Mass.) WGBH (Television station : Boston

These four lavish productions are all-new adaptations of Christie classics.

This series chronicles the history of New York City from its beginnings in 1609 as a Dutch trading post, through the depression, onto the turbulent years of change in the following decades after WWII, to its present day status as one of the most important and influencial cities in the world. The final episode was created in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

When the National Gallery is flooded, the stuffy curator is forced to flee to the mountains of Wales, along with the paintings. He gets more than he bargained for when he meets the townspeople.

Picking up from this winter's Costa Concordia disaster and looking both back to the Titanic disaster a century ago, and into the future of sea travel, Nova looks at questions about cruise ship safety and the science of the ships' buoyancy.

Pope Benedict made history when he announced his resignation. In his wake he left a bitterly divided Vatican mired in scandals. Frontline goes inside the Vatican to unravel the remarkable series of events that led to the resignation that shook the world. Frontline gives a first-hand account of the final days of Benedict's papacy and the current battle to set the Church on a new path under Francis.

The blues is a seven-part documentary film series exploring the evolution of the blues, featuring rare archival performance footage of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon ... et al., also including over 100 newly-filmed performances by contemporary artists such as B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Beck ... et al. singing classic blues songs.

Mighty, elemental forces, fiery eruptions, titanic floods, the grinding of great ice sheets, and massive impacts from space molded North America. This spectacular road trip through our nation's tumultuous past sets out to answer three fundamental questions: How was the continent built? How did life evolve here? And how has its spectacular landscape shaped human lives and destinies?

"When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, every living thing in the blast zone was buried. However, life began to bloom again, and biologist Charlie Crisafulli has been documenting the return of plant and animal life. Also the mountain, like the wildlife, is coming back to life. Nova presents a pioneering look at the interplay between biology and geology that may help scientists predict future volcanic eruptions"--Publisher.

At the start of World War II, 14-year-old Carrie and her younger brother Nick are separated from their mother and evacuated from war-torn London to a rural village in Wales, where they now live with a puritanical shopkeeper and his spinster sister.

Nova and National Geographic present exclusive access to an astounding discovery of ancient fossil human ancestors. Deep in a South African cave, a special team of experts has brought to light an unprecedented wealth of fossils belonging to a crucial gap in the record of our origins that spans the transition between the ape-like australopithecines (such as the famous Lucy) and the earliest members of the human family. The film describes the 2013 discovery,...