Great Expectations

This film will be an epic tale of Barack Obama's White House battles. Since taking office, Obama has had to confront economic crisis as well as an opposition determined to discredit him and destroy his agenda. Obama has been forced to adapt his governing style, and to rein in his ambitions for change. These four years crystallize the very nature of the political machine in representative democracy. What happens when the best speeches and best of intentions meet up with the unforgiving reality of economic recession and relentless political opposition?

This is what it's like to be outside, looking in. Dickens used the story of a blacksmith's boy who rises from the working class into a life of leisure to hold a mirror up to Victorian society and ask, what is it that really makes a gentleman? For once, the reaction of the British aristocracy was to grow a conscience. But, before such soul-refinement could occur, Dickens' character had to pass from the largely unreported, dark world of lower-class Britain, far, far up to its dizzying - but not so enlightened - heights.

The '90s: The Last Great Decade is a documentary on the National Geographic Channel (NGC) that examines the 1990s. It is a three-part documentary that runs for six hours. TV Guide describes it as: "A retrospective of the people and events that marked the 1990s." The Daily News describes it as: "Flashback recalls years both grand and giddy, including cyberbiz, Bill Clinton, Anna Nicole Smith, Roseanne Barr and Vanilla Ice."

Six classic British books are considered with a fresh eye. Returning to the authors' original manuscripts and letters, expert writers and performers bring their personal insights to these great works.

Controversial, witty, irreverent – Britain's best known screenwriter, Andrew Davies, has created some of the most iconic small-screen dramas of the past 50 years. At the age of 82 he is following his smash hit adaptation of War and Peace with another global epic, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. As he watches the production come to life during 2018, he looks back at the influence of his childhood in Cardiff. And he explores how he boils down and spices up his dramas – transforming our best-loved novels into prime-time television. Contributors include Sarah Waters, Helen Fielding and Dominic West.

What has become of the gloomy, majestic house in Rochester where the skeletal Miss Havisham resided? Does Joe Gargery’s cottage still stand in Chalk? And what became of the notorious Bowes Academy, the harshest of the Yorkshire schools now known to the world as Dotheboys Hall?