Greetings and best wishes for the holiday season, MagellanTV circumnavigators!
Our annual trip around the Sun soon comes to a close, inviting us to ponder our experiences of this year. Many of us accomplished great things, learned great things, and, most importantly, watched great things.
Our members’ favorite documentaries of the year reflect a profound interest in our rapidly changing world. Conservation efforts, new archaeological excavations, and scientific advancements have opened our eyes like never before.
Whether you’re enjoying our docs from your cozy home in Ohio, an expansive hacienda in Mexico, or a warm chalet in the Alps, we hope you’ll consider watching some of these top MagellanTV documentaries and series from 2024.
Happy New Year!
True Crime
#1 - Fred Dinenage Murder Casebook
Any true crime hobbyist can attest that the most ludicrous stories are often the ones that are true. In Murder Casebook, Fred Dinenage takes a close look at murders across the United Kingdom during the 20th century. A prolific crime journalist with 40 years of experience, Dinenage demonstrates his chops as he discusses in detail the lives of the victims and their families as well as those of real-life villains.
Runner Up - Crimes that Shook Australia
Australia is a wonderfully diverse and beautiful country, but it isn’t immune to the problems that plague other modern societies. As firsthand accounts from police and local media demonstrate, some infamous and disturbing crimes have taken place there over the years. In Crimes that Shook Australia, prolific journalist Stan Grant conducts comprehensive investigations to dramatically reconstruct a number of these shocking cases.
Nature
#1 - WIld About New Zealand
As the backdrop of Peter Jackson’s beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand is nothing if not stunning! In Wild About New Zealand, Gus Roxburgh journeys across the country’s national parks to learn more about conservation efforts of rangers and scientists to protect the land they care so passionately about.
Runner Up - Fascinating Places
From deserts as barren as the surface of Mars to caves that glow with the luminescence of silkworms, our world is full of fascinating places. This documentary series invites you to view breathtaking landscapes, intriguing animal behavior, and the impressive ways in which human beings learn to live among geographic anomalies. Indeed, as its title suggests, Fascinating Places will take you to unforgettable destinations around the globe.
War & Military
#1 - Battlefield America
Though it might sound like a popular video game franchise with a new subtitle, Battlefield America – a MagellanTV original series, produced in association with the American Battlefield Trust – is actually among our most popular documentaries of the year! This deep dive into the U.S. Civil War explores six major battles and campaigns of the tragic conflict that pitted the Blue against the Gray. In this thrilling documentary series, historians as well as military tacticians evaluate the strategic methods of Union and Confederate forces alike.
Runner Up - Beyond the Myth: The SS Unveiled
From Indiana Jones and Star Wars to Rebel Moon and Wolfenstein, plenty of media employ literal or symbolic Nazis as antagonists. The horrifying crimes of the real SS have solidified their place on the wrong side of history. In six episodes, the MagellanTV original Beyond the Myth: The SS Unveiled offers a break from talking about fictional space cowboys, freedom fighters, and bad guys in favor of a comprehensive discussion about what made history’s most heinous mass murderers tick.
Space & Science
#1 - Planet Hunting with the James Webb Space Telescope
As distant as interstellar travel may feel for us Earthlings, artificial intelligence and powerful telescopes have provided scientists with a much clearer picture of the cosmos in recent years. This documentary, a MagellanTV original, shares how infrared detection and the James Webb Space Telescope help us answer important questions about the Universe. Can any exoplanets support life? How common is life in the cosmos? Answers lie in unraveling profound mysteries that have persisted since a mere 50 million years after the Big Bang.
Runner Up - FAST: The Celestial Eye
This curious documentary is as much a discussion of architecture as of the cosmos. Over a decade ago, plans for China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) presented to engineers the unique challenge of building one of the biggest telescopes of all time and nestling it among perilous mountains. FAST: The Celestial Eye chronicles this immense engineering challenge to celebrate the birth of humanity’s biggest radio telescope.
History
#1 - Maya: Ancient Metropolis
The Mayan civilization has been baffling enough for some to credit Mayan prowess in mathematics and astronomy to communication with alien life! Apart from great pyramidal ruins, little physical evidence of this powerful civilization has come to light until now. As Maya: Ancient Metropolis discusses in detail, recent archaeological excavations reveal the lost citadels of Tikal in the Guatemalan jungle, a sacred underground river (or “cenote”) at Chichen Itza in northern Yucatan, and a network of tunnels northeast of Mexico City in Teotihuacan.
Runner Up - Egypt: The Temples Saved from the Nile
Literally showing how to walk like an Egyptian, Egypt: The Temples Saved from the Nile closely retraces the steps of pharaohs from Ramses II through Cleopatra and Roman occupiers. This exceptional international effort documents the turbulent history of the ancient temples to explore millennia of Egyptian heritage.
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