When a crane driver collapses 180 feet above the ground, the ambulanceman attempting to rescue him must grapple not just with the obvious dangers of the situation but with his own fear of heights. In the Isles of Scilly, the dramatic rescue of a lone yachtsman is captured on video, and in Manchester a 3-year-old boy and his dog Max go missing.

Tonight's stories include the capsizing accident that left a young sailor trapped underwater; and the two cavers entombed by a rockfall who used smoke signals to help their rescuers find them.

This week's stories include the fire-fighters who were thrown through the air like rag dolls when a barn exploded in a freak flash fire.

Tonight's reconstructions of real-life rescues include a man who was overcome by fumes in an underground petrol tank, and a little boy plunges through a hole whilst sledging, into a freezing, fast-running stream.

Tonight, the catalogue of errors that led to disaster on a sandbank 12 miles off the Essex coast; the husband and wife who exhibited completely different symptoms of poisoning at the same time; and the woman who came to the rescue of footballer Steve Nicol after he fell through the ice of a frozen lake trying to rescue his dog.

Tonight, the mystery of the diver who went missing at midnight in a Scottish loch, only to be found miles away on dry land; the car crash which left a man bleeding badly and unable to tell his rescuers about the hidden medical conditions which could kill him; and the chimney pot which crashed through a Brighton roof during a storm, trapping a man on his bed beneath.

Tonight, the school diving trip to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands that almost ended in disaster; the airship on a test flight which crashed into the top of a tree and ended up resting on branches not strong enough to bear its weight; and the inspired use of a fork-lift truck to release a cyclist pinned under a 38-tonne lorry.

Tonight, the British nurse airlifted out of Sierra Leone after contracting a highly contagious killer virus; and the pilot who swooped from the skies to throw a life raft to a drowning man. Plus, advice on staying healthy abroad.

More reconstructions of dramatic real-life rescues, including the skills of a lifeboat crew being tested to the limits, the story of a soldier who, with a wooden stake lodged in his chest after a car crash, scrambled 30 feet up a motorway embankment to try to get help, and how the number 1471 saved the life of a shop assistant.

Tonight: how rescuers risked their lives on the sands off Southend to save a trapped teenager before the tide engulfed him; the detective work required to locate a lorry driver who has a mobile phone but can't use it to make anyone aware of his plight; and the chain of people who refused to allow a man to die after a crash broke bones in every limb of his body, injuries that later required 10 metal plates, 32 pins, 50 screws and six grams of gold.