Climate Change: The Facts
Sunday 11 August at 7.40pm
Presented by Sir David Attenborough.
We’re just two degrees away from a climate catastrophe.
If the rate of global warming continues, we’ll reach the threshold for permanent environmental damage within 40 years.
Heatwaves from the Mediterranean to the Arctic. Wildfires running out of control across the USA. Rising numbers of heat-related deaths. The evidence of climate change is all around us: it’s happening now.
But we have the power to prevent it.
Using dramatic user-generated content and emotional first-hand testimony, this documentary delivers the facts about global warming simply and strikingly. Intimate stories get inside the lives of the people affected by climate change, and those fighting it. And world-leading experts reveal the developments that are redefining our horizons.
How can cows eating seaweed save the planet? Why should we put power plants on water? These inspiring stories show how we can take control of our future.
This is the greatest challenge we’ve faced. And the human race can rise to it.We’re on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. This is the story of how we can prevent it.
Miriam’s Deathly Adventure
From Tuesday 13 August at 9.30pm
Inimitable actress Miriam Margolyes is rather terrified of death. In this though provoking and entertaining two-part documentary, she’s on a mission to confront her fear of ageing and death and tackle our greatest taboo – our own mortality.
With her unique mix of charm, cheek and intellectual curiosity Miriam’s travelling through the UK, Europe and America taking an unflinching look at different approaches and attitudes to dealing with death.
In Episode One Miriam checks into Wren Hall, a dementia care home, to see what getting old might actually look like. With average life expectancy for women in the UK at 82, Miriam, 77, knows statistically she hasn’t got long left and the chances are, like most of us, she’ll end up in a home. She meets Geoff, who visits his wife June every day following her stroke six years ago.
Terrified and chastened she heads to America to meet people who believe that soon we’ll not only be able to ‘cure ageing’ but with radical medical and technological advances we could actually ‘defeat’ death enabling us to live forever.
In California Miriam heads to RAAD Fest - the world’s largest gathering of life enthusiasts. The Revolution Against Ageing and Death festival attracts thousands of people, with some going to extreme and even dangerous lengths to prevent ageing and prolong life.
Next she meets pioneers of the super longevity movement - the eerily youthful 82-year-old Bernadene and cryotherapy enthusiast Jim. At their monthly meeting in Arizona Miriam sees a growing community of people who are trying to achieve ‘unlimited lifespans’ by thinking and feeling differently about how we deal with death. In his minus 140-degree Celsius cryo chamber Miriam learns of Jim’s philosophy that rather than waste our lives because we all think death is inevitable, why not aspire to immortality and improving the world with our wisdom?
Loma Linda, near San Diego, is one of the world’s five ‘Blue Zones’ - longevity hotspots where people live longer than anyone else on earth and residents survive ten years longer than the average American. It’s also home to over nine thousand Seventh Day Adventists – strict believers in healthy living and a devotion to God. Miriam joins 71-year-old Marijke at water aerobics – part of her daily three-hour exercise regime. Surrounded by hundreds of sprightly pensioners, all preaching the gospel to fitness and Jesus, Miriam next accompanies Ida to her experimental laughter therapy session at Loma Linda’s medical university.
But not everyone wants to laugh their way to long life. For some, the answer to super longevity is found in science. At the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida, Miriam meets founder Bill Falloon. His church doesn’t involve God but rather a devotion to supplements that may keep you alive long enough to allow you to benefit from scientific breakthroughs that will lead to immortality. But they don’t come cheap and Miriam begins to wonder whether fighting death and achieving a healthy never-ending old age is beyond the pockets of most and wonders what this means for those who can’t afford it.
Returning to the UK humbled, Miriam heads back to Wren Hall. Geoff’s invited her to a party where she soon realises that while the privileged busily fret about extending their lives, for most people, the best way to deal with death is to make the most out of life.
Poldark - Season 5
From Saturday 17 August at 8.30pm
The fifth and final series of Poldark is set in a new century and with it comes the promise of a hopeful future, but the past casts a long shadow over Cornwall.
The Poldarks look forward to life together in peace, but a plea from Ross’ old Army Colonel, Ned Despard (Vincent Regan), compels him to the capital to help. As Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) manages their affairs in Cornwall she encounters disenchantment and a new opponent, Tess (Sofia Oxenham). George (Jack Farthing) meanwhile struggles to engage with the world after Elizabeth’s death and it falls to Cary (Pip Torrens) to expand the family empire as Valentine (Woody Norman) struggles to find his place within it.
Arriving in London, Ross (Aidan Turner) finds it gripped with paranoia and is determined to save Ned from the conspiracy that imprisoned him. George enters into an alliance with a merchant behind Ned’s imprisonment, Ralph Hanson (Peter Sullivan), whose business is in upholding the slave trade. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Charles (Freddie Wise) decides to follow in Ross’s footsteps and enter the military but also finds himself drawn to Cecily Hanson (Lily Dodsworth-Evans), Ralph’s daughter. As George’s grief leads the Warleggans into uncharted and worrying territory, Ross discovers a grave plot and is urged to heroism, while Demelza is forced into action herself back at home.