Episode 18

NOVA brings you stories from the frontlines of science and engineering, answering the big questions of today and tomorrow, from how our ancestors lived, to whether parallel universes exist, to how technology will transform our lives.

Highway Thru Hell focuses on a team of drivers who work for Jamie Davis, along with several other heavy recovery operations fighting to keep the roads open in some of the most dangerous working conditions ever seen on TV. The Coquihalla and nearby highways through BC's Cascade Mountains have some of the most difficult and fast changing road conditions anywhere. When it's snowing hard up top on the summit of ‘The Coq', 1200 metres below its pounding rain in The Fraser Valley. Add to that, Canada's busiest trucking route to the West Coast, Highway 1 (Trans Canada Hwy), and you have the ‘Bermuda Triangle' of trucking. Police and highway maintenance crews depend on Highway Thru Hell's heavy rescue operators to respond at a moment's notice in the worst conditions. In between the winter storms, the teams ‘off road' skills are put to the test. The rugged terrain near Hope, British Columbia dishes out some of the most unique and challenging recovery jobs over steep cliffs, down deep ravines and even in bodies of water. Highway Thru Hell is ultimately a series about man versus Mother Nature and the toughest men in the towing business being pushed to their breaking point. The stakes are high - lives, the economy and thousands of jobs depend on the highways staying open, and the last line of defense is Heavy Rescue.

The Handmaid's Tale is the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism in its militarized ‘return to traditional values'. As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred is a Handmaid in the Commander's household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate the world. In this terrifying society, Offred must navigate between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids – where anyone could be a spy for Gilead – all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.

Night Court centers on the unapologetic optimist judge Abby Stone, daughter of the late Harry Stone, who follows in her father's footsteps as she presides over the night shift of a Manhattan arraignment court and tries to bring order to its crew of oddballs and cynics, most notably former night court prosecutor Dan Fielding.

With rising international tensions in the Indo-Pacific, a brilliant and eclectic team of U.S. NCIS agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are grafted into a multinational taskforce to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet.