American Experience

An eight-part British biography of Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-79), great-grandson of Queen Victoria. Mountbatten, who was killed by IRA terrorists, was a World War II naval hero who became Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia. He oversaw India's independence and the postwar reorganization of Britain's defense forces. The miniseries draws on archival footage and interviews, including Mountbatten's recollections of his youth and career as a midshipman in World War I.

This five-part collection features actual footage from World War II.

Dickens was a 2002 BBC docudrama on the life of the author Charles Dickens. It was presented by Peter Ackroyd, on whose biography of Dickens it was based, and Dickens was played by Anton Lesser. It was broadcast in three hour-long episodes.

Oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Calypso set sail to research far-off cultures and species of aquatic fauna and flora in another of the explorer's nature series, mainly in the Pacific Ocean and in the West Indies.

Works by independent filmmakers focus on lifestyles and issues affecting the decade.

It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates, the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.