The National Gallery in London is one of the great museums of the world with 2400 paintings from the 13th to the end of the 19th century. Almost every human experience is represented in one or the other of the paintings. The sequences of the film show the public in various galleries; the education programs, and the scholars, scientists and curators, studying, restoring and planning the exhibitions. The relation between painting and storytelling is explored.

In episode two, Professor Brian Cox is off to India, where he assesses arguably the first evidence of rational thought in literature, the poetry of the Vedic monks. They pondered mankind's origins, realising there must have been a day with no yesterday - a day of creation - prompting the age-old question of where did the universe come from? Brian marvels that the universe seems to follow a set of rules, the laws of physics, allowing space to be considered on the grandest scale, travelling to the most distant, farthest reaches of the cosmos just by using our minds. Brian also visits Japan, and offers viewers the idea that man lives in just one of an infinite number of universes that are being made all the time.

Julien Temple's epic time-travelling voyage to the heart of his hometown. From musicians, writers and artists to dangerous thinkers, political radicals and above all ordinary people, this is the story of London's immigrants, its bohemians and how together they changed the city forever. Reaching back to the dawn of film in London at the start of the 20th century, the story unfolds through film archive, voices of Londoners past and present and the flow of popular music across the century; a stream of urban consciousness, like the river which flows through its heart. It ends now, as London prepares to welcome the world to the 2012 Olympics.

For centuries, man has yearned for an earthly paradise, and no place better encapsulates this desire than Shangri-La - but was it ever real? The tale of an earthly paradise is among the most enduring myths in the world. From Sumerian epic to the 'islands of the blest' in Celtic literature, it has been a recurring theme through many bodies of literature and for thousands of years. Not surprisingly, then, modern people have also been drawn to the dream of a lost paradise where the ravages of time and history have been held back, where human beings live in harmony with nature, and where the wisdom of the planet is saved for future generations. In other words, to a Shangri-La.

Enter creator J.R.R. Tolkien's fantastical world of hobbits, orcs and wizards, and uncover the real life influences that shaped his epic fantasy, 'The Lord of the Rings'.

On a spectacular journey through Renaissance Italy, Andrew Graham-Dixon searches for the shadowy figure who wrote one of the most important books on art and looks at some dazzling works, including masterpieces of the early Renaissance by Giotto, Masaccio and Donatello. Giorgio Vasari was the grandaddy of all art critics, travelling Italy in the 16th century for his definitive Lives of the Artists. It was a time of miracles that he named 'the Renaissance'.