This World

In February 2011, millions of Egyptians came together to bring down President Hosni Mubarak in what became the defining moment of the Arab Spring. For the past year Children of the Revolution has followed three young revolutionaries as their differing visions for the new Egypt have begun to collide. Ahmed Hassan hoped a new Egypt would mean finding work. Socialist activist Gigi Ibrahim's desire was for an Egypt that would respect freedom for all. Tahir Yasin, tortured in Mubarak's jails, joined a new ultra-conservative party hoping to realise his vision of Egypt as an Islamic state. Children of the Revolution goes into homes, markets and mosques, witnessing families at war and personal dreams of revolution unravel.

When a tsunami struck Japan in 2011, it swamped the Fukushima nuclear complex causing nuclear meltdown and releasing radiation that ultimately would leave hundreds of square miles uninhabitable, and cost a hundred thousand people their homes. With unique footage and powerful eyewitness testimony from key figures in the drama - the engineers in the plant, firemen, soldiers, pilots, tsunami survivors, the Japanese prime minister and even the MD of the company operating the plant - Inside the Meltdown reveals what really happened in the extraordinary days after the tsunami as a disaster unfolded that Japan's nuclear industry said would never happen. It tells the story of workers inside the plant's pitch-dark, radio-active reactor buildings desperately trying to stop reactors exploding as radiation levels rose inexorably. 'In the control room people were saying we were finished,' says one. 'They were saying it quietly but they were saying it.' It meets the helicopter pilots who desperately dropped water from above the radioactive cores, and the firemen who braved radiation to spray water onto melting nuclear fuel. 'We chose all the over 40s', their chief tells the programme. 'These were the guys who were not going to be having any more children.' Inside the Meltdown also reveals the tensions between the plant's owners and an increasingly distrustful Japanese prime minister, struggling to get at the truth of what was happening, fearful the owners planned to abandon the plant. He reveals his experts at one point warned he might need to evacuate vast areas of Japan, even the capital Tokyo. 'That first week, we walked a razor thin line,' he tells This World.

This World tells the story of White Horse Village, a tiny farming community deep in rural China. A decade ago, it became part of the biggest urbanisation project in human history, as the Chinese government decided to take half a billion farmers and turn them into city-dwelling consumers. It is a project with a speed and scale unimaginable anywhere else on Earth. In just ten years, the Chinese Government plan to build thousands of new cities, a new road network to rival that of the USA and 300 of the world's biggest dams. Carrie Gracie follows the lives of three local people during this upheaval, filmed over the past six years.

Every Saturday night in China, millions gather around their televisions to watch Interviews Before Execution, an extraordinary talk show which interviews prisoners on death row. In the weeks, days or even minutes before they are executed, presenter Ding Yu goes into prisons and talks to those condemned to die. Combining clips from the TV show, never-before-seen footage of China's death row and interviews with a local judge who openly questions the future of the death penalty in China, This World reveals a part of China that is generally hidden from from view.

John Sweeney investigates the beliefs of Mitt Romney, the man most likely to take on Barack Obama later this year, and asks whether America is ready for a Mormon president. Sweeney travels to Utah to examine the appeal of the world's fastest growing religion. He meets the stars of its expensive ad campaign 'I'm a Mormon', who tell him of their dedication to family and charity. He meets polygamists, followers of an old Mormon tradition the official Church has turned its back on, he talks to missionaries who recruit people around the world just like Mitt Romney in the sixties, finds ex-members who claim they are cut off from their families and accuse Mormonism of being a cult, and he explores the faith with a Mormon apostle.

This World tells the inside story of the 2011 massacre in Norway, offering new insights into the life and mind of the perpetrator Anders Breivik, and exposing the hidden hatreds that inspired him. Through interviews with key players, including the Norwegian prime minister, survivors, the commander of the police response and the head of the Delta Force team that arrested Breivik, and including unique footage and unseen archive, the film pieces together, minute by minute, the course of the attacks and the response of the security services.

Decades of clerical abuse and cover up have left the Catholic church in Ireland at breaking point. Now Darragh MacIntyre reveals new evidence of a scandal that goes to the very top of the Irish church.

Self-confessed Eurosceptic Michael Portillo visits debt-stricken Greece. He believes that the euro crisis must have shaken the Greeks' faith in Europe's single currency and wonders if there'll be a desire to revert to the free-floating drachma. In Athens he meets everyone from a destitute young family to the former finance minister and the outgoing Prime Minister, and is surprised by some of their answers. Meanwhile in Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, Michael encounters the taxpayers who are paying most towards Greece's mammoth financial bailout while having to watch angry Athenians burning the German flag. With tensions rising in the Eurozone, is this the moment it becomes more united, or will it be pulled apart?

Documentary which captures the moment when the Nobel Prize-winning dissident Aung San Suu Kyi took the huge, risky step into everyday politics in Burma. This tells Suu Kyi's extraordinary personal and political story, how she turned from Oxford housewife into national leader and then international icon of resistance.

Andrew Marr looks back at Barack Obama's first term in office. When Obama stood before a crowd of nearly two million people, preparing to take the oath of office, it was a moment that many never believed they would see: the inauguration of a black American president. Now, through informal and candid interviews with some of Obama's own White House staff and those who have worked closely with him, Andrew Marr assesses how far this presidency has lived up to the huge expectations. Administration insiders like Austan Goolsbee, the economics professor who advised Obama through the worst economic crisis since the great depression, and Former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs PJ Crowley recount the stories behind the moments that have defined a tumultuous presidency, revealing how this extraordinary orator who entered the White House with a flourish of bold idealism and grand promises to change the ways of Washington has ultimately been replaced by a very different man.

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale. Simon Reeve meets ordinary Cubans whose lives are being transformed, from the owners of fledgling businesses to the newly rich estate agents selling properties worth up to 750,000 pounds. In this hour-long documentary for the BBC's award-winning This World strand, Simon gets under the skin of a colourful and vibrant country famous for its hospitality and humour and asks if this new economic openness could lead to political liberalisation in a totalitarian country with a poor human rights record. Will Cuba be able to maintain the positive aspects of its long isolation under socialism - low crime, top-notch education and one of the best health systems in the world - while embracing what certainly looks like capitalism? Is this the last chance to see Cuba before it becomes just like any other country?

Paul Mason travels to Spain to investigate how this once thriving economy has become the latest casualty of the Eurozone crisis. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have all received massive bailouts with strict conditions. But Spain is different. One of the largest economies in the world, for nearly twenty years "cool Espana" meant cutting edge architecture, the world's best restaurants and the magic of Barcelona Football Club. Spain was a European success story. For BBC Two's award-winning strand This World, Mason reveals how the transition to democracy after Franco's dictatorship created a financial and political system that left the country vulnerable to catastrophe when the world economic crisis struck in 2008. One of the keenest advocates of the European single currency, Spain is now the biggest victim of the Eurozone crash with youth unemployment running at more than 50%. Interviewing key players, including former prime minister Felipe Gonzalez and European commissioner Joaquin Almunia, Mason reveals how Spain's extraordinary credit and construction boom has collapsed, leaving millions facing poverty and the politicians still bickering about a massive potential bail out.