At 15 years old, Henry Perkins is one of the most promising young ballet dancers in Britain. Last year he gave up life with his family in Hampshire to begin four years training at the The Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow, widely regarded as the best ballet school in the world. Only the second ever British boy to win a place at the academy in its illustrious 230 year history, Alan Yentob presents a gritty and challenging portrait of Henry's life during his first gruelling year at the school, 1500 miles from home.

Alan Yentob presents a profile of Bollywood A-lister Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest actor India has ever produced and a man with global appeal, whose Hindi films reach huge audiences from Australia to the Middle East, from Africa to Britain. Now he's no longer just a successful actor, he's a demi-god and everyone wants a piece of him.

Helvetica is a shorter version of the feature-length film by Gary Hustwit about the most popular typeface in the world, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year. Why Helvetica? Because it is everywhere. Millions of people use it and read it everyday, on public transport, newspapers, shop fronts and, of course, their computers. The film tells the story of how a typeface drawn by a little-known Swiss designer in 1957 became one of the most popular ways for us to communicate. It has been described as the Kate Moss of fonts - ultrathin, misunderstood and plastered all over the tabloids. The Museum of Modern Art in New York even staged an exhibition devoted to it.

Alan Yentob presents a profile of the provocative French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois, who was still producing cutting edge work at the age of 95. Memories of a disturbed childhood have produced fantastic and disturbing sculptures of giant spiders and poured-plastic body parts. As a girl she restored old tapestries, worked with Leger and knew surrealists like Breton and Duchamp. In New York she emerged as an artist in her own right, bringing dread, desire, sex and the psyche into her work.

Armed with 5,000 pounds of his own money to spend on art, Alan Yentob immerses himself in the frenzied fun of Frieze Art Fair week in London's Regent Park. He meets artists, dealers and collectors to investigate what is driving the current creative and sales boom in contemporary art, and also to find out what hot tips they can offer a novice collector.

Starting with a look at the latest self-help phenomenon, The Secret, Alan Yentob sets out to learn from the big hitters in the self-help world: Susan Jeffers, author of the bestselling Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway; David Burns, whose book Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy has sold over 5 million copies, and Anthony Robbins, who fills stadiums with his can-do performances. “Most people see things worse than they are so they never have to try,” says Robbins. “People say to me ‘I’m sceptical’ and I say no you’re not, you’re gutless.” Robbins has been the personal coach to a raft of celebrities including Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton. At last year’s Wimbledon, Serena Williams, another Robbins follower, was spotted with her own self-help notes: “My good thoughts are powerful. Any negative thoughts are weak. You are number one. You are the best. You will win Wimbledon.” “But let’s face it, none of us are going to win Wimbledon,” says Yentob. “And anyway, we keep being told it’s not all about winning, so why do we need these books?” “I think we all have pain,” says Amy Jenkins, writer of This Life and a self-help fan. David Burns, a pioneer of cognitive therapy, challenges pain head on with the idea that “your thoughts create your feelings, so your thoughts can change your feelings.” This is not just a fad; his self-help book on cognitive therapy is now prescribed by doctors around the world instead of antidepressants. Yentob’s optimism is bought crushingly down to earth by the Freudian psychoanalyst Adam Philips. “Freud said the purpose of psychoanalysis is to turn neurotic misery into everyday unhappiness, and what he meant by that is that people aren’t going to be transformed magically.” In search of the roots of the self-help genre, Yentob discovers Self Help by Samuel Smiles, which was published in 1859, the same year as Darwin’s The Origin of Species. “Guess which one was the bestseller

Alan Yentob traces the career of Richard Rogers, uncovering the influences that have produced some of the greatest landmarks in modern architecture. Tracking Rogers' life, from his birth in Florence, we re-visit some of his most famous buildings from the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Lloyds of London to the earlier and more personal work that defined his style.

Marc Newson is an industrial designer whose imagination knows no bounds. He has created everything from the iconic Lockheed Lounge chair - the most expensive piece of furniture by a living designer ever to sell at auction - to coat hangers, dish drainers and vibrators. His latest and most audacious project is a suborbital jet that just might be the future of long-distance travel. In this profile, Marc Newson talks to Alan Yentob about his inspirations, thought processes and designs. He remembers when, aged just 23, he sculpted the Lockheed Lounge from a piece of foam in a frenzied few days. “It felt like a monumental moment.” He couldn’t get rid of the Lounges back then. Today, with just thirteen in existence, they are one of the most sought-after collectors’ items in the world. The programme follows Newson to Bodylines, an extraordinary Aston Martin panel beating workshop outside Milton Keynes, where men who usually work on vintage cars create his limited-edition furniture pieces - and one craftsman gives him a piece of his mind about the flaws in his Black Hole table. In the marble quarries of Carrara in Italy, we see the processes behind his exquisite sculptures. Newson’s designs push marble into contemporary shapes, with each piece carved from one individual block. The programme also takes in the launch of Newson’s Space Plane, which, he hopes, will one day do exactly what it says on the tin.