The White Tiger

In this series, naturalist Chris Packham reveals the natural world in a way that you’ve never seen it before. For him, what is really beautiful about nature is not the amazing animals and plants that we share the planet with but the hidden relationships between them. These relationships may sound bizarre but without them, no life would be possible. Discover previously unknown relationships, like why a tiger needs a crab; or why a gecko needs a giraffe.

The film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, The Road Home (1999) is a story of past and present. In black and white we see a young businessman return to a rural village where his father has died. His mother wants a traditional funeral, which involves carrying the coffin several miles in the depths of winter. Then, in flashback and brilliant colour, we are told the story of his parents' courtship. His father had come as the local schoolteacher and had fallen in love with his mother, a local girl. Political complications ensue and they are separated for two years, but at last reunited. This apparently simply tale is told with great insight and dazzlingly beautiful camerawork, in a style which echoes the Italian neo-realist films of the 1940s. Perhaps it doesn't have the complexity of the director's earlier film, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), which starred the luminous Gong Li, but The Road Home has her match in Zhang Ziyi, who also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Historian Dan Cruickshank is invited through the closed doors of six of Britain’s greatest private houses in an illuminating and surprising journey through our architectural history. hese fascinating buildings remain private homes and closed to the public, but their owners have allowed Dan Cruickshank to roam the corridors, tease out each home’s story – who built them, lived in them and lost them – and uncover tales of excess and profligacy, power and ambition.

Two sisters plot for revenge against the drug-lord who murdered their family and took their home, now being used as a base for their experiments on aphrodisiacs. The older sister becomes a prostitute in order to get close to the gang. Later, she rallies up a gang of female-bikers, in skimpy leather outfits and knee-high boots, they raid the syndicate's hideout - and lose, badly. They are subject to torture of various sorts, fight among themselves, but gather their wits to try, and fight back for escape.

The actor begins his journey at Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, where he hunts down the vundu catfish, known locally as the `steam train' because of its strength. He also examines the kapenta fishing industry, which is integral to life in the country because it provides protein for the low-income populace.