Seasons & episodes

Horizon goes behind the scenes at NASA as they countdown to the landing of a 2.5 billion-dollar rover on the surface of Mars. In six days time, the nuclear-powered vehicle - the size of a car - will be winched down onto the surface of the Red Planet from a rocket-powered crane. That's if things go according to plan: Mars has become known as the Bermuda Triangle of space because so many missions there have ended in failure. The Curiosity mission is the most audacious - and expensive - attempt to answer the question: is there life on Mars?

Dallas Campbell looks back through almost 50 years of the Horizon archives to chart the scientific breakthroughs that have transformed our understanding of the universe. From Einstein's concept of spacetime to alien planets and extra dimensions, science has revealed a cosmos that is more bizarre and more spectacular than could have ever been imagined. But with every breakthrough, even more intriguing mysteries that lie beyond are found. This great journey of discovery is only just beginning.

On a bright, cold morning on 15th February 2013, a meteorite ripped across the skies above the Ural mountains in Russia, distintegrating into three pieces and exploding with the force of 20 Hiroshimas. It was a stark reminder that the Earth's journey through space is fraught with danger. A day later, another much larger 143,000-tonne asteroid passed within just 17,000 miles of the Earth. Presented by Professor Iain Stewart, this film explores what meteorites and asteroids are, where they come from, the danger they pose and the role they have played in Earth's history.

S0 · E76Mend Me: A Horizon Guide to Transplants 2013-03-27 · 60 min＋

Transplant surgery has now reached incredible heights, from achieving full face transplants to growing organs in the lab. This Horizon Guide looks back at the extraordinary odds doctors and patients have had to overcome to achieve these amazing breakthroughs. What we now take for granted has been a hard won struggle, both for the patients who were willing to gamble their lives and the doctors who faced ethical and medical dilemmas in the name of progress. Michael Mosley looks through the Horizon archive, identifying the key turning points for transplant surgery to explore how far science can go in its bid to prolong life.

S0 · E77Tomorrow's World: A Horizon Special 2013-04-11 · 60 min＋

Liz Bonnin delves in to the world of invention, revealing the people and technologies set to transform all our lives. She examines the conditions that are promising to make the 21st century a golden age of innovation and meets some of the world's foremost visionaries, mavericks and dreamers.

Changes in the weather, pesticides, and even a virus have all all been blamed for the ongoing mass deaths of bees Bill Turnbull meets the scientists who are fitting minute radar transponders on to bees to try to find answers.

It was hoped that Comet ISON could be the brightest and most spectacular comet for a generation. After travelling towards the sun for ten thousand years, it appeared to have been disintegrated by the heat and tidal forces of the sun in early December 2013. But ISON's tail of vapourised gas and water, hundreds of millions of kilometres long, may give insights into some of the greatest mysteries of science.

S0 · E80The £10 Million Challenge 2014-05-22 · 60 min＋

To celebrate its 50th birthday, Horizon invites the public to play a role in tackling the greatest challenges facing science today. This special episode of Horizon launches the £10 million Longitude Prize 2014 - a prize developed by Nesta, with Technology Strategy Board as funding partner, to find solutions to a new scientific challenge.

S0 · E81The Transit of Venus: A Horizon Special 2012-06-05 · 60 min＋

Liz Bonnin presents a Horizon special about a rare and beautiful event in our solar system, one that we should all be able to see for ourselves - the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It will start just before midnight of the 5th of June, and won't happen again for more than a century.

Something peculiar has happened to Britain's weather. During the last two months we have heard frequent stories of forest fires, dried-up reservoirs and even rumours of water rationing. How much of it is true and what is the meaning of the present scare? This special report goes behind the scenes and observes that we are indeed facing the worst drought for over 200 years.

Horizon theorizes how life could be in 2002, using extracts from previous Horizon episodes.

Darwin's theory of evolution transformed our view of the world. But what would he think of the progress we have made since?

An updated report on AIDS, a catastrophic collapse of the immune system that leads to a bizarre range of cancers and potentially fatal infections.

A Horizon special dramatizing the race at the University of Cambridge in 1951 for the discovery of DNA.

S0 · E105Sex: A Horizon Guide 2013-09-11 · 60 min＋

Alice Roberts looks through 45 years of Horizon archive material to see how science came to understand sex, strived to solve our problems with it and even helped us do it better.

Dr Helen Czerski delves into the Horizon archive to chart the transformation of a little-known theory into one of the greatest scientific undertakings in history.

Michael Mosley uses the BBC archives to chart scientists' progress as they probed the mind of the murderer to try to understand why people kill, and whether it can help prevent it.

S0 · E108The Horizon Guide to AI 2018-09-04 · 60 min＋

Documentary looking at the perception of AI from 1964 to the present day. Can we be optimistic about all that AI can deliver - or fearful of its ability to control our lives?

Astronaut Tim Peake's video diary of the two years leading up to his arrival at the International Space Station in December 2015.

S0 · E110Jimmy Carr and the Science of Laughter 2016-09-11 · 60 min＋

Comedian Jimmy Carr takes over Horizon for this one-off special programme, produced as part of BBC2's sitcom season. Jimmy turns venerable documentary strand Horizon into a chat show, with eminent laughter scientists as guests and a studio audience to use as guinea pigs. Jimmy and his guests try to get to the bottom of what laughter is, why we enjoy it so much and what, if anything, it has to do with comedy. Between them, and with the help of contributions from other scientists on film, Jimmy and guests discover that laughter is much older than our species, and may well have contributed to making us human. With professors Sophie Scott, Robin Dunbar and Peter McGraw.

S0 · E111Horizon Special: The Vaccine 2021-06-16 · 60 min＋

The extraordinary inside story of the biggest scientific challenge of our age - following a small band of vaccine scientists around the world who took on Covid-19 and ultimately delivered the weapon to beat it. As news of the coronavirus broke around the globe, a small group of scientists jumped into action to tackle one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: to create a vaccine against a virus no-one had ever seen before and to do so in record time, all during a deadly, global pandemic. English

The Life and Times of El Niño combines history and science to show how this meteorological monster has affected global economy and political history. As a little understood climatic event, El Niño has caused the worst ever yellow fever epidemic in America, cannibalism in China, and in more recent times, the erosion of the coral reef in Australia and severe flooding in Brazil. But, as our knowledge of El Niño grows and attempts are made to predict its worldwide effects, The Life and Times of El Niño asks - could the power of one of nature's most destructive occurrences ever be contained? The Life and Times of El Niño is a science education resource investigating both the history and science of this climatic event.

It's a macabre paradox, but almost every advance in aviation safety has been driven by a crash. After every crash, investigators determine its cause and scientists make every effort to ensure the same mistakes never happen again. Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archives to chart the deadly disasters that have helped make air travel today the safest it has ever been.

In the 1950s up to 8,000 people died every year on the roads in this country - a truly horrific figure. Thankfully it has now fallen to around 2,000 a year - still a terrible toll, but a vast improvement, particularly given the increase in cars on the road. Dallas Campbell looks back over decades of Horizon and BBC archive to chart the key scientific breakthroughs that have transformed road safety and saved millions of lives. However, it hasn't all been about innovative engineering and groundbreaking medical discoveries - scientists have also had to act as campaigners, persuading car manufacturers to install their life saving devices and urging the public to use them.