At last, Paul arrives in Chennai and heads to the beach to relax. He swiftly discovers that relaxing is the last thing Indians do on a beach. Walking along the shore, he is confronted by somersaults and cartwheels as the local stuntmen practice their moves. Chennai is the home of the hugely profitable, but often overlooked, Tamil film industry, known as Kollywood. Leaving the acrobats to it, Paul heads inland, only to discover another group on the sand. These men and women meet daily to practice the art of laughter yoga. This is an exercise involving laughing at nothing, which proves hard for a professional comedian such as Paul to endorse. Next up is a visit to India’s largest city. Known as the ‘City of Dreams’, Mumbai attracts people from all over the country. They come to seek their fortune, but despite Mumbai’s prosperous reputation many people slip through the cracks. Paul visits the central railway station and encounters some of the hundreds of street children who live rough and scratch a living from what they can scavenge from the trains. Mumbai is also home to a more glamorous world – India’s premier film industry, Bollywood, but Paul has heard of another very ‘alternative’ film industry, eight hours’ drive North in the industrial town of Malegaon. In this small, remote town Paul becomes immersed in their latest project: James Bond, Indian style, complete with toy chopper and the villainous Mr Burpy! Just days before his departure home, Paul heads back to Mumbai. While reading the local newspaper, he is surprised to discover that the city is home to a fan club dedicated to the quintessentially English author PG Wodehouse. Intrigued, he decides to spend an evening with these eccentric obsessives and discovers that the healing power of Wodehouse’s humour helps them cope with their hectic lives. Other stressed city residents turn to an altogether different solution – past life regression therapy. Popularised in the West, this therapy strikes a particular chord in a nation where reincarnation is a cornerstone of the culture. With an open mind, Paul meets the recent converts. Before Paul finally takes his leave of India, he cannot resist one more appointment. Over the past eight weeks he has encountered so many people who have found a way to stand out in this nation of over a billion people, so it seems only right that Paul should meet just one more record holder – a man who holds the world’s least desirable title… BB Nayak holds the record for having been kicked in the testicles the most times in one minute!

The Taliban had come to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Determined to turn Afghanistan into the world’s purest Islamist state, the Taliban introduced one of the most intolerant regimes.

The Tamil Tigers are one of the deadliest and most ruthless terrorists organisations the world has ever known. Since embarking on their campaign of violence in the early 1980s, they have killed almost 60,000 people – more than the rest of the world’s terrorist organisations put together – and displaced hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans.
The Tigers are fighting to win independence for the Tamil provinces in the North East of Sri Lanka, a large island formerly known as Ceylon situated in the Indian Ocean 40 miles off the mainland coast of India. In the name of their cause, they stop at nothing – including the use of suicide bombers, blowing up ancient buildings, attacking troop convoys and slaughtering innocent villagers. Their victims also number several leading politicians, the most high profile of which was the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, killed by a female suicide bomber in May 1991.
The key to ending the long and bloody conflict is still seen to be the terrorist leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. But unless he disbands the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government recognise the Tamil’s claim to independence, a settlement seems as far away as ever.

Before Modern Man arrived, Europe was inhabited by a species that thrived in a harsh environment, the Neanderthals. This documentary tells their story and looks at the mystery of their extinction.

On 22 October 2002 terrorists seized a theatre in Moscow, holding more than 800 people hostage, as they demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops. The siege ended in a tragedy as 130 of the hostages died.

On 4 February 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old student heiress and granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her residence in Berkeley, California. For the next two months, by her account, she was kept in a closet, sexually and physically abused, and “brainwashed” by the small group of radicals called the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) who targeted wealthy capitalists as the ultimate enemy. The Hearst family agreed to the initial demands, which included the distribution of millions of dollars worth of food, but negotiations reached a stalemate. Then the SLA publicized a photo of Patty, machine gun in hand, apparently a willing convert to revolution. She took the name ‘Tania’ (a tribute to the wife of Che Guevara). On 15 April 1974, Patty was seen wielding a gun as the SLA robbed the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. The question on everyone’s lips was: had she been forced to assist her captors, or was she doing it of her own free will? In May, following one of the biggest gun battles in US police history, six SLA members were killed in Los Angeles. Patty was not among them, but in September she was arrested, tried and sent to prison for seven years for her part in the armed robbery. Released after just 22 months, Patty was eventually given a full pardon by President Bill Clinton. The SLA never numbered more than 20 or so members. But the kidnapping of Patty Hearst gave the gang the attention it certainly did not deserve.

Paul is in Hyderabad, in the centre of India where the ‘North meets the South’. It is a city of call centres and IT (information technology) and Paul has been told that there is nothing worth seeing, but while driving to the hotel he spots a sign for Snow World. He gets out to investigate and discovers an unexpected world of snowballs and sledging.
Later that day, Paul has an appointment to meet his local guide, Raj, at a local museum. He is not too keen as Raj escorts him round the car exhibition, until he catches sight of its main attraction – the world’s biggest tricycle.
Warming to his guide, Paul accompanies Raj on his ‘day job’ – rescuing snakes from the city. Raj has devoted his life to protecting his beloved snakes and Paul is swept along on a hair-raising rescue, then meets the unnerving residents of Raj’s home farm.
South of Hyderabad is Bangalore, the garden city of India. It too is renowned for its IT, but Paul has come to meet the city editor of the local newspaper, Vinita, to learn more about a prison where the food is so good, the convicts don’t want to be released. After an early morning visit to the local Hare Krishna kitchens, where 10,000 takeaway meals are prepared daily, Paul enters the central prison and meets the well-fed inmates, stumbling on a rehabilitation salsa class along the way!
Having met a number of Indian record-holders, Paul has an invitation to attend a live record attempt. Dr Ramesh Babu holds the most Limca records* in India and hopes to smash three records in just one hour – using some string, a frisbee and a skipping rope.
After so much time in cities, Paul now decides to take a leisurely train journey across to Chennai and India’s longest beach. During his five-hour journey, Paul notices a fellow passenger painting his portrait – with his tongue!

It clinks in our glasses, carves majestic landscapes and holds crucial clues about Earth's past. Ice - the solid form of life's precious elixir - is making its mark as an unusual tool of technology.

Apache, the greatest stealth fighter in American History, versus a Gladiator,crowd-thrilling killer of ancient Rome. It's stone versus steel, devious against direct, surprise versus slaughter, as these two go toe to toe in a no-holds barred battle to the death.

Paul is in Hyderabad, in the centre of India where the ‘North meets the South’. It is a city of call centres and IT (information technology) and Paul has been told that there is nothing worth seeing, but while driving to the hotel he spots a sign for Snow World. He gets out to investigate and discovers an unexpected world of snowballs and sledging.
Later that day, Paul has an appointment to meet his local guide, Raj, at a local museum. He is not too keen as Raj escorts him round the car exhibition, until he catches sight of its main attraction – the world’s biggest tricycle.
Warming to his guide, Paul accompanies Raj on his ‘day job’ – rescuing snakes from the city. Raj has devoted his life to protecting his beloved snakes and Paul is swept along on a hair-raising rescue, then meets the unnerving residents of Raj’s home farm.
South of Hyderabad is Bangalore, the garden city of India. It too is renowned for its IT, but Paul has come to meet the city editor of the local newspaper, Vinita, to learn more about a prison where the food is so good, the convicts don’t want to be released. After an early morning visit to the local Hare Krishna kitchens, where 10,000 takeaway meals are prepared daily, Paul enters the central prison and meets the well-fed inmates, stumbling on a rehabilitation salsa class along the way!
Having met a number of Indian record-holders, Paul has an invitation to attend a live record attempt. Dr Ramesh Babu holds the most Limca records* in India and hopes to smash three records in just one hour – using some string, a frisbee and a skipping rope.
After so much time in cities, Paul now decides to take a leisurely train journey across to Chennai and India’s longest beach. During his five-hour journey, Paul notices a fellow passenger painting his portrait – with his tongue!

A Space Shuttle has 2.5 million parts and travels at over 7000 metres per second. With armour that is designed to break and heat shields that are designed to burn, Spacecraft technology is literally 'out of this world'. Using 3D computer images, high speed cameras and microscopic analysis, experts from NASA and the Russian Space Agency explain what, for once, really is 'rocket science'.

This landmark series is a comprehensive history of the living Earth. This episode tells the story of the oceans – fierce waves, global currents and the future dangers of global warming.

Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, whose life story was depicted by Oscar-winner George Clooney in the hit Hollywood movie Syriana, returns to the intelligence trail to investigate the rise of Western and female suicide bombers in a new sequel of the ground-breaking documentary series Cult of the Suicide Bomber. On July 7 2005 London was attacked by a new, deadly enemy - the home grown suicide bomber. How could four British citizens turn themselves into human bombs and believe they would reach Paradise via mass murder on the London Underground? How can a woman like 29-year-old Palestinian lawyer Hanadi Jaradat eat lunch in an Israeli restaurant then deliberately stand between two families and then blast them and herself to pieces? For twenty years Robert Baer worked in the Middle-East as an agent for the CIA's Directorate of Operations. In this extraordinary two-part documentary series Baer goes back on the intelligence trail to find out why the 'virus' of the cult of the suicide bomber has attracted a new generation of ever more deadly adherents, Westerners and women. From the grim back streets of Beeston in Leeds - where the 7/7 bombers came from - to the Syrian capital Damascus, to the misery of the Gaza Strip, to the suffocating confines of the world's only jail for failed female suicide bombers, Baer uncovers the psychology and motivation of individual bombers. Like a virus suicide bombing has spread out from the Middle-East and infected a new generation of Westerners like Derby-born Omar Khan Sharif who, along with his fellow British citizen Asif Hanif, flew thousands of miles to blow himself up in an Israeli bar. Baer investigates who recruited Sharif and the 7/7 bombers. With extraordinary access to failed bombers and their recruiters Baer, for the first time ever on television, reveals the hidden personal motivation behind the suicide bomber's actions. And where the next attacks will come from.

Spartan, the bronze battle tank celebrated in the movie 300; versus a Ninja, Japan's legendary master of death. The battle pits the ancient world's most extreme warrior against an enemy who obeys no rules, and kills using stealth, poison, surprise weapons and unbelievable agility.

Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, whose life story was depicted by Oscar-winner George Clooney in the hit Hollywood movie Syriana, returns to the intelligence trail to investigate the rise of Western and female suicide bombers in a new sequel of the ground-breaking documentary series Cult of the Suicide Bomber. On July 7 2005 London was attacked by a new, deadly enemy - the home grown suicide bomber. How could four British citizens turn themselves into human bombs and believe they would reach Paradise via mass murder on the London Underground? How can a woman like 29-year-old Palestinian lawyer Hanadi Jaradat eat lunch in an Israeli restaurant then deliberately stand between two families and then blast them and herself to pieces? For twenty years Robert Baer worked in the Middle-East as an agent for the CIA's Directorate of Operations. In this extraordinary two-part documentary series Baer goes back on the intelligence trail to find out why the 'virus' of the cult of the suicide bomber has attracted a new generation of ever more deadly adherents, Westerners and women. From the grim back streets of Beeston in Leeds - where the 7/7 bombers came from - to the Syrian capital Damascus, to the misery of the Gaza Strip, to the suffocating confines of the world's only jail for failed female suicide bombers, Baer uncovers the psychology and motivation of individual bombers. Like a virus suicide bombing has spread out from the Middle-East and infected a new generation of Westerners like Derby-born Omar Khan Sharif who, along with his fellow British citizen Asif Hanif, flew thousands of miles to blow himself up in an Israeli bar. Baer investigates who recruited Sharif and the 7/7 bombers. With extraordinary access to failed bombers and their recruiters Baer, for the first time ever on television, reveals the hidden personal motivation behind the suicide bomber's actions. And where the next attacks will come from.