Noel Chanan

The story of an extraordinary woman, marathon swimmer Beth French, attempting the world’s most extreme swimming challenge. Driven to be a role model for her autistic son, and by her battle with lifelong illness (ME), Beth confronts jellyfish, sharks, wild weather and reluctant skippers. But as her journey unfolds, dangers of the sea prove easier to conquer than upheavals of the heart.

Explores the plans for the construction of the monumental dam on China's Yangtze River, the structure that when completed in 2009 will become the Three Gorges Dam. It is slated to be 610 feet high, 1.3 miles across, creating a reservoir 400 miles and the largest power plant in the world.

The story of Josephine Baker takes us on a fascinating tour of 20th-century race relations on both sides of the Atlantic, yet it leads to no conclusion, and black girls in search of a role-model tend to look elsewhere. Part of her appeal is her startlingly unique appearance. Simply nobody has ever looked or acted like her. She fits no black stereotype. Nor does she look like any recognizable strain of Afro-American. I'd always heard she was half-white, but it seems that her paternity is unknown, and her contradictory claims on the subject don't do much to enlighten us. (We are tempted to imagine quite an exotic mix.) Her origins in sharply-segregated St. Louis, where she is said to have witnessed a lynching, do not seem to have left her embittered. Perhaps she had too much to give. There is a special innocence about that smile, and when she performs her cross-eyed gag, we are lifted into a strange pixie-world, all its own.

Peter Batty presents a gripping account of the bloodshed and horror of the American Civil War. From the origins of the unrest between North and South, the specific events of the war and the eventual assassination of Abraham Lincoln, this program is a powerful, comprehensive account of the American Civil War with large scale battle re-enactments, superb contemporary photographs and period music.