Channel 5 (UK) Documentaries

Terror and tragedy Why did Damian Rzeszowski murder his entire family?

Dogs are man’s best friend who we shower with care, love, affection and gifts, but how much of what we put into our pooch’s food is actually good for them? What if through the attention we put into our canine’s culinary delights we are actually making some massive mistakes? In an industry worth billions of pounds every year, there’s a huge market for all kinds of dog foods. Be it commercial, vegetarian, raw meat or home-cooked meals, the British public continue to spend vast sums of their cash on their favourite pets, even in times of recession. Clearly, it’s in the dog food industry’s best interests to offer as much choice to the consumer as possible, but what is the BEST food to feed our pets? With the rise of reported chronic health issues amongst dogs, along with the incontrovertible rise of obesity amongst our favourite pets, the next nutritional battle ground to be fought in the UK is over dog food. An increasing number of dog owners in the UK are beginning to question and challenge the major dog food manufacturers and are going it alone when it comes to their precious pooches diets.

Programme looking at some of the most disturbing crimes ever committed in Britain.

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in the world. It is 127 years since he solved his first case – ‘A Study in Scarlet’ published in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 – yet interest in the great detective has never been higher. But what was the inspiration behind the character, and what made him so popular? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his creator, modelled Holmes’s lightning powers of observation and deductive reasoning on a real surgeon, Dr Joseph Bell, and added his own knowledge of fledgling forensic techniques, imbuing Sherlock with an unprecedented ability to solve crime in a completely revolutionary way. In doing so, he also changed the real world of police detection and deduction. The success of modern crime-solving owes much to Sherlock Holmes. Forensic scientists, crime historians and Sherlockian experts reveal for the first time how the fictional detective became a catalyst in the evolution of modern investigation, identification and the forensic sciences. Holmes was the world’s first individual to apply scientific methods to crime solving. He subjected each crime scene to an acute examination and used chemistry, bloodstains and minute traces of evidence to catch his man. In an era when eyewitness reports and ‘smoking gun’ evidence were needed to convict criminals, and police incompetence allowed Jack the Ripper to stalk the streets freely, Sherlock’s methods were revolutionary. He truly was the world’s first crime scene investigator.

Documentary about people who have become addicted to body-enhancing surgery. Meet the Scouse Pamela Anderson, a 58-year-old Californian who was born a man, a 59-year-old who has had everything from liposuction to her toes straightened, 'The Devil Man' from Kent, and Orit, a high-maintenance Israeli beauty who prides herself on looking like a doll.

All of us can be guilty of hanging on to too much stuff but when does not throwing things out become a problem and turn a house in to a hoard-filled home?

As British women jet abroad for their summer holidays, little do they know that predatory men lurk in these idyllic resorts, ready to romance them, simply to get into their bank accounts!

Exploring the symbolism and superstitions surrounding royal funerals. This edition documents the spectacle of Elizabeth I’s funeral in 1603, through to Queen Victoria’s meticulously planned funeral, to the intimate service for George VI to the public outpouring of grief for Diana, Princess of Wales.

It's dark. Quiet. There's no one else around. Out of nowhere a mysterious man pushes you to the floor and raises a claw hammer. What do you do? Try to run away? Beg for mercy? Fight back? Told in their own words, these are the heart-wrenching stories of the brave survivors who escaped the Yorkshire Ripper - and, in so doing, helped to put the monster behind bars. Peter Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Ripper, is one of the most notorious British serial killers of all time. He murdered 13 women and attempted to kill at least 20 more during a 5-year reign of terror. Now, in this compelling documentary we tell his shocking story through the ones that got away - the brave survivors who he attacked but who lived to tell the tale. It was their testimony that helped to put the Ripper behind bars, bringing his murderous rampage to an end. This enthralling documentary is driven by heart-stopping, intimate first-person interviews, as these survivors recount the attacks blow-by-blow, second-by-second. Along the way we interweave Sutcliffe's murderous rise and fall.

On Saturday 8 March, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 took off for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 passengers and crew on board; around one hour after take-off the Boeing 777 vanished from the radar screens. No one knows for sure what happened. This fast turnaround documentary tells the 14-day story of a mystery that has shaken modern aviation to its very core, and which will have a far-reaching impact on the monitoring and security of future air travel. Was it pilot error, technical failure, terrorism or some other freak occurrence? Using exclusive archive and testimony from some of the world’s leading aviation and security experts, we will track the search efforts, investigate the theories and examine the latest evidence.

Original accounts of 29 British POWs' attempts to escape the notorious Holzminden camp in Hanover in 1918. The Great Escape is one of the most famous events of the Second World War, but few people know that a similar event preceded it in 1918. The First Great Escape took place in 1917, from Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp in Hanover, Germany. Camp Commandant Karl Niemeyer, a man who had an appalling reputation for mistreatment, boasted from the outset that escape from Holzminden was impossible. He greatly underestimated the ingenuity of the British Officers. Within a month of the camp's establishment, 17 Officers escaped, although they were swiftly recaptured. Many other escape attempts failed, with the Officers being returned to confinement. It was against this backdrop that a small group of British Officers devised a plan to break out by digging a tunnel. This is the story of the incredible escape of 29 British Officers in July 1918, having spent 10 months constructing the tunnel right under the noses of their German guards.

A mountaineer who lost his hands and feet to frostbite tackles the biggest challenge of life: climbing the Matterhorn.

Documentary looking at Britain's drinking culture. Every weekend, the UK's hard-drinking party animals lay siege to towns and cities across the country - and suffer the consequences. On Newcastle's Bigg Market, one can see everything from broken ankles on the dance floor to broken noses on the street. An army of people, from doormen to cabbies and paramedics to takeaway owners, try to make sure the night goes well and are there to pick up the pieces when it does not.

Brand new documentary exploring the weird world of the women who work in the alternative adult industry, including stories of baked bean showers and crushing tiny cars in stilettos. Discover the bizarre and often hilarious world of women who work in the alternative adult industry, with exclusive access to their online playgrounds. Focusing on the increasingly popular world of webcam erotica, we follow some of the savvy businesswomen finding creative ways of cashing in. With 28,258 people accessing online adult content each second, the world's appetite for saucy screenplay seems to be insatiable. Applications on mobile devices that allow people to fulfil fantasies 'on the go' are currently valued at £80 million in the UK alone. With the UK adult industry worth over £1 billion as a whole, the money making potential is endless. As each webcam conversation clocks up a minimum of £1.60 a minute for these technological temptresses, these women can make over the hourly national minimum wage in less than six minutes. With the ability to earn a living from the comfort of their own homes, it's no wonder these online belles indulge in some of the most niche fantasies, no matter how peculiar. From baked bean showers, to crushing tiny cars in stilettos, we are about to enter their bizarre world...

Gypsies On Benefits And Proud will show the unique stories of three immigrants after they travelled freely to the UK with their families once working restrictions were lifted in January. The programme, which is the first episode of the second "And Proud" series, shows how easy it is for immigrants to now travel to the UK and join the nation's generous benefit scheme. Ion Lazar, 36, who came to the UK with five other immigrants, says it is so simple to walk into Britain and get everything given to you. He says on the show: “I know it’s very, very easy to take benefits in England… She’s give me home free, she’s give me money free, she’s give me everything." He is now focusing on earning £40,000 to take home to Romania to build a house in his small village where he grew up.

A celebration of Britain's best love double acts from the world of TV, sport and comedy.

The first part of a two-part documentary examining what encouraged one of Britain's most notorious murderers, Harold Shipman, to embark on his prolonged killing spree. This episode focuses on his early life, which was overshadowed by his mother's death from lung cancer when he was 17

Part 2 of the documentary cover how Harold Shipman was taken down

In the summer of 1986, the elderly population of south London were terrified by reports that a killer was targeting them in their homes. In just 17 weeks, Kenneth Erskine, the Stockwell Strangler, embarked on a spree of sexual assault and murder that shocked Britain. In this film, eminent criminologist Professor David Wilson explores the difference between Erskine's first and last kills in an effort to understand what triggered these crimes and how he was caught.

June 6 1944 saw the world’s biggest amphibious assault, one of the most important military campaigns in history and a pivotal moment in the Second World War. For generations, historians, archaeologists and other experts, in their attempts to reconstruct the events of the day, have scoured every battlefield – except one. Just off the coast of Normandy is a lost graveyard, where hundreds of objects lie on the sea bed. Using two mini-submarines, a team of historians, wreck detectives, scientists and veterans are on a quest to discover what lies below the waves. In summer of 2013, the multi-disciplinary team scoured a 500 square kilometre stretch of seabed. Among the astonishing objects they found were a curious collection of American Sherman tanks, specially adapted to float, and the wreck of the SS Leopoldville, a troopship hit by a German U-boat on December 24 1944 with the loss of 800 lives. In an emotional testimony, American D-Day veteran Bill Allen recalls his experiences as a teenage medic on a ship which ferried supplies into Normandy. On his fourth trip to the beaches, his ship hit amine and 94 of his shipmates died. Returning to Normandy for the first time, Bill takes a submarine to the seabed to pay his respects to those comrades who never returned. Submariner Jim Booth, now in his 90s, was part of a key five-man crew manning a midget submarine that lurked off the coast for days before the invasion. At first light on D-Day, they erected a light to guide landing craft safely on to the beach. The expedition team takes him on his first submarine trip since the Normandy landings. D-Day was not only a triumph of individual courage, but also a miracle of detailed planning and engineering brilliance. Tim Beckett’s father Alan was an engineer who had the crucial job of designing a deep sea harbour which would be used to supply the invasion. Tim now teams up with a computer graphics specialist and engineer to build a virtual model of Mulberry Har

The daring raid is undoubtedly one of the most famous in the history of the Second World War, the subject of a great British blockbuster and countless books. But what did the elite fliers of No 617 Squadron RAF, otherwise known as the Dambusters, do after Operation Chastise? This new documentary provides a wealth of insight into the spectacular missions undertaken by the squadron after the deployment of the famous bouncing bombs in 1943.

With the aid of dramatised scenes and location-based interviews with leading historians, this film tells the riveting story of how, over an eight-week period in 1586, England's greatest spymaster used covert espionage techniques to foil a Catholic conspiracy to murder Queen Elizabeth I and engineered the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Sir Francis Walsingham is recognised as one of history's master spies, thanks to the extraordinary trap that he set for Mary, Queen of Scots. Using a sophisticated network of double agents, informants, and secret codes he allowed Mary to believe that she was master-minding a plot to destroy Elizabeth. In fact, every move Mary made was tracked, by intercepting and decoding her correspondence. As a result, the Scots Queen was exposed as a threat to the Crown, and Walsingham was finally able to persuade Elizabeth to execute her. As the man who went on to prepare England's defences against the Spanish Armada, Walsingham should be a national hero. But his quiet brilliance is tinged with fanaticism. "Walsingham was responsible for protecting the Queen from assassination and he saw it as his duty to use every weapon in his arsenal," says historian John Cooper. So why was this dangerous prince of spies so dedicated to his Queen and country? In this tense documentary we'll explore new visual evidence that will transform our understanding of Walsingham's dark world. This will include forensic X-ray and dating analysis which will reveal a 'lost' image behind one of the best-known portraits of the wiliest Elizabethan. We'll also tell the story of one of the most successful and thrilling intelligence operations in English history through compelling, dramatised sequences.

The 16 Year Old Baby The Greenbergs are just like any other American family, except for one thing – their third daughter Brooke is very different from any other 16-year-old. Brooke weighs 17lbs and is 30 inches long. The size and weight of an 11-month-old infant, Brooke stopped growing and ageing when she was five. Her condition is so rare that doctors have named it Syndrome X. No one knows why she has failed to grow and develop, but academics now believe that her genes may offer new insight into the ageing process. The 16-year-old Baby draws on the extensive home video and photographic archive kept by the Greenberg family. The film follows them as they go about their daily lives with school and doctors appointments for Brooke, cake baking, tennis and college for their other daughters. Brooke has already lived longer than doctors had predicted. Experts believe that it is a mutated gene that stops her from ageing. Florida microbiologist Dr Richard Walker, working with geneticists at the University of South Florida, is looking at Brooke's case and hopes that by studying her DNA he will be able to isolate the gene that causes ageing. With this groundbreaking information, he believes that he could help to halt the development of diseases that frequently occur in later life. Featuring interviews with Brooke's parents, Howard and Melanie, her sisters, Emily, Caitlin and Carly, and her two grandmothers, Trudy and Jeanne, the programme looks at her highs and lows, the medical crises from which doctors did not believe Brooke would recover, the struggles the family has endured and the joy that Brooke has brought into their lives. The Greenbergs accepted many years ago that Brooke would never grow, but take comfort in the fact that cracking her genetic secret could make a major contribution to medical science.

Illegal Immigrants And Proud Every day, hundreds of immigrants risk a potentially fatal journey in order to enter the UK illegally. Following on from the Channel 5 programme ‘Gypsies on Benefits’, this documentary film follows some of the 800,000 illegal immigrants who are thought to have settled in the UK and who have managed to live their lives largely below the authorities’ radar. Daljit Singh, or ‘Bobby’, is an Indian national who has lived in London without permission for nearly 20 years. He lives in an Ilford graveyard – that is, when he is not in prison. Bobby does not fiddle the benefits system, but his four spells behind bars have none the less cost the British taxpayer over £50,000. Compared to his graveyard home, living in prison is a tantalising offer: “ I love to stay in prison,” Bobby tells us. “In Thame side we had Sky so we watched football all day.” Many illegal immigrants coming to Britain from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran take a route that leads through Calais, where a refugee camp has recently sprung up. In the camp, the programme meets Dawood, an Afghan who has been living there for a month. Dawood gives a tour of the lorries he hopes will be his free pass into the UK, pointing out the hiding spots which he hopes will keep him safe and hidden.

Football hooliganism was once called ‘the English disease’. While the police’s hard-line tactics have largely eradicated the violence of the 70s and 80s, with the World Cup right around the corner it is clear that there are still a few gangs hell bent on having a scrap. Featuring frank and honest interviews with the perpetrators themselves, this programme shines a light into the underworld of 21st-century hooliganism.

'The Girl Raised By Monkeys' is a film following the story of Marina Chapman, a 62-year-old woman, who claims that at the age of 4, she was kidnapped from her Colombian village and abandoned in the jungle. At this point, she said her own means of survival was to join a troop of capuchin monkeys and live as one of them for the next seven years. After leaving the jungle, she went through more personal difficulties, before been adopted by a family in England. She still remembers her time with the monkeys, but has no idea who her actual family are. Now with the help of her daughter, she is attempting to discover her origins. She also undergoes forensic testing in hopes of finally proving her claims. The film also includes dramatic reconstructions of her story.

In one of the most astonishing untold stories of the 20th century, Channel 5 reveals how a team of British intelligence officers found Hitler’s will and examines the subsequent quest to uncover the extent of the Führer’s wealth and to find his money. For the first time on television, Hermann Rothman recounts his part in the story. A German Jew now in his 90s, Rothman fled Hitler’s tyranny just before the war started and was assigned to the British Counter Intelligence Corps for the duration.

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, the age of conscription was 18. Among the thousands of young men who went to war were boys, some as young as 15, who lied about their age in order to join up. This programme profiles some of those who from playing war in the street to the most brutal of battlefields.

The world's most extreme weather captured by those who survived it. In Indianapolis, freak winds cause a 32-tonne stage to collapse on top of spectators, hurricane Sandy strikes a small coastal town in New York, and in Illinois, a tornado tears a peaceful neighbourhood to pieces.

This documentary exposes the criminal underbelly of car crime in Britain and the people who choose to get involved in it. From car thieves and spotters, to people who fake accidents in order to claim money from insurance companies, the show looks at people who are proud to be involved in car crime in the UK. Jamie Manderson is a 40-year-old former car thief from Swindon. He was once labelled Britain’s most convicted car criminal, although Jamie says that is wrong. “Not Britain’s biggest car thief. I like to think Britain’s best car thief,” he explains. During his 25 years as a car thief, this ‘rogue of the road’ stole up to 14 cars a night and could be in and gone in 30 seconds. Jamie now wants to turn over a new leaf – for his son, if nothing else. This new straight-and-narrow road means starting over for Jamie. He has never had a driving licence or car insurance and now needs driving lessons!

With extraordinary access to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) in New York, this documentary tells the story of one of the world's largest forensic recovery operation after America's worst terrorist attack in 2001. To date, almost 22,000 individual pieces of human remains have been recovered from the debris. Scores of scientists, specialist machinery and cutting-edge DNA identification techniques have been employed and more than 1,600 victims have been identified. However, of the other 1,115 there is currently no identifiable trace. Their families have no closure, no fragments of their loved ones to bury. The team at OCME continue to push the limits of science in their painful and painstaking work, but now the search for the final victims has become urgent. A decision has been made to transfer the 8,000 unidentified remains to a specially built repository next to the new 9/11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero. We follow the team as the latest phase of DNA testing draws to a close, and many families are left to wonder if there will ever be further ways to test the outstanding remains. The process is also followed from the other side – from the point of view of the families who have the OCME to thank for succeeding in identifying their loved ones. Geoff Campbell, an executive at Reuters, engaged to an American, was at the North Tower to attend a conference on 9/11. His Sussex-based family are one of several who have had numerous body parts returned to them over the years. The last piece, the sixth, was only identified in December 2013. Each time a piece arrives, Geoff's brother Matt, his mother Maureen and the family are faced with the upsetting ordeal of their grief being reignited once again. Firefighter Jack Fanning was in the vicinity of the North Tower when it crashed to the ground. Only his badly damaged helmet was ever found. With nothing else left of him, his daughter Jacqueline still questions what happened to her dad on that day and

‘Diary of a Prom Queen’ follows two sets of teenagers in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire as they start to prepare for one of the most eventful nights of their school life. The months leading up to the big day, preparations are kept in secret to create a huge impact. The cost of the big day costs in the hundreds. However it is not just the girls that concerned about their appearance for Prom, boy are just as eager.

From people at the mercy of terrifying natural forces to ja w-dropping narrow escapes and death-defying acts of courage, Channel 5 presents amazing footage of dramatic events and intense danger caught on camera by the very people who found themselves in life-threatening situations but lived to tell the tale. Two brothers put their lives at risk to rescue a four-year-old child from a burning car, a couple are terrified when a tornado tears through an airport in St Louis, a plane skids off the runway in Phuket and a couple with a baby fear for their lives when their light aircraft is forced to make an emergency landing in two feet of snow.

Everyone has experienced journeys that have not gone to plan, but this documentary reveals the moments when things go spectacularly wrong. There is shocking footage from a thrill-seeking speed-freak who takes his eyes off the road and finds himself smashing at full throttle into the rear of a car. Finally, a recently engaged British couple take a romantic trip up one of Europe’s tallest mountains – only to find themselves clinging to each as their cable car grinds to a halt and the weather closes in! All the drama is captured, relived and retold moment by moment, journey by journey, in this breathtaking documentary.

Documentary highlighting some of the country's worst roads with narration by Robert Webb. In Yorkshire, the programme meets a man living on a dangerous corner whose house is regularly used as a crash barrier, and has a look at the noisiest road - the A180. A lorry driver gives a tour of the most treacherous part of the country's deadliest road, the A9.

Imagine you've been in love with someone for 20 years. You've bought up a family together. You trust them with your life. And one day you wake up to find they've stolen all your money. This film explores the ultimate deception: people who've been taken to the cleaners by someone they loved.

Investigative documentary into the ancient mystery surrounding the death of Tutankhamun.

Find out where your favourite sitcom was positioned in this countdown special.