The Great Escape The True Story

Stabbings, shootings, genocide, torture, abduction, robbery, serial killing and mass suicide are just a few of the horrific crimes explored in Great Crimes and Trials. True stories carefully researched and reconstructed with actual archive footage. Cases which have become almost legendary in the annals of crime and detection.

The early Pacific battles bring heroism and hardship, success and failure… long before victory.
In the aftermath of World War I, the vast Pacific Ocean became the setting for a struggle between imperialistic Japan and isolationist America. Japan, eager for resources it lacked, invaded Manchuria, and later China. The situation in the Far East set Japan on a collision course with the United States, a course that ultimately led to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Japan's success on December 7th began an unbroken tide of victory and conquest.

William Still was just a boy when he helped the first one escape. He never knew the man's name; only that he was being hunted by slave catchers.

From foot soldiers to fighter pilots, step into the shoes of those who fought for one of the largest armies in history. This series highlights ordinary foot soldiers, intelligence officers, mine pickers, gunners, tank men, marines, alpine and airborne raiders and fighter and attack aviation pilots whose role in the Allied victory over the Nazis played a crucial part in the war effort. Using the latest computer graphics and technology, viewers witness the combat equipment design, tactics and strategy of conducting a battle. Rare newsreel shots and the reconstruction of the events allow viewers to feel they are being transported back to the battlegroud, allowing them to see war through a soldier's eyes.

Dan Cruickshank's quest is to tell the story of civilisation through the greatest of man's achievements. It will also be the story of his travels, and who and what he meets along the way. Whether standing before the solemn heads of Easter Island, investigating the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru or the magnificent temple of Borobodur in Java, Dan is never less than fascinating about the origins, construction, mysteries and vicissitudes of each of these monuments to the great civilisations of the world.

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.

The greatest warlords in world history are reviewed in this riveting and informative BBC series. Lavish, all-action dramatic spectacles based on the lives of eight men who shaped the world around them, either by sheer force of will, genius, courage or even greed. These are the legendary warriors of history - soldiers with the courage, ambition and military genius to lead their men to victory.

From the narrow streets of Nice to the gleaming corridors of Wall Street, Daring Capers tracks some of the world's most fascinating criminals and their audacious crimes. Here's a rogue's gallery of bank robbers, art thieves, and debonair con artists who tried to steal their way to wealth through brilliant ploys and slick transactions.

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.

With access to tapes that have been hidden for over 40 years, this documentary goes behind the legend of the 1963 heist to uncover the true story of the crime of the century. Through tape recordings made by one of the key masterminds, the film explores the truth about the background to the robbery, and the audacious planning to carry it off, as well as revealing how one of the men managed to escape the police and live off his share of the loot until he died a few years ago.