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The Human Animal
1994 · TV series · documentary · 50 min episodes · 1 season
The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by Desmond Morris, which focuses on the behaviour of homo sapiens, examining areas such as love and sex, baby rearing, the importance of urban habitat and the roots of our creativity.
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One was Norman's Awesome Experience (three people get sent back to Ancient Rome) and the other was a documentary Desmond Morris's The Human Animal which I eventually found a rip that claimed to be from DVD that was better than any that I managed (even though I haven't found the actual dvds for sale which makes me wonder if it was sourced from dvd)
There is a whole genre of educational documentaries that basically have no point of view (other than general, popular consensus). For me, the best documentaries are basically audio books with very good illustrations, and while audio books don't work for me at all, documentaries do. From watching hundreds of hours of them, I think the best ones actually lack an overarching story (seeng as how reality usually doesn't have an epic climax). Because the content is being delivered so fast, there's some latency involved here, but the medium lends itself well to repeat watching, listening, or both.
Something like BBC/PBS "Universe" stuff from the late 90's aged very well because they are snapshots of discoveries and problems that now are not nearly as exciting anymore, but they tell you a lot about the very recent history of the subject. This goes for a lot of other subjects, whether it's art, or math, or history. Documentaries can be historical documents in themselves, just check out "Civilization" from 1970 (I think), or "The Human Animal" from 1994.
Soundtrack, narration opening, editing, those all hold clues to trusting or not trusting the content, and it's pretty easy to establish credibility and historical context early on. But they can also be the equivalent of an amazing lecturer.
Edit: one obvious addition to the biography section would be "The Quest For Tannu Tuva", parts of an autobiographical interview with Feynman, on YouTube as well. Edit 2: "The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Alan Turing" from 1992 as well.
This has been covered in the excellent documentary, The Human Animal. See it in 4 parts:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=The+Human+Animal