Best documentaries on BBC iPlayer

Dramatic mobile phone video and eyewitness accounts tell the story of the 2024 floods that swept through towns in Valencia, to discover the role climate change may have played in a disaster that caused 228 deaths. The programme examines why a mobile phone alert was sent two hours too late, and how rising populations worldwide can force people to live in areas at risk of flooding

Amol visits the Maha Kumbh Mela religious festival in northern India, where up to 500 million pilgrims from all over the globe gather in a temporary megacity the size of Manhattan, at the confluence of three sacred rivers. There they wait to purify themselves in the waters and gain salvation for themselves and their families. This is a profoundly personal journey for Amol, who was born in India to a practising Hindu family. Having lost his father three years ago, he hopes to reconnect with his birthplace and come to terms with his grief

The inside story of the 2016 robbery and its impact, with those close to the case revealing details about the crime for the first time. Featuring interviews with friends of the family, police officers and journalists who have followed the case, this documentary recalls the fateful night when the US reality TV star was robbed of millions of dollars' worth of jewellery in Paris at gunpoint

Adam Curtis's documentary exploring life in Britain at the end of the 20th century

Following complex murder investigations, minute by minute, from the multiple perspectives of detectives and specialists.

In December 2024, the world witnessed the toppling of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, ending a 13-year civil war. However, beneath the celebrations is a grim legacy - the disappearance of over 100,000 Syrians. This programme offers a look inside one of the most brutal campaigns of state repression in modern history - told by those who endured it and those who enforced it

The extraordinary story of Baroness Mone of Mayfair, the millionaire lingerie entrepreneur, who's now embroiled in a PPE scandal which broke in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic as told through testimonies of fomer employees

Juliet Stevenson narrates a dramatised documentary examining how Jane Austen became one of the world's most well-known and critically acclaimed novelists, with Emoke Zsigmond as the author

The evolution of the prehistoric giants, using computer graphics and special effects to portray Earth as scientists think it was millions of years ago. Narrated by Bertie Carvel

An exploration of one of the IRA's most significant attacks on mainland Britain during the Troubles, which killed five people and seriously injured 34 others. Directly targeting Margaret Thatcher, the bomb was planted three weeks before the Conservative Party conference, hidden beneath a bathtub in room 629 of Brighton's Grand Hotel. This programme features new testimony from many of those affected and an interview Patrick Magee gave in 2022 about his role in the bombing