Cold War (2018)

During the Cold War, the superpowers mobilized thousands of spies and spotters to acquire the enemy’s secrets.

Don Wildman uncovers some of the Cold War's most closely guarded secrets and discovers just how close we actually came to nuclear Armageddon.

In 1955, the African-American congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie announced a new Cold War weapon to combat the Soviet Union - America's iconic jazz musicians and their racially integrated bands would cross the globe to counter negative propaganda about racism in American. Over the next decade, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck would tour the world in service of US Cold War interests. But the unfolding Civil Rights movement back home forced them into a moral bind; how could they promote a tolerant image of America abroad when racial equality remained an unrealised dream?

In 1955, the African-American congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie announced a new Cold War weapon to combat the Soviet Union - America's iconic jazz musicians and their racially integrated bands would cross the globe to counter negative propaganda about racism in American.

Since its invention at the start of the 20th century, the tank has served as a symbol of political power as well as military strength. These huge vehicles have long since found their way into global culture - whether as a monument, in films or on billboards. Tanks have made history and have themselves become part of the story. The first tank battle inaugurated a new era of warfare. At the same time, these fighting machines entered the culture and were exploited for propaganda purposes.

As thousands of British fans prepare to travel to Russia for the World Cup, David Dimbleby returns to a country he first visited when Yeltsin came to power 25 years ago. For 18 of those years, Vladimir Putin has ruled the largest country on earth, and he has another six years ahead of him. But with talk of a new Cold War, and with British Intelligence accusing Putin's government of 'criminal thuggery', this Panorama special asks what Russians see in him and how he has held on to power for so long.

They were once some of the most advanced structures and facilities on the planet, standing at the cutting-edge of design and construction. Today they are abandoned, dangerous, some of them even deadly. In this Episode : A mysterious American pyramid built out of Cold War paranoia, a haunted prison, and a cluster of structures in the Atlantic are mysterious deserted engineering projects, and new discoveries reveal how they were built and why they were abandoned.

At the height of the Cold War, Gilligan's Island depicted seven Americans living in an analogue of a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors have to rebuild civilization.

Under Stalin, football was an instrument of propaganda. The fate of football games was in the hands of the secret police and army. Interviews with the children of players, insight from historians and archive footage combine to tell the story of the many dark secrets hidden in the history of Russian football up until the Cold War when sports and politics collided. A topical subject ahead of the Football World cup taking place in Russia this month.

Concorde: The Supersonic Race Relive the fascinating and flawed history of the Concorde, from its very first flight to the plane’s final journey in 2003. International aviation experts, pilots and engineers discuss this marvel of engineering, and remember the fierce battle between the US, USSR and the Anglo-French to create the world’s first supersonic civilian plane. What was it like to fly at twice the speed of sound? What led to the iconic Concorde’s demise? And what of NASA’s plans to develop supersonic flight for the future? Sound barriers are breached and history re-examined in this stimulating documentary about the epic ‘White Bird’.