Horizon - Season 57 / Year 2020

Dr Michael Mosley immerses himself on the frontline of our prescription painkiller habit. In America, it is an epidemic. Now, new evidence raises concern about the UK's use of prescription opioids.

Naturalist Chris Packham investigates the impact a growing human population is having on the planet, asking whether the earth can sustain predictions of ten billion people by 2050.

The untold story of Britain's worst fetal poisoning scandal since thalidomide, when a group of ordinary mothers took on the establishment and won. Set in a post-industrial Northamptonshire town, the Corby Litigation Case was a landmark case with worldwide legal and medical ramifications - the first time ever that a court has recognised a link between airborne toxins and foetal development damage.

Investigating the scientific facts and figures behind the biggest public health crisis in living memory as a new coronavirus takes an unprepared world by storm.

Maitre d' and Extraordinary Places to Eat host Fred Sirieix and GP Zoe Williams open a restaurant with a difference, welcoming 20 unsuspecting diners for a slap-up meal. It all sounds normal enough, but this restaurant has something unexpected back of house - a functioning gym, where a group of fitness fanatics are poised on exercise bikes, treadmills and rowing machines, ready to burn off every single calorie ordered and consumed by the diners. This groundbreaking stunt for science strand Horizon is based on the latest scientific research, which suggests that when we are shown the astonishing amount of exercise required to remove excess calories from our bodies, we choose to eat up to 20% less.

Fred and Zoe also delve into the science of calories, including why we need them and why we are collectively eating more than we are burning, a situation which has left nearly two thirds of the population overweight or obese. They examine new science, learning that our genes influence our weight, not by changing how we metabolise food, but by determining how hungry we feel. They also delve into our microbiome to discover how a healthy gut could help us burn fat.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its launch, this film tells the remarkable story of how Hubble revealed the awe and wonder of our universe and how a team of daring astronauts risked their lives to keep it working.

Mathematician Hannah Fry and doctor and broadcaster Michael Mosley join an Imperial College, London, experiment to assess the brainpower of the nation, putting members of the public to the test in a battle of wits as they pit young and old, males and females, and tech lovers and readers against one other. The results reveal new science about how people's intelligence changes through their lives, while Hannah and Michael examine groundbreaking new science on how lifestyle and love of technology is changing the human brain.

Dr Chris van Tulleken, Dr Hannah Fry and Michael Mosley examine the latest research and explore some of the big questions about Covid-19 and the pandemic it has created. Michael visits the UK government's high-security laboratory Porton Down, where vaccines are being tested. He also uncovers what the experience of the 2002 SARs epidemic reveals about this one. Both were caused by coronaviruses, but certain key changes to today's virus have allowed it to infect the world, where SARs was contained.

Tony Slattery was one of the most gifted TV comedians of the late 1980s and early 1990s, only to disappear from screens in 1996 amid rumours of a massive breakdown. As he approaches 60, he has been touring the country with a show that explores his past and his mental health. Although depression was diagnosed, he and his partner Mark Hutchinson are convinced he may have bipolar disorder, so Tony wants to have his mental health reassessed. But it will mean opening up about his addictions and a painful event in his childhood.

The incredible story of how Pluto has been propelled from an unremarkable ball of ice on the edge of the solar system to a world of unimaginable complexity - where some form of alien life might exist.