Bin Laden: The Road to 9/11
Sunday 11 September 7:30 PM Triple episodes
Episode 1: This episode follows Osama Bin Laden’s early life as as a schoolboy in Saudi Arabia - raised in a wealthy family, he watches Westerns, enjoys football and avoids playground fights.
His childhood friend, Khaled Batarfi, says of him - ‘He was good, I don’t know what happened to him’.
In 1980, after the invasion of Afghanistan he joins many other Arab men who want to free the country from the Soviets.
Episode 2: This episode begins with Bin Laden returning home to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, an acclaimed war hero after the withdrawal of the Soviet - a military victory that he believes he helped achieve.
However, 18 months after he returns, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait prompting the anxious Saudi authorities to seek protection from the US.
Horrified by what he regards as an invasion of Muslim holy lands by the American army, Bin Laden turns publicly against the Saudi royal family, and refusing to be silenced he escapes to Sudan.
He reinvents himself as a large-scale agricultural producer, famous for growing giant sunflowers and watermelons.
Episode 3: This episode begins in 1997 with Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda ramping up its operations in Afghanistan.
With America his target, he grants rare interviews to US networks from his mountain base to take his threats straight into US homes.
He follows this, in 1998, with his infamous fatwa calling for ‘the murder of any American, anywhere on Earth’.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Thursday 15 September 8:30 PM double episode
June (Elisabeth Moss) faces consequences for killing Commander Waterford while struggling to redefine her identity and purpose, and the widowed Serena Waterford (Yvonne Strahovski) attempts to raise her profile in Toronto as Gilead’s influence creeps into Canada.
Hampton Court: Behind Closed Doors
Friday 16 September 8:30 PM
Hampton Court: Behind Closed Doors is an intimate look behind the scenes of King Henry VIII’s beloved royal palace on the Thames.
Now a popular tourist attraction we’ll explore, along with the visitors, the palace’s vast parklands and historic rooms. We’ll follow the palace Warders as they reveal unique spaces like the Great Hall, built for Henry VIII himself, the gardeners as they maintain the 300 year old historic maze, and the grooms as they look after Hampton Court’s own team of rare Shire horses. With the help of Historic Royal Palaces Chief Curator Tracy Borman, we’ll discover the kings and queens who lived and died at Hampton Court – from Elizabeth I to Henry VIII and his unlucky wives Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard.
Greatest Train Journeys From Above
Saturday 17 September 7:30 PM
Connecting iconic mountain resorts St Moritz and Zermatt, the Glacier Express is filmed from above winding along alpine peaks, over treacherous gorges and through vertiginous mountain ranges.
It’s a constant struggle to keep on track as engineers battle deep snow drifts, harness the latest tech to protect the line from landslides and set explosives to guard against deadly avalanches.