The 14 greatest science and tech documentaries of 2025 thus far, from David Attenborough to Hannah Fry

Netflix
Bryan Johnson is an uncommon fellow by anybody’s requirements. A millionaire enterprise capitalist and anti-ageing evangelist, he needs to push his lifespan and “healthspan” to the very limits by taking a every day cocktail of practically 100 medicine and following a strict health routine. The actual miracle of Don’t Die is the way it manages to wrench any sympathy for Johnson from the viewers. His life-style relies on a deeply flawed method to science, however his mindset is way extra attention-grabbing than these of his tech bro contemporaries.

Disney+
There’s a sequence in Ocean with David Attenborough that’s as horrifying as something I’ve watched all yr: a backside trawler’s mechanical enamel puncture the seabed, churning by way of sediment as fish are swept into an infinite internet. Attenborough’s most political mission thus far is a catastrophe movie, warning of the catastrophic environmental penalties of business fishing practices. If that is certainly among the 99-year-old’s ultimate work, as he hints at within the documentary, it would do his prolonged profession justice.

BBC iPlayer/NBC
Who’s the US equal of David Attenborough, a person whose voice is synonymous with the best British programming? Your greatest wager will be the silver-screen credentials of two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks. He narrates this 10-part pure historical past sequence all concerning the unimaginable biodiversity of the Americas, lending it a shiny, cinematic sheen. Count on little perception into the local weather disaster right here, however what it lacks in real-world relevance, it (virtually) makes up for with its beautiful cinematography.

BBC iPlayer
Twenty years in the past, Bruce Parry spent months dwelling amongst Indigenous communities as a part of the anthropology sequence Tribe. Now, the programme returns, however in a really completely different world. With deforestation and displacement even better threats now than they have been within the early 2000s, Parry should do much more to realize the belief of the teams that host him, none of which has permitted outsiders to go to earlier than. There are such a lot of fascinating scenes in Tribe – from piranha fishing and political conferences to yagé(ayahuasca) rituals – that you simply solely want we may spend extra time observing. The temporary entry we’re granted by way of Parry looks like a present.

Netflix
We’ve got lengthy leveraged the innocence of kids for leisure – little one actors of the Twenties and 30s have been compelled to work lengthy hours, given amphetamines and even pushed into near-death experiences. The Twenty first-century variant of this horrendous follow is “kidfluencing”, when households construct monetary empires off the net antics of their precocious kids. Dangerous Affect follows little one pageant star and dancer Piper Rockelle, who was allegedly exploited by her “momager” after rising to fame at age 9. Warning: this can be a really grim take a look at the darkest aspect of social media.

BBC iPlayer/CNN
Whereas the early days of Fb are notorious because of the David Fincher movie The Social Community, Twitter’s origins aren’t so well-known. Twitter: Breaking the Hen traces the corporate’s historical past all the way in which again to when it was a easy platform for posting standing updates. The movie is most attention-grabbing when protecting the internecine energy struggles between Jack Dorsey and his fellow founders; it additionally delves into the technical points which have plagued the social media platform since its inception. And do you know that Twitter (or X, because it’s now recognized) may have began off with the identify Ketchup or Buddy Stalker? However its later chapters are additionally a welcome reminder that the myriad issues at Twitter didn’t start with the risky presence of Elon Musk – the cracks have been there from the very begin.

BBC iPlayer
Final yr, naturalist Chris Packham offered Inside Our Autistic Minds, a two-part documentary that noticed autistic individuals make movies to attempt to specific how their minds work to their family members. The follow-up season focuses on ADHD and dyslexia, two different extremely misunderstood situations. Whereas the sequence largely focuses on the social challenges that may include ADHD and dyslexia, there may be good science to again issues up, with some nice insights into the neurological underpinnings of those situations. There’s additionally a welcome give attention to the positives of ADHD and dyslexia, such because the enlightening incontrovertible fact that many individuals with dyslexia have above-average pattern-recognition skills.

Netflix
From the makers of My Octopus Trainer comes Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey, the story of a child pangolin saved from the unlawful wildlife commerce. Underweight and traumatised when he was rescued, Kulu should be rehabilitated by his handler Gareth earlier than he may be launched into the wild. Gareth describes himself as a helicopter guardian – he actually spends a variety of time hauling Kulu out of warthog burrows earlier than dusk approaches. It’s all unbearably cute, and whereas it’s honest to say that Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey is a contact too sentimental, it’s additionally arduous to not really feel an intense affection for this unusual, delicate creature and his brethren. Because the world’s most trafficked wild mammals, pangolins will want loads of goodwill from people if they’re to outlive.

BBC iPlayer
Season three of Hannah Fry’s information to the on a regular basis applied sciences we depend on is as enchantingly informative as at all times. This time spherical, she investigates rollercoasters, motorways and (inevitably) air fryers. That is extremely detailed stuff, and delving into the nitty-gritty of this taken-for-granted tech leads to some shocking discoveries. How did the inventor of the theremin affect the doorbells on our houses in the present day? Why have been frisky chickens key to the creation of fridges? And what, precisely, is an air fryer’s starfish? If you happen to’ve ever been tempted to take aside your home equipment to find out how they work, let this charmingly small-scale sequence will prevent from violating their warranties.

Amazon Prime Video
We’ve got obtained to know particular person octopuses in quirky roles: psychics, escapologists and unlikely academics. How fantastic, then, to have this two-part sequence about our tentacled buddies and their extraordinary skills. Our fantastically animated information to the life cycle of those creatures is Doris, an enormous Pacific octopus that beats the chances by surviving her harmful childhood and occurring to breed, dying shortly afterwards. Regardless of that sad ending, Octopus! is a light-hearted documentary stuffed with curiosity and humour.

NOW
Science fiction is our most potent technique of imagining the longer term – and that future is usually bleak. The first goal of this four-part documentary is to chart how sci-fi dreamed up the atomic bomb, then taught us relate to it, with concern and fascination that might go on to poison humanity’s relationship with every little thing else on the planet. Past that, although, Wonderland is a considerate, rigorous consideration of the previous 80 years of sci-fi in all its varieties, not simply probably the most apocalyptic or conventional. This can be a welcome salve for all these wounded by the surface-level evaluation too typically afforded to the style.

Netflix
In 2023, the world was gripped by the four-day seek for the lacking OceanGate Titan submersible, which had disappeared on a visit to see the wreck of the Titanic. We might finally be taught that the 5 individuals on board, together with OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush, had been killed virtually immediately after a deadly implosion. This feature-length documentary reveals how ego and negligence led to these tragic deaths. One notably chilling sequence sees Rush on an early take a look at dive, listening to an acoustic monitoring system that signalled when the carbon-fibre hull was cracking beneath deep-sea pressures to a harmful extent. The corporate later deserted this important safeguard.

Disney+/NatGeo
In 1983, Sally Experience was NASA’s golden lady: the primary US lady to go to house, she was among the many most well-known individuals on this planet, even showing on Sesame Avenue. However she and her fellow feminine astronauts have been topic to institutional sexism and invasive media consideration. This feature-length documentary is framed across the private life Experience fought to maintain personal, together with her 27-year relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy throughout a deeply homophobic interval in US historical past. There are many fascinating particulars about Experience’s profession too, equivalent to how the hand-eye coordination she honed in her former tennis profession gave her the sting over colleague Judy Resnik, who can be positioned on a later mission that ended within the Challenger catastrophe.

BBC iPlayer
Again in 1999, Strolling with Dinosaurs was a TV sensation, transporting viewers to our prehistoric planet by way of some cutting-edge-at-the-time visible results. These visuals have dated a bit of because the present first aired, so the time was ripe for a reboot. In every episode of the 2025 sequence, researchers play detective, uncovering historic stays after which extrapolating a wealth of knowledge from the bones and the encompassing setting. These imagined tales are charming and transferring by turns, whether or not we’re watching a child Triceratops chase a dragonfly by way of the jungle or an Albertosaurus pack cornering their prey. Take all of it with a pinch of salt, after all: there may be a lot about dinosaurs’ lives that we don’t and can’t know.