FRONTRUNNERS highlights professionals at the very forefront of their field. We showcase their amazing work, discover their motivations, and learn about the challenges they face in the future.
Social & External
An educational series that explains everyday objects and makes complex science accessible through experiments and playful explanations. It shows how discoveries like waves enabled the smartphone, and explores radioactivity, dark energy, and blood circulation, featuring Curie, Röntgen, Newton, and Einstein, showing science is understandable and engaging.
Presenter Rob Bell takes us on a voyage around Britain and Ireland to reveal the hidden secrets that make offshore lighthouses such extraordinary feats of engineering.
Stephen Hawking’s Science of the Future investigates the very latest game changing innovations. Each episode takes one area of progress and sends five top scientists out to actively test the inventions and breakthroughs that are driving it. The team explore human upgrades, the virtual world, bio-mimicry, high-tech emergency responses, and more. Featuring a wide range of examples, from advanced robotics and breathtaking digital actors, to cutting edge smart homes and electronic brain stimulation, the series reveals how science is delivering astonishing improvements to all our lives. Using the evidence they gather, the team reveals the year when each innovation will be rolled out for us all to benefit from, and Hawking then draws out his own uniquely insightful predictions about what our world will be like in the years to come.
Glittering facades, vibrant life, and people facing the daily struggle for survival. ZDF correspondents each profile a megacity within their reporting area. How do people celebrate, laugh, and love in such a city? How are problems like housing shortages, food supply, transportation, and climate change solved – in metropolises with over ten million inhabitants?
Capturing the latest breakthroughs in science, technology and innovation. With anchor Hari Sreenivasan, we check out the hottest gadgets, meet the innovators creating the startups of tomorrow and map out the mysteries of the scientific world.
Follow the culinary and entrepreneurial journey of Ravneet Gill and her husband Mattie, as they take on the challenge of opening their own restaurant using only their personal savings.
From cafes to craft fairs, glamping to ghosts, join Dame Penelope Keith as she meets the owners of Britain’s historic country houses struggling to keep their homes intact. Featured properties include Ashby Manor in Northamptonshire, Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, and Mapperton House in Dorset. As these estates turn to innovative ventures to stay afloat, Keith offers insight into the challenges of maintaining these grand homes in 2025. Will their creative solutions be enough to save their history?
A century ago, the world experienced a revolution in mobility. Cities like Berlin grew rapidly, with the Graf Zeppelin soaring over the city in 1928, sparking excitement for airship travel. These majestic airships made ocean crossings faster and more luxurious, and even enabled polar expeditions. At the same time, automobiles and motorcycles became staples for many, although streets became congested. Women like Amelia Earhart and Elly Beinhorn broke barriers in aviation, inspiring new possibilities for both genders in the field of technology. While air travel grew in popularity, trains remained the main long-distance transport. The era also saw an explosion of new mobility options, with faster, cheaper ways to travel across the globe, making the world seem smaller and more connected. However, this golden age of mobility would be cut short by the outbreak of World War II.
There's no place like home. Brill bungalows, cosy cottages, terrific terraces - Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen leads the search for Northern Ireland’s most desirable dwelling.
How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson is a six part documentary series that reveals the story behind the remarkable ideas that made modern life possible; the unsung heroes that brought them into the world – and the unexpected and bizarre consequences each of these innovations has triggered.
Providing a thought-provoking and imaginative perspective on scientific discovery as it unfolds, each episode follows scientific explorers working on cutting-edge projects with breakthrough potential, revealing the world of tomorrow... today.
Property and design enthusiast Tinie Tempah follows homeowners as they unleash their inner architect and build beautiful, often radical and 'out there' home extensions.
PhantasIA explores the creative potential of AI in an eclectic, exhilarating, and uninhibited way. A monthly magazine showcasing original creations and the human, political, and environmental questions raised by AI, PhantasIA invites readers to engage with AI through creation in order to better understand it. Far from seeking to replace the artist with the machine, PhantasIA places the artist and the human being at the heart of creation and examines the impact of these new practices.
How can we build architectural environments that help children learn, provide dignity and protection to the most vulnerable, and help offenders rehabilitate? This series looks at new schools, prisons, and homeless shelters whose architects have used innovative techniques to create buildings that help society.
Traces the incredible trajectory of Brown’s life and career from a 7th grade drop-out arrested and jailed at the age of 16 for breaking into a car in the Jim Crow-era South, to an entertainment legend whose groundbreaking talent and unique perspective catapulted him to become a cultural force.
Highlights the talented, often provocative entertainers whose brilliance and rise to stardom transformed American popular culture.
Keanu Reeves and Gard Hollinger are kindred souls with a bond built on a love of motorcycles and an insatiable curiosity about the world around them. In 2011, they founded ARCH Motorcycle to reimagine what a motorcycle could be. To them, ARCH is a mindset, a lens through which to see the world. This is a journey of curiosity, to understand where human creativity comes from and to shine a light on the visionaries who are pushing the bounds of innovation and changing our world.
Going beyond the horizon. Meet Japan's entrepreneurs whose innovative thinking is changing traditional mindsets in their various fields of work.
Industry leaders including Eric Schmidt and Steve Wozniak are interviewed in this remarkable look at how Silicon Valley has produced an unrivaled stream of innovations.
The fascinating stories of the families behind the food that built America, those who used brains, muscle, blood, sweat and tears to get to America's heart through its stomach, those who invented new technologies and helped win wars.
HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.
An insider's look at the engineering and scientific miracles behind the things that form the modern world.
The epic motorcycle adventure continues in this third chapter of the Long Way series, as Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman journey to glorious landscapes across South and Central America—on the backs of prototype electric Harley-Davidsons.
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.
30 for 30 is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This currently includes four "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series under the ESPN Films Presents title in 2011–2012, and a series of 30 for 30 Shorts shown through the ESPN.com website. The series has also expanded to include Soccer Stories, which aired in advance of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and audio podcasts. This entry refers to the main Volumes of the series presented by ESPN
Maritime mysteries—old and new—come to life in this series, combining scientific data and digital re-creations to reveal shipwrecks, treasures, and sunken cities on the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans around the world.
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.
Part detective story, part true-life drama, long-running series explores some of the most iconic moments in history to debunk myths and shed new light on past events. Using the latest investigative techniques, forensic science and historical examination, it shatters accepted wisdom, challenges prevailing ideas, overturns existing hypotheses, spotlights forgotten mysteries, and ultimately rewrites history.
Jazz is a ten part series that explores the evolution – and the genius – of America’s greatest original art form, focusing on the extraordinary men and women who could do something remarkable – create art on the spot. Jazz celebrates their profoundly enduring, endlessly varied, and infinitely alluring music in the context of the complicated country that gave birth to and influenced it, and was in turn transformed by it.
Explore Marvel’s rich legacy of pioneering characters, creators and storytelling to reflect the world outside your window. Each documentary, helmed by a unique filmmaker, showcases the intersections of storytelling, pop culture, and fandom within the Marvel Universe.
Three years after Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set off on a 15,000-mile journey from the northernmost tip of Scotland to the southernmost tip of South Africa, mixing their love of motorcycles with the lure of far-flung roads.
Through the prism of Jeff Goldblum's always inquisitive and highly entertaining mind, nothing is as it seems. Each episode is centered around something we all love — like sneakers or ice cream — as Jeff pulls the thread on these deceptively familiar objects and unravels a wonderful world of astonishing connections, fascinating science and history, amazing people, and a whole lot of surprising big ideas and insights.
Award-winning actor and nervous explorer Eugene Levy steps out of his comfort zone for a whirlwind tour of the world's most beautiful and intriguing destinations.
Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you've never seen before.
When George Lucas set out to make Star Wars, little did he know he would end up revolutionizing an industry. This is the story of a team of creative geniuses who put the magic in the movies we love.
An annual award ceremony presented by MTV to honor the best in the music video medium.
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.
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.
This documentary series about plants is the first immersive portrayal of an unseen, inter-connected world, full of remarkable new behaviour, emotional stories and surprising heroes in the plant world. Planet Earth from the perspective of plants.