David Johnson

This documentary series follows three iconic species — caribou, zebra and elephant — on three of the world’s most breathtaking wildlife adventures. Each must overcome immense obstacles, from challenging terrain to hungry predators and sheer physical exhaustion. What drives these animals to risk everything in the race of their lives? Using the latest satellite-tagging technology, a team of scientists and filmmakers can now track the precise journeys of individual animals, witnessing their daily life-and-death decisions first hand as they happen. For the first time, we’ll reveal the complete picture of these epic races — the successes, the failures and the near misses.

7/10

This documentary follows the lives and hardships of several cougars (mountain lions) which have been under study by the Teton Cougar Project since 2000.

Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin is far from being a household name, yet he designed the iconic clock tower of Big Ben as well as much of the Palace of Westminster. The 19th-century Gothic revival that Pugin inspired, with its medieval influences and soaring church spires, established an image of Britain which still defines the nation. Richard Taylor charts Pugin's extraordinary life story and discovers how his work continues to influence Britain today.

It's the largest and most ambitious habitat recreation project ever known - to bring back to life one of the world's greatest marshlands. And it's happening in Iraq. Considered to be the original Garden of Eden, the marshes were once Iraq's wildlife jewel, where man and nature thrived for 5,000 years. But in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein drained these gigantic wetlands and turned them into a desert, destroying a home to thousands of people and millions of birds. Donning his body armour, film-maker David Johnson travels to the Mesopotamian marshes to follow the work of Azzam Alwash, the visionary Iraqi engineer at the centre of this extraordinary scheme to reflood hundreds of miles of desert and bring back life to the sands. This is a view of Iraq the world never sees, a world of huge reed beds and vast flocks of birds that fill the sky.

Natural World is a nature documentary television series broadcast annually on BBC Two and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history brand. It is currently the longest-running series in its genre on British television, with more than 400 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, but individual programmes can be in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or films made and distributed by independent production companies and purchased by the BBC. Natural World programmes are often broadcast as PBS Nature episodes in the USA. Since 2008, most Natural World programmes have been shot and broadcast in high definition.

8.6/10