Darwin's Brave New World (2009)

Featuring a superb cast and commentators including David Suzuki, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond and Iain McCalman, this is the story of how four young voyagers changed our world – forever. The epic adventures of Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace would revolutionise science, turn society on its head and give birth to an extraordinary theory. Charles Darwin's experiences in the Southern Hemisphere, and particularly in Australasia, convinced him that everything he'd been told about life on earth might not be true. On his return to England, his incendiary idea – evolution by means of natural selection – grew into an obsession. In this brilliant dramatised series we meet the man, his family, and the colleagues who supported him through years of illness, isolation, agonizing self-doubt and religious crisis. We gain a glimpse into the courage and tenacity it took to change the way we understand our world and our place in it.