The Fifties

History 101

Infographics and archival footage deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.

The Nineties

Hit rewind and explore the most iconic moments and influential people of The Nineties, the decade that gave us the Internet, DVDs, and other cultural and political milestones.

1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything

In a tumultuous era, 1971 was a year of musical innovation and rebirth fueled by the political and cultural upheaval of the time. Stars reached new heights, fresh talent exploded onto the scene, and boundaries expanded like never before.

American Masters

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.

Doctor Who Confidential

Doctor Who Confidential is a documentary to complement the revival of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Each episode was broadcast on BBC Three on Saturdays, immediately after the broadcast of the weekly television episode on BBC One. The running time of the first two series was 30 minutes, being extended to 45 minutes in the third. BBC Three also broadcast a cut-down edition of the programme, lasting 15 minutes, shown after the repeats on Sundays and Fridays and after the weekday evening repeats of earlier seasons.

The New York Times Presents

A series of standalone documentaries powered by the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time.

Top Gear

Motoring programme featuring reviews of and reports about cars of all types.

The Sixties

The space race, the cold war, "free love," civil rights and more: The decade of the 1960s shaped our history -- and changed the world. In collaboration with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, CNN explores perhaps the most transformative decade of the modern era in a 10-part documentary series and brings new insights into how those events shaped today.

JANET JACKSON.

The documentary takes viewers through Janet Jackson's life and career, contain never-before-seen footage, and feature home videos from the legendary artist. Jackson discusses her controversial 2004 Super Bowl halftime show performance with Justin Timberlake, her father Joe Jackson, the death of her brother Michael Jackson, and more.

Eli Roth's History of Horror

An in-depth look at the history and pop cultural significance of horror films.

Baseball

The history of the sport of baseball in America, told through archival photos, film footage, and the words of those who contributed to the game in each era. Writers, historians, players, baseball personnel, and fans review key events and the significance of the game in America's history.

The Men Who Built America

Influential builders, dreamers and believers whose feats transformed the United States, a nation decaying from the inside after the Civil War, into the greatest economic and technological superpower the world had ever seen. The Men Who Built America is the story of a nation at the crossroads and of the people who catapulted it to prosperity.

Into the Unknown: Making Frozen II

The team behind Frozen II open their doors to cameras for a six-part documentary series to reveal the hard work, heart, and collaboration it takes to create one of the most highly-anticipated films in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ near-century of moviemaking. Cameras were there to capture an eye-opening - and at times jaw-dropping - view of the challenges and the breakthroughs, the artistry, creativity and the complexity of creating the #1 animated feature of all time.

American Experience

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

Leaving Neverland

Explores the experiences of James Safechuck and Wade Robson, who were both befriended and sexually abused by singer Michael Jackson, and the complicated feelings that led them both to confront their experiences.

How It's Made

Have you ever wondered how the products you use every day are made? How It's Made leads you through the process of how everyday products, such as apple juice, skateboards, engines, contact lenses, and many more objects are manufactured.

Biography

Biography is a documentary television series. It was originally a half-hour filmed series produced for CBS by David Wolper from 1961 to 1964 and hosted by Mike Wallace. The A&E Network later re-ran it and has produced new episodes since 1987. The older version featured historical figures such as Helen Keller and Mark Twain, or long-dead entertainment figures such as Will Rogers or John Barrymore. The A&E series has placed the emphasis on such people as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Plácido Domingo, Freddie Mercury, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Eric Clapton, Pope John Paul II, Gene Tierney, Selena, Diego Rivera, Mao Zedong and Queen Elizabeth II, and fictional characters like The Phantom, Superman, Hamlet, Betty Boop, and Santa Claus. The program ended up profiling enough figures that in 1999, A&E spun it off into an entire network, The Biography Channel.

The Movies

Explore American cinema through the decades and the cultural, societal and political shifts that framed its evolution.

Sherwood

Old grudges, new rivalries. A tangled web of murder and revenge spirals in a fractured Nottinghamshire mining community. Powerful drama with Lesley Manville and David Morrissey.

Corleone: A History of la Cosa Nostra

How, from 1974 to 1993, Totò Riina (1930-2017), supreme boss of the Corleone family, ruled by blood and terror over the Sicilian Mafia. An implacable account, based on the testimony of his men and those who fought against them.

Gulag, the Story

A major political, historical, human and economic fact of the 20th century, the Gulag, the extremely punitive Soviet concentration camp system, remains largely unknown.

The Great Smog: Winter of '52

Dr Xand Van Tulleken and Raksha Dave investigate the Great Smog of 1952 - the deadliest environmental disaster ever recorded and one of the world's worst peacetime catastrophes. Lasting just over four days, the Great Smog plunged London into a terrifyingly murky gloom - the acrid pollution seeping into homes, leaving Londoners gasping for breath, shutting down transport and emergency services, and overwhelming hospitals and undertakers alike.

The Vietnam War

An immersive 360-degree narrative telling the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. Featuring testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.

Del Miño al Bidasoa

Fifties Features - The Women behind the Pictures

A three part series about women working in the British film industry during the 1950s.

Spain: The 20th Century in Color

Through the birth of cinema and the first images recorded in Spain, this series takes viewers on a journey from the late 19th century to the 1970s across 6 hour-long episodes. An exclusive journey through Spain's history featuring stunning footage colorized for the first time and enhanced with realistic sound design to bring out their vividness and spectacular nature. A captivating yet educational series with lively and emotional narration that offers viewers a new way to experience the past.

At War for Algeria

North Africa, 1954. The Algerian war of independence begins, a traumatic and extremely violent catastrophe that for eight long years will shake and finally overthrow the foundations of the colonial regime established by France in 1830.

Miss Fallaci

Based on the story of Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci, who started her career with cinema and lifestyle columns and ended up becoming the most influential and controversial female journalist of the 20th century.

Lipstick on Your Collar

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, two young clerks at the stuffy Foreign Office in Whitehall display little interest in the decline of the British Empire. To their eyes, it can hardly compete with girls, rock music, and the intrigue of romantic entanglements.

Brecht

East Berlin, 1956. Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary of the theater and poet of the state, looks back: his exploits as a teenager during the World War I; his romantic adventures during the twenties; the escape of the Nazi regime; the return from exile. The life of a timeless classic, a class fighter, an indefatigable free spirit, a committed artist.

The Queen's Gambit

In a 1950s orphanage, a young girl reveals an astonishing talent for chess and begins an unlikely journey to stardom while grappling with addiction.

A Vida Como Ela É...

Adaptations of 40 short stories of brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues, written between 1951 and 1961. The stories were considered scandalous at the time as Rodrigues used immoral characters and black humor to satirize the hypocrisy and repression in people's daily lives.

Red Forest

A drama about the national resistance movement in Latvia after the Soviet occupation. Events take place in 1949 when the British intelligence service MI6 tries to find out about the situation in the Baltic States occupied by the Soviet Union. Wittold (Jekabs Reinis), together with other Latvians, works hard in his daily work, and Velta (Agnese Cirule) is a nurse. They dream of going to the United States, saving money, planning a wedding and arranging the necessary documents because the US carefully selects emigrants. But Wittold decides to take part in the Mission, and the hope of changing history changes his life.

The Darling Buds of May

An idyllic picture of 1950's rural England as seen through the lives of the Larkins, a farm family living in Kent. The show revolves around Pa Larkin, a man of a kind and mischievous nature with a penchant for getting into scrapes and talking his way out of them with equal equanimity; and his daughters, as they deal with growing up and discovering the joys and sorrows of young love.

In Cold Blood

At the end of the 1950s, in a more innocent America, the brutal, meaningless slaying of a Midwestern family horrified the nation. This film is based on Truman Capote's hauntingly detailed, psychologically penetrating nonfiction novel. While in prison, Dick Hickock, 20, hears a cell-mate's story about $10,000 in cash kept in a home safe by a prosperous rancher. When he's paroled, Dick persuades ex-con Perry Smith, also 20, to join him in going after the stash. On a November night in 1959, Dick and Perry break into the Holcomb, Kansas, house of Herb Clutter. Enraged at finding no safe, they wake the sleeping family and brutally kill them all. The bodies are found by two friends who come by before Sunday church. The murders shock the small Great Plains town, where doors are routinely left unlocked. Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation heads the case, but there are no clues, no apparent motive and no suspects...

Them

A limited anthology series that explores terror in America.

Hi-de-Hi!

Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom set in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, during 1959 and 1960, and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst others. It aired on the BBC from 1980 to 1988. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's management and entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of writers Perry and Croft: after being demobilised from the army, Perry was a Redcoat at Butlin's, Pwllheli during the holiday season. The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In 2004, it came 40th in Britain's Best Sitcom and in a 2008 poll on Channel 4, 'Hi-de-Hi!" was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase.

Laverne & Shirley

Best friends, roommates, and polar opposites, Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney work together at the Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee and keep each other's spirits up at home.

Masters of Sex

William Masters and Virginia Johnson are real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory.