There was a time, before football and rock'n'roll, when explorers were the A-listers of their day. Death-defying antics and tales of daring made them the stuff of legend: names like Columbus, Raleigh, and Cook, who sailed off over the horizon to discover new lands and bring home treasures unimaginable to those sitting at home in dark, damp Europe. Intrepid explorers they may have been, but ‘great' might be pushing it. Across the seven seas, they spilled blood and spread disease. They enabled the destruction of civilisations and the growth of slavery. And many of their ‘discoveries' weren't quite what you'd think...
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Season 1
3 episodes · 2025
2010
Don Wildman unearths relics from the world's greatest institutions to reveal secrets from the past. He examines each artifact to illuminate history's most incredible triumphs, sensational crimes and bizarre encounters.
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1988
TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.
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2018
Maritime mysteries—old and new—come to life in this series, combining scientific data and digital re-creations to reveal shipwrecks, treasures, and sunken cities on the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans around the world.
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2023
Award-winning actor and nervous explorer Eugene Levy steps out of his comfort zone for a whirlwind tour of the world's most beautiful and intriguing destinations.
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2006
An insider's look at the engineering and scientific miracles behind the things that form the modern world.
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1978
Motoring programme featuring reviews of and reports about cars of all types.
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2004
MegaStructures is a documentary television series appearing on the National Geographic Channel in the United States and the United Kingdom, Channel 5 in the United Kingdom, France 5 in France, and 7mate in Australia. Each episode is an educational look of varying depth into the construction, operation, and staffing of various structures or construction projects, but not ordinary construction products. Generally containing interviews with designers and project managers, it presents the problems of construction and the methodology or techniques used to overcome obstacles. In some cases this involved the development of new materials or products that are now in general use within the construction industry. MegaStructures focuses on constructions that are extreme; in the sense that they are the biggest, tallest, longest, or deepest in the world. Alternatively, a project may appear if it had an element of novelty or are a world first. This type of project is known as a Megaproject.
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1986
American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.
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2026
Explores WWII from Germany's invasion of Poland through the atomic age, examining pivotal battles, wartime leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and the human cost of total war.
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2012
Noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has been helping people discover long-lost relatives hidden for generations within the branches of their family trees. Professor Gates utilizes a team of genealogists to reconstruct the paper trail left behind by our ancestors and the world’s leading geneticists to decode our DNA and help us travel thousands of years into the past to discover the origins of our earliest forebears.
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2020
Infographics and archival footage deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.
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2021
Will Smith whose curiosity and wonder is positively infectious—is guided by National Geographic Explorers traveling to different corners of the world to get up close and personal with the weirdest, most unusual, dangerous and thrilling spectacles of the planet.
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2019
Through the prism of Jeff Goldblum's always inquisitive and highly entertaining mind, nothing is as it seems. Each episode is centered around something we all love — like sneakers or ice cream — as Jeff pulls the thread on these deceptively familiar objects and unravels a wonderful world of astonishing connections, fascinating science and history, amazing people, and a whole lot of surprising big ideas and insights.
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2016
Morgan Freeman presents his quest in order to find how most religions perceive life after death, what different civilizations thought about the act of creation and other big questions that mankind has continuously asked.
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2004
A British genealogy documentary series in which celebrities trace their ancestry, discovering secrets and surprises from their past.
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2000
Part detective story, part true-life drama, long-running series explores some of the most iconic moments in history to debunk myths and shed new light on past events. Using the latest investigative techniques, forensic science and historical examination, it shatters accepted wisdom, challenges prevailing ideas, overturns existing hypotheses, spotlights forgotten mysteries, and ultimately rewrites history.
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2026
Inspired by his late mentor, Will Smith spends 100 days facing extreme challenges, venturing from pole to pole with scientists, explorers and experts.
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2022
Experience the wonders of our world like never before in this epic series from Jon Favreau and the producers of Planet Earth. Travel back 66 million years to when majestic dinosaurs and extraordinary creatures roamed the lands, seas, and skies.
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2018
An in-depth look at the history and pop cultural significance of horror films.
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2019
The fascinating stories of the families behind the food that built America, those who used brains, muscle, blood, sweat and tears to get to America's heart through its stomach, those who invented new technologies and helped win wars.
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