You don’t have to be familiar with Formula One--or the tragic destiny of Ayrton Senna--to enjoy this visceral encounter with one of racing’s finest talents. Spanning a decade of Formula One from 1984, Senna picks through archive footage to show a world where traditional driving skills are under threat from the unsporting forces of big business and technical engineering. A gifted newcomer, Senna goes from anonymity at the back of a rain-soaked debut at Monaco to three-time world champion--earning him legendary status in Brazil and igniting the hopes of a struggling population along the way. Between races director Asif Kapadia ( The Warrior, Far North ) shows us an isolated figure: unskilled at the politics of Formula One and speaking to journalists about ‘pure driving' as a metaphor for life. On the track, his fierce will to win--fuelled by a bitter rivalry with team-mate Alain Prost--pushes him to the limits of racing brinkmanship, and the scenes of Senna dueling in the wet, weaving down the straight or accelerating towards the disappearing space of a corner rank among the greatest moments of any sports documentary. --Leo Batchelor

It's hard to rain too many superlatives on The Blue Planet , surely one of the finest and most fascinating nature documentaries ever made. But nonetheless, we're going to try.

Long in the making, the idea behind the show was to, using some cutting-edge technology, film previously unseen areas of the ocean, and to investigate life beneath the waves. And in doing so, it pretty much encompasses the full spectrum of creature size. From the staggering, gigantic whale of the first episode, through the miniscule life that's documented as the programme progresses, it's a jaw-dropping experience.

It's also a very, very accessible one. Thanks to a diligent, warm narrative from Sir David Attenborough, there's plenty of fact married up to the sheer spectacle of The Blue Planet , although in many ways the stunning photography almost needs no accompaniment. It's timeless work, too, with immense rewatch value, uncovering both life that's never been photographed previously while charting the habits of the more familiar. Icing The Blue Planet 's cake is a series of short pieces documenting just how some of the incredible pictures were captured, and these are almost as interesting as the main feature.

Enough of those superlatives, though. Because The Blue Planet simply demands to be seen and enjoyed. Prepare, like many before you, to be mesmerised. -- Simon Brew

As befits the BBC's reputation for producing some of the world's best nature documentaries, the five-disc set Planet Earth is an epic travelogue, focussing on different ecologies and the unique animals that inhabit them. Once again, Sir David Attenborough provides the narration, as the cameras fly across the surface of the earth, zooming in to give us a bug's eye view one minute, zooming out to give us an eagle's perspective the next. The BBC's cameramen filmed more than 200 locations, resulting in some truly spectacular footage, much of which has never before been seen--such as the rare sight of an endangered snow leopard hunting in the Himalayas, or great white sharks leaping from the water as they hunt. The creators of Planet Earth endured some of the world's most hostile environments, from the deepest ocean depths to an Antarctic blizzard to a fetid, cockroach- and bat-infested cave, just to grab a few moments of film; it's worth watching the"Making of" shorts that accompany each episode, in order to see just what lengths they had to go to. The three extra episodes here-- Planet Earth: The Future --provide a sobering finale, as Sir David practically pleads with viewers to cherish the animals that we share this planet with, before it's too late. --Ted Kord

You don’t have to be familiar with Formula One--or the tragic destiny of Ayrton Senna--to enjoy this visceral encounter with one of racing’s finest talents. Spanning a decade of Formula One from 1984, Senna picks through archive footage to show a world where traditional driving skills are under threat from the unsporting forces of big business and technical engineering. A gifted newcomer, Senna goes from anonymity at the back of a rain-soaked debut at Monaco to three-time world champion--earning him legendary status in Brazil and igniting the hopes of a struggling population along the way. Between races director Asif Kapadia ( The Warrior, Far North ) shows us an isolated figure: unskilled at the politics of Formula One and speaking to journalists about ‘pure driving' as a metaphor for life. On the track, his fierce will to win--fuelled by a bitter rivalry with team-mate Alain Prost--pushes him to the limits of racing brinkmanship, and the scenes of Senna dueling in the wet, weaving down the straight or accelerating towards the disappearing space of a corner rank among the greatest moments of any sports documentary. --Leo Batchelor

As he did with the occupation of Iraq in <em>No End in Sight</em>, Charles Ferguson shines a light on the global financial crisis in <em>Inside Job</em>. Accompanied by narration from Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try--and paid the price. Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States. Unlike Alex Gibney's fiscal films, <em>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room</em> and <em>Casino Jack</em>, Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages Gordon Gekko-like behavior, but the number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger. Though the director isn't as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush's economic adviser. Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it's hard to know who to trust when conflicts of interest run rampant. If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform. And in the category of unlikely heroes: former governor Eliot Spitzer, who fought against fraud as New York's attorney general (he's the subject of Gibney's documentary <em>Client 9</em>). <em>--Kathleen C. Fennessy</em>

What do you get when you combine the resources and ethos of the BBC with the literary panache of one of the world's best narrative historians? The answer is Simon Schama's <em>History of Britain</em> television series. In this well-written and thoughtfully crafted survey, Schama, the bestselling author of books on European cultural history such as <em>The Embarrassment of Riches</em> and <em>Citizens</em>, has managed to be both conventional and provocative. He tells the official version of Britain's story--Roman Britain, the Norman Conquest, the struggles of the Henrys and Richards, Elizabeth I, Scottish rebellions and the English Civil Wars, the American Revolution, the growth of the British Empire, Queen Victoria, the industrial age, and Winston Churchill. But while sticking to a script familiar to anyone who sat up and listened during history class, Schama brings it all alive with memorable prose and presence--Simon de Montfort's rebel parliament is described as inaugurating the"union between patriotism and insubordination"; with Henry VIII, Schama says,"you could practically smell the testosterone." Schama is also particularly enlightening on the symbolism of buildings, memorials, language, and ceremonies, and on the complex relations between England and its Celtic and Catholic neighbors. If history must have gloss, then let it be presented like this. <em>--Miles Taylor (Amazon.com)<br /></em>