Timewatch - Season 30 / Year 2011
Season 30 / Year 2011
Episodes
Code Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes
Documentary that reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineercombined to hack into Hitler's personal super-code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised.
The Most Courageous Raid of WWII
Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the German Dams
James Holland presents an analysis of the legendary 1943 Dam Busters raid, a low-level night mission that took 19 Lancaster bombers deep into the heart of enemy territory to destroy German dams with a brand newweapon - the bouncing bomb.
Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story
Following on from his documentary Operation Mincemeat, based on his book of the same name, writer and presenter Ben MacIntyre returns to the small screen to bring to life his other bestselling book - Agent Zigzag.
As part of the Timewatch series, MacIntyre reveals the gripping true story of Britain's most extraordinary wartime double agent, Eddie Chapman. A notorious safe-breaker before the war, Chapman duped the Germans so successfully that he was awarded their highest decoration, the Iron Cross. He remains the only British citizen ever to win one.
Including remarkable and newly discovered footage from an interview Chapman gave three years before his death in 1997, the programme goes on the trail of one of Britain's most unlikely heroes - a story of adventure, love, intrigue and astonishing courage.
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Abbott Elementary
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Fire Country
In Fire Country, seeking redemption and a shortened prison sentence, young convict Bode Donovan joins a firefighting program that returns him to his small Northern California hometown, where he and other inmates work alongside elite firefighters to extinguish massive blazes across the region.
The Handmaid's Tale
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.