Ice Station Zebra

Britain's state-of-the-art Antarctic research base Halley VI is in trouble. Built on the Brunt Ice Shelf, it sits atop a massive slab of ice that extends far beyond the Antarctic shoreline. But the ice is breaking apart and just 6km from the station is a ginormous crevasse, which threatens to separate Halley from the rest of the continent, setting the £28 million base adrift on a massive iceberg.

Britain's state-of-the-art Antarctic research base Halley VI is in trouble. Built on the Brunt Ice Shelf, it sits atop a massive slab of ice that extends far beyond the Antarctic shoreline. But the ice is breaking apart and just 6km from the station is a ginormous crevasse, which threatens to separate Halley from the rest of the continent, setting the £28 million base adrift on a massive iceberg.

Antarctica is the last great wilderness. It's the coldest, windiest, driest and most isolated place on Earth. And every winter, for over three months of the year, the sun never rises. But it's also home to the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station. A veteran of living and working at Halley in the early eighties, BBC weatherman Peter Gibbs makes an emotional return to the place he once called home. A place that, during his time, was key to the discovery of the ozone hole. The journey starts with an arduous 12-day, 3000-mile voyage onboard the RRS Ernest Shackleton.

‘Punda the Zebra’ tells the story of a little foal, from its birth to the end of the annual great migration. Less than an hour after his birth, he knows how to run. When you are one of the weakest species in the Savannah, it’s a question of survival. Little Punda discovers the herd and the essential skill of learning to recognise his mother in the middle of a jungle of stripes. We follow him on one of the largest migrations in the animal kingdom.

A look at why goats risk life and limb to climb an almost vertical dam wall; a zebra has no stripes; a school of fish swarm a diver.

Can we reverse climate change? Ice on Fire explores the many ways we reduce carbon inputs to the atmosphere and, more important, how to "draw" carbon down, bringing CO2 out of the atmosphere and thus paving the way for global temperatures to go down. Reversing climate change is urgent, given that the world passed 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere resulting in climate instability across the globe. We have heard the predictions but now climate related events are a daily reality - summer 2018 was the hottest on record, storms are stronger, droughts are longer, the arctic ice is thin or non-existent and antarctica is melting faster than predicted. Through visiting visionaries and scientists young and old, the film explores the deep hope that we can turn away from the brink. And, just as we figure out drawdown, we face an added complexity, the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas in the arctic, that is now entering the atmsphere. As the film says: "Is it game over? Or is…

The International Space Station (ISS) is without doubt the most ambitious orbital project ever built. This giant assemblage covering some 9,700m2 has allowed men and women to prepare for long periods of weightlessness, as a precursor to possible trips to Mars. It has also allowed people from around the world to live and work together, with no fewer than 16 nations having participated in the construction of this steel behemoth weighing 400 tonnes. But how did the engineers and astronauts go about assembling this station in space? How does it operate? What energy source does it use.

All alone in an uncaring world: that was the fate of many Japanese children who lost their parents during World War II. Desperate and hungry, they drifted to train stations in big cities and lived in underground passages, and were called and known as "station children". They were forced to beg and, often, to steal. Some just waited for death. NHK found survivors who reveal the largely unknown plight of these war orphans. A woman recalled caring for her brother and sister in the dark hell beneath Tokyo's Ueno Station. A man, spurned by relatives, described living on the streets, nearly blinded by illness and losing his best friend to suicide. These heartbreaking accounts offer an important message for modern Japan.

Professor Alice Roberts reveals the natural history of the most famous of ice age animals - the woolly mammoth. Mammoths have transfixed humans since the depths of the last ice age, when their herds roamed across what is now Europe and Asia. Although these curious members of the elephant family have been extinct for thousands of years, scientists can now paint an incredibly detailed picture of their lives thanks to whole carcasses that have been beautifully preserved in the Siberian permafrost.

Imagine a world colored by ice and fire, carved by hurricane-force winds, weighted by glaciers, and teeming with wildlife perfectly adapted to freezing conditions and winters of perpetual darkness. Experience the beauty of wild white blizzards and fire-red sunsets reflected in a glassy sea.
Antarctica Dreaming Blu-ray explores the Antarctic peninsula, South Georgia Island, and the Falkland Islands, and features five species of penguins, four kinds of seals, fierce seabirds, and the most spectacular scenery on the planet.