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Expand your mind with the most fabulous REAL-LIFE SHOWS on demand – the third in our five-part series
ALL this week in the Daily Mail, as tens of millions of people across the country stay indoors, the Mail’s TV critic Christopher Stevens and TV Editor Mike Mulvihill are helping you to navigate the vast back catalogue of catch-up TV — available through the BBC’s iPlayer and ITV Hub, as well as streaming video services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Today it’s documentaries — war, chat, crime, science and everything in between...
DOCUMENTARY COLLECTIONS Clive James’s Postcards iPLAYER
The Australian wit, critic and memoirist who died last year will always be remembered for the sadistic Japanese gameshow Endurance, which he championed in Clive James On TV. But his best work is this occasional series of travelogues. Reporting from his favourite European capitals, he then ventures off to Cairo, Miami, Rio and Bombay. Everywhere is described with his trademark sardonic quips, whether he’s learning to pick up Italian girls in cafes or paraglide behind a speedboat. Six episodes
Stacey Dooley Investigates iPLAYER
If you know this Essex redhead only from her appearance on Strictly, it’s a shock to see her in action as a war reporter. She’s unafraid to tackle the toughest interviews, quizzing Isis brides in Syria, confronting whale hunters and meeting sex workers in the Philippines. 14 episodes
Face To Face iPLAYER
Before chat shows, TV did interrogations. In these confrontations from the early 1960s, interviewer John Freeman puts his subjects through some merciless analysis. Some, such as Martin Luther King, handle the pressure with aplomb. Others, like novelist Evelyn Waugh, are desperately ill at ease. Seven episodes
The Americas With Simon Reeve iPLAYER
The boyish adventurer is far more interested in people and their cultures around the world than the scenery. He meets biker gangs and money launderers, and uncovers pollution and feuds. Reeve’s innocent manner leads him to ask questions that sometimes seem downright dangerous. 15 episodes
Attenborough’s Early Years iPLAYER Our Planet NETFLIX
Everyone is familiar with Sir David’s greatest shows, such as Life On Earth and Blue Planet II (both available on iPlayer). His earliest and most recent series are less well known but equally wonderful. In Attenborough’s Early Years, Zoo Quest takes him to Indonesia in the 1950s in search of the Komodo dragon, and to Madagascar long before the destruction of the rainforests. Adventure: Zambezi follows him across Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, when elephants roamed in huge herds. Sixty years later he makes an impassioned plea for the protection of the world’s remaining wild habitats in last year’s Our Planet. 22 episodes
Civilisation iPLAYER
Kenneth Clark changed the nature of documentaries for ever with this erudite but down-to-earth history of Western art from the Ancient Greeks to Picasso. He didn’t lecture, he explained. Like a man able to assemble a jigsaw blindfolded, he showed exactly how each masterpiece and new idea connected to everything else — its influences and its legacy. When David Attenborough watched it, he was inspired to do the same by charting the history of evolution in Life On Earth. 13 episodes
Louis Theroux iPLAYER/NETFLIX
The prince of the awkward question, Theroux never lets his subjects wriggle off the hook. Glib answers are met with a sad look, as though he’s disappointed beyond words — and the interviewees start jabbering, condemning themselves. It’s a magnificent technique, one he tests in more than 50 documentaries, talking to swingers, neo-Nazis, big-game hunters and religious obsessives. 52 episodes
Michael Palin iPLAYER/ BRITBOX
With his movie career booming thanks to films such as A Fish Called Wanda, the former Python unintentionally launched a new TV genre when he agreed to copy Jules Verne’s heroes by travelling Around The World In Eighty Days without using planes. Join him in North Korea, Brazil, the U.S. and the Pacific Rim. Seven episodes, North Korea free on My5
New Lives In The Wild MY5/BRITBOX
Ben Fogle has matured into a connoisseur of eccentrics, able to win the confidence of the most prickly hermits such as the Aussie recluse who shares his island with his two
wives — both shop mannequins. He delves deep into the psychology of civilisation’s dropouts and, to find out what drives people to live outside society, he lives with them too. 29 episodes
Nazi Victory: The Post-War Plan UKTV PLAY
The archives of UKTV Play are stuffed with box sets about war, especially World War II, with titles like Hitler’s Propaganda Machine and Secret Nazi Bases. One of the most imaginative is historian and Mail writer Guy Walters’ six-part alternative history, analysing what could have happened if the Blitz had led to German invasion. It’s a great series to watch alongside the Amazon drama that imagines the same nightmare, The Man In The High Castle. Six episodes
Extreme Railways UKTV PLAY/BRITBOX
One of the great things about watching Chris Tarrant flog his way across the Andes or Siberia by train is how little effort he makes to disguise his misery. Unlike Michael
Portillo, a fellow lover of rail travel whose rainbow suits are never creased, Tarrant looks like he’s slept in a bush before the journey even starts. He makes these trips for the sheer love of trains, and that enthusiasm is infectious. The journeys are fascinating too, more so because he goes to places you’d never want to see. Ticket for Guantanamo Bay, anyone? 11 episodes
Explained NETFLIX
Here’s one for conspiracy theorists. Last November Netflix added a documentary to its Explained series, asking experts including Bill Gates to predict what would happen in the next flu pandemic. It could be under way even now, booms the voiceover. As it turned out, they weren’t wrong. The show even identifies China’s notorious ‘wet markets’, where animals are butchered in front of shoppers, as a probable launch pad for a new virus. That’s a powerful recommendation for this show’s research. Other episodes discuss whether humans will be able to keep eating meat, and how cryptocurrencies work. 30 episodes
Hip-Hop Evolution NETFLIX
This series offers a new way to look at the history of black America. When the first DJs in Harlem started picking out snippets of dance music from their vinyl to create a hypnotic rhythm, segregation in the Deep South was just ending. By the time rappers such as Kanye West and Dr Dre were multimillionaires, America had its first black president. This documentary, featuring interviews with just about every major living rapper, reveals how those two things happened in parallel. 12 episodes
The Vietnam War NETFLIX
This documentary is film-maker Ken Burns’s best yet. A rock soundtrack accompanies hours of newsreel footage, but what is unique about this ten-parter are the interviews with former U.S. Marines and Viet Cong soldiers, telling of the hell they endured. Ten episodes
Classic Albums NOWTV/SKY TV
Music specials abound in the streaming archives. Netflix offers two of the best
— Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue, a woozy account of Bob Dylan’s mid-1970s world tour, and Bruce Springsteen’s autobiographical Broadway stage show. But if you want detail, Classic Albums analyses the great rock LPs — from Steely Dan to Pink Floyd — track by track, separating the vocals from the guitars, and picking apart the rhythm section. 23 episodes