Documentaries & Specials
Each month, the BBC World Service offers new documentaries and specials selected specifically for U.S. audiences, with in-depth, relevant reporting. Typically one-hour, or two half-hours on a similar topic, they offer great content for any time of day, and satisfy audiences' needs for deeper narratives and more reflective listening.
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From famine to hope - Women reshape Madagascar
Air window: March 28 - April 24, 2026
Half hour
Today, Madagascar is one of the most food insecure countries in the world and women and children are the most vulnerable. This despite the fact that women produce around 80% of the country’s food yet own less than 10% of the land.
Lying off the south-eastern coast of Africa, Madagascar has been pushed into crisis by a deadly combination of climate change, poverty and environmental degradation. In 2021, more than 1.6 million people faced acute food insecurity, while nearly half of all children under five were chronically malnourished. Rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable, and when it does arrive it often comes as destructive cyclones, wiping out entire seasons of crops.
In southern Madagascar, forests no longer cast shade over the villages of Androy. Once celebrated as the “Green Island” for its extraordinary biodiversity, Madagascar is now known as the “Red Island”, its deep red soil exposed by decades of deforestation, drought and environmental collapse. The land has turned to dust, harvests have failed and famine has followed.
Journalist Georgie Styles travels from the war-like scenes and dust-choked streets of Ambovombe, the capital of the Androy region, to the windswept farms of the Tsimananada commune. Along the way, she meets women from across Madagascar who are defying famine and patriarchal norms, experimenting with agro-ecological farming and adapting to a rapidly changing climate, determined not just to survive, but to reclaim their land and their future.
Namibia’s hydrogen superpower dream
Air window: March 28 - April 24, 2026
Half hour
A near-pristine desert wilderness on Southern Africa’s remote Atlantic coast, in Namibia, could soon be hosting a huge green hydrogen development, raising concerns for the area’s unique plant and animal life, but also hopes for wealth and desperately needed jobs.
Namibia’s young population is struggling, with youth unemployment among the highest in the world. Many are hoping they’ll have a part to play in Namibia’s green energy future and Johannes speaks to officials who believe the project could transform the country’s future.
World Book Club: Ragnar Jonasson - The Darkness
Air window: April 4 - May 1, 2026
One hour
Ragnar Jonasson talks about his thriller - The Darkness. When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is unceremoniously told she is being forced into early retirement, she is given the chance to work on one last Cold Case - anything she likes. The case she chooses to revive centers on the death of a Russian asylum seeker; a 27 year old woman who had been found dead on the icy shore a year before.
As Hulda reopens the case, she discovers that another young woman disappeared at the same time — and that crucial facts have been withheld. Witnesses are evasive, records incomplete, and even her fellow officers appear determined to stall her investigation. With only two weeks to uncover the truth, Hulda must uncover what really happened, even at the risk of her own life.
Ragnar answers listeners’ questions about how he created his detective, Hulda, and how the Icelandic landscape shapes his characters and stories. Did he realize the ending of the novel would shock so many of his readers?
World Questions: Nepal
Air window: April 11 - May 8, 2026
One hour
Last autumn Nepal’s youth uprising led to a ban on social media, an attack on parliament and multiple deaths of young people as police fired on protesters in the capital’s streets. Nepal’s Gen Z wanted accountability for corruption, jobs for the young, freedom of expression and political reform. The army brokered a deal with the leaders of the movement and the crisis ended with an interim government and the promise of new elections.
One month after those elections, what is the way forward for Nepal? Can a new government deliver on its promises and will the young be satisfied? Jonny Dymond chairs a panel drawn from both Nepal’s youth movement and the political establishment as they debate questions from the public in Kathmandu.
In Our Time - the Mariana Trench
Air window: April 18 - May 15, 2026
One hour
Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world.
In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometers. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic plate slips under another and heads down and there are around fifty of them globally. While at one time some thought it was too dark and deep for life there and others wildly imagined monsters, the truth has turned out to be much more surprising
Last Dance Floor in Chernobyl
Air window: April 25 - May 22, 2026
One hour
On the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Last Dancefloor in Chernobyl tells the untold stories from in and around the city: what life was like leading up to the meltdown, and life since, including the five weeks in 2022 when Russian armed forces occupied Chernobyl.
The stories are told through the fashion, music and relationships that young people found in Pripyat and the town’s nightclub – ‘Edison 2’.
What has been forgotten is that the young people who survived the nuclear meltdown in April 1986 stayed to maintain the damaged power plant and keep it safe. They saw the fall of the Soviet Union and created new identities, until the Russian invasion once again turned their lives upside down. These three events that changed the world are told in a very different way - through the people that were there.
The Documentary: Tequila with the Bat Man and Game of Clones
Air window: May 2 - May 29, 2026
One hour
Enjoy a combination of two The Documentary episodes. First up, the conservationist Rodrigo Medellin is working to protect Mexico's bats and its iconic spirits - tequila and mezcal. Can tequila become “bat friendly”?
The agave spirits are hugely important for Mexico’s economy with exports of the drinks worth billions and sales boosted by big budget celebrity-owned brands designed to appeal to the US consumer. But the agave is often harvested before the plant can flower meaning bats cannot feed from the nectar, and critically, they can’t do their job as pollinators. Rodrigo explains how he wanted to change the way the spirit industry works, creating a “bat-friendly” certification for tequila and mezcal producers who leave 5% of the agave untouched, to bloom. But why have so few brands been certified, why is the program controversial for some producers, and why is the conservation of bats a hard sell for many people?
Then in the second half, cloning polo horses is transforming the sport in Argentina. There are big companies, big profits and big ambitions. Against the backdrop of the Argentine Open (the crown jewel of the Polo season) presenter Marnie Chesterton talked to scientists and key figures in this tale of how cloning conquered Polo, and where the genetic interventions are heading.
World Questions: Sweden
Air window: May 9 - June 5, 2026
One hour
Migration, citizenship laws, crime and the rising cost of living are just some of the issues facing voters in Sweden ahead of upcoming elections. World Questions visits the country’s capital, Stockholm, on the 5 May to debate the challenges facing the nation. Leading politicians will face questions from a Swedish audience in a discussion chaired by Jonny Dymond.
In Our Time - The Columbian Exchange
Air window: May 16 - June 12, 2026
One hour
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange and impact of cultures and biology, across the Atlantic and Pacific, after Columbus reached the Bahamas in1492. It was a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form. And in turn, the Americas then had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox. As flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation. In parts of the Americas, European viruses contributed to the deaths of over 90 percent of the population. And in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia - populations boomed on the new American foods. Other changes included sheep from Europe grazing fertile land into deserts in parts of the Americas, while the lowered populations in other areas led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age. Contributors: Rebecca Earle, Professor of History at the University of Warwick John Lindo, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London.
Broadcast Rights
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