bbc world service documentaries assignment

2,000 episodes

A window into our world. Original BBC documentary storytelling, bringing award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and “unputdownable” audio. New episodes every week from The Documentary, Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio, BBC OS Conversations and The Fifth Floor.

The Documentary Podcast BBC World Service

• Society & Culture
• 3.8 • 5 Ratings
• 10 APR 2024

Bonus: What in the World

A bonus episode from the What in the World podcast. When it comes to elephant conservation, Botswana is the world leader. It is now home to more than 130,000 elephants — or around a third of the world's elephant population. But this growing number poses major problems for humans: the animals destroy homes and crops, and even injure and kill people. To manage its elephant population, Botswana allows so-called “trophy hunting”. Hunters from abroad pay for permits to shoot and kill elephants — and can then take a piece of the elephant home. Botswana then re-invests this income into conservation efforts. It’s a controversial practice. Animal rights activists want Botswana’s government to seek alternatives to trophy hunting, which they deem as cruel. And in Germany — Europe’s biggest importer of African elephant trophies — the government has suggested there should be stricter limits on importing them. The president of Botswana recently threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany as part of the dispute. Shingai Nyoka, a BBC reporter in neighbouring Zimbabwe, explains the laws that govern trophy hunting and why they’re up for debate. And John Murphy, a BBC News reporter in London, recounts his experience visiting an “elephant corridor” — regular routes taken by elephants in their daily commute between their feeding grounds on one side and water on the other. Instagram: @bbcwhatintheworld WhatsApp: +44 0330 12 33 22 6 Email: [email protected] Presenter: Hannah Gelbart with Shingai Nyoka Producers: Alex Rhodes and William Lee Adams Editors: Verity Wilde and Simon Peeks

Forward Thinking: Jocelyn Bell Burnell

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a previously unknown kind of star, the Pulsar. A Nobel prize followed, but not for Jocelyn; her male boss took the honour. Jocelyn has never been bitter about the award, but says that today things should have moved much further than they have. More women are working in space research, but is it enough? In conversation with Nuala McGovern, she argues that different perspectives are essential for moving the science forward. One of these is a more global, inclusive vision to exploring the cosmos. India and China have prestigious space programmes, and the low-key space missions of Japan and South Africa collaborate with international partners from around the world. We discuss how global enthusiasm for space research can be used to propel change. Jocelyn Bell Burnell is professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford. This is the second of a series of four programmes from the Oxford Literary Festival, presented by Nuala McGovern, produced by Julian Siddle. Recorded in front of an audience at Worcester College Oxford.

Assignment: New Caledonia - new agreement needed

New Caledonia is an island archipelago in the south Pacific. It has an incredible diversity of birds and plants. Its history includes a period serving as a 19th century penal colony for the French colonisers and being an allied naval base during World War Two. An agreement signed 26 years ago about how the islands are run is expiring. But talks to make a new one are bogged down, as the opposing sides - French settlers and indigenous Kanak - both demand their rights. For Assignment, Peter Hadfield has been to New Caledonia to see if a new deal can be made.

In the Studio: Ellie Simmonds

Public swimming pools are more than just concrete and water. Often, they are the heart of a community, a place to exercise, to meet people and connect. Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmonds explores what it takes to design and build a swimming pool, and asks why they are so important in a post-pandemic era. She joins award-winning Dutch architects VenhoevenCS as they sign off their biggest project to date - the aquatic centre for Paris 2024. Their lead architects talk us through their plans for the new pool, looking at sustainability, accessibility and safety. She also hears from British architect, author and swimming advocate Chris Romer Lee about the importance of public pools, and why he thinks more of us should be getting into the water.

El Salvador's missing children

During El Salvador’s brutal civil war hundreds of children were separated from their families. Some were seized by soldiers during military operations against left-wing rebels, and later found living with new families in Europe and North America. Others were given up for adoption by mothers forced into poverty or displaced by the conflict. Three decades on some of those adopted are trying to piece together their lives and find their birth relatives. Former BBC correspondent in Central America, Mike Lanchin, follows their dramatic stories. Mike meets Jazmin who was raised in France and two sisters who managed to locate the son of one of their younger siblings and Flor who has long struggled to understand why her birth mother gave her up.

The Fifth Floor: My Ramadan

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It’s a period of prayer, celebrations and community gatherings and Muslims worldwide observe it by fasting from dawn to sunset. As this year’s Ramadan draws to a close, Faranak Amidi is joined by three BBC World Service colleagues who share their personal experiences and the stories that made headlines in their countries during this year’s celebrations. Asif Farooqi, Aalia Farzan and Deena Easa have been looking at how conflict, natural disasters and the cost-of-living crisis are impacting people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Gaza. Plus... Ramadan cricket, why do people want to get married during the Holy Month, and the TV series that everyone’s talking about. Produced by Alice Gioia and Caroline Ferguson (Image: Presenter Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich)

• © (C) BBC 2024

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Tom hanks’ costly wildlife docuseries ‘the americas’ gets sneak preview at miptv.

The NBC/BBC series five years in the making is thought to be the most expensive non-scripted program ever made at NBCU: "We asked ourselves, who is the American version of David Attenborough?"

By Liza Foreman

Liza Foreman

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Hollywood studios have long made a point of promoting tentpole movies at the Cannes Film Festival, using the Cote d’Azur location to highlight their A-list titles with splashy promotional campaigns.

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The footage, screened at international television confab MIPTV , showed extraordinary sights, including a bear making a treacherous half-mile descent down a crumbling cliff face, with two cubs clinging to her for life, images captured by a drone camera.

The Americas filmmaking team went to extraordinary measures crisscrossing the continent to capture its wildlife on screen. The team prepped for five years and made 180 expeditions over 8,700 miles of landscape to deliver the 10-episode show with “its toes in the Antarctic and its head in the Arctic,” said executive producer Mike Gunton. There will be an 11th, making-of episode featuring behind-the-scenes footage depicting the lengths the producers went to get the shots they needed.

“I had the idea that there was an area of the planet no one had ever really covered,” said Gunton. “It’s the Americas. What’s so exciting is that nowhere has this range. You cannot imagine anything more diverse. As a wildlife filmmaker, you are looking for superlatives. It hasn’t got elephants but it’s got everything else. [We] are delivering things people have never seen before.”

Animals, however, don’t read scripts. Gunton and series editor Holly Spearing detailed several horror stories of best-laid plans going to waste when the stars refused to cooperate with the schedule, like a bisson walking “off set” spoiling a carefully orchestrated day of filming. But patience also paid off, as in the case where, after three years of filming wild horses, the team captured an unexpected fight between two rival stallions, providing dramatic bonus footage.

Toby Gorman, president of Universal Television Alternative Studio, said the extraordinary lengths, and the extraordinary costs, required to make the series are evidence of the ongoing interest in premium factual programming. “It was expensive. There were so many risks. It is the most expensive, unscripted project in NBC’s history, as far as I know,” he says. “But we are confident it’s been worth it.”

Gorman said the choice of Hanks as narrator was a simple one. “We asked ourselves, who is the American version of [BBC wildlife documentary legend] David Attenborough? We agreed internally there was a list of one: Tom Hanks. What we didn’t know was if he would agree to do it. [But] it resonated with him,” he said. 

The team also lucked out with the music, signing up Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer for the series score.

NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution is selling The Americas worldwide. The series premieres on NBC in 2025.

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