gregory Dorans modern-dress production was hailed by the critics as thrilling, fast-moving and, in parts, very funny. Hamlet must decide whether to avenge his fathers murder at the hands of his uncle Claudius, who has married his brothers wife Hamlets mother, Gertrude. This visually sumptuous screen version was filmed on location with all of the original stage cast.


Director: Gregory Doran
Starring: David Tennant, Patrick Stewart, Penny Downie, Oliver Ford-Davies, Mariah Gale, Edward Bennett



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BBC Engineering for the World (2009)



XviD | 832 x 468 | Runtime: 59min | 700MB

Documentary on engineering, following 12 different engineering subjects across a diverse range of topics. A series of short video clips created specifically as resources to support the teaching of the new 14-19 Diploma in Engineering.


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