A Hidden Life

Going for a dramatic approach, this installment takes a look at the changing world of nature, from the sky to the sea to the sun to the insects to volcanic action to the planet itself. It's nature's strange and intricate designs for survival and her many methods of perpetuating life in this spectacular story. It takes a lot to make nature footage dramatic but here we are and it's quite a sight. It's exciting, beautifully shot and photographed, sometimes a little suspenseful, though it might not look like it at the start of it.

Carlos Galindo is a decent man, a Mexican single parent working as a gardener in California to raise Luis, his fourteen-year-old son, whom Carlos is frightened will drift into local gang culture.

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.

The story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead. Instead, he was living in a little hotel near Frankfurt, with a wife and a young German son.

The extraordinary story of an ordinary woman living through traumatic times raises profound questions about the moral choices and personal sacrifices that one is faced with when confronted by evil. Reflecting back on her life, Brunhilde Pomsel makes it clear that the dangers that led to the rise of fascism have not been overcome. 'So I joined the party,' she recalls. 'Why shouldn't I? Everyone was doing it.'

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.

The Giant Panda has long been famous as a symbol of conservation and wildlife protection. China is now the only country where pandas still live in the wild. The government has worked hard to prevent its national pride, this adorable bamboo eating bear, from becoming extinct. It has put extensive resources into restoring the pandas’ forest habitat and reintroducing rescued animals to the wild. The panda breeding centre in Chengdu employs highly qualified Chinese and international specialists. The pandas live safely here and are provided with conditions conducive to successful procreation and cubs are taken care of to ensure they survive.

John Eliot Gardiner goes in search of Bach the man and the musician. The famous portrait of Bach portrays a grumpy 62-year-old man in a wig and formal coat, yet his greatest works were composed 20 years earlier in an almost unrivalled blaze of creativity. We reveal a complex and passionate artist; a warm and convivial family man at the same time a rebellious spirit struggling with the hierarchies of state and church who wrote timeless music that is today known world-wide. Gardiner undertakes a 'Bach Tour' of Germany, and sifts the relatively few clues we have - some newly-found. Most of all, he uses the music to reveal the real Bach.

The extraordinary life of cricket commentator, pigeon racing champion, and test captain Bill Lawry, whose infectious commentary became the sound of summer for many.

Historian Michael Wood presents a portrait of ordinary people living through extraordinary times, tracing the story of a real-life peasant of 14th-century Hertfordshire. She wasn't a famous person, or of noble blood, yet Christina Cok's story is important in understanding our own roots. In this time of war, famine, floods, climate change and the Black Death are the beginnings of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a market economy.