1990s Documentary TV Shows

This daily German magazine show delivers interesting facts on numerous topics centering around technology, life, and bizarre knowledge.

Can you tell the difference between fact and fiction? Several stories of strange, mysterious and incredible occurrences are chronicled during each episode. It is up to the viewer to decide which stories actually happened and which were completely fabricated by the show’s writers. The answer is revealed by Jonathan Frakes at the conclusion of each episode.

C'est pas sorcier is a French educational television program that originally aired from November 5, 1994 to present.

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An intimate look into the personal lives of pop music's greatest and most influential artists.

This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers and featuring unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history.

A current affairs/journalism program that investigates unsolved cases and looks into various problems in society, religion and more.

Intimate Portrait is a biographical television series on the Lifetime Television cable network focusing on different celebrities, which includes interviews with each subject. Among the people profiled were Grace Kelly, Natalie Wood, Carly Simon, Jackie Kennedy, Katharine Hepburn, Carol Burnett, Tanya Tucker, and Marla Maples.

Dateline NBC, or simply Dateline, is a weekly American television newsmagazine series. It was previously the network's flagship newsmagazine, but now focuses mainly on true crime stories with only occasional editions that focus on other topics.

For thirty years, Zone Interdite has been the magazine that documents and analyzes the upheavals in French society. Conducted over time, the investigations broadcast in the program reveal the taboos, passions, and struggles of the French people at the heart of current events.

Railway-related documentary covering modern railway systems, museum railways and their facilities as well as items on model railway layouts. Politics and criticism is not left out; the series reports on closures, controversial model ideas, delays to reconstruction plans or smart commuter transport concepts.

Putting the "real" back into reality television, Australian Story is an award-winning documentary series with no narrator and no agendas — just authentic stories told entirely in people's own words.

Real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world are solved by experts using scientific laboratory analysis which helps them find previously undetectable evidence. Brilliant scientific work helps convict the guilty and free the innocent.

Then complex world of geopolitics broken down into ten minute, bite-sized chunks. You'll never sound uninformed at the dinner table ever again.

37° reports on typical life situations in our society from an unusual perspective: the camera accompanies a group or individual people, usually in a particularly exposed social situation. The reportage often outlines a turning point or a decision-making phase in the biography under review.

Exclusiv: das Starmagazin reports on the latest news and topics from the world of celebrities on a regular weekly basis. It covers the latest headlines relating to the stars as well as rumors and insights into the everyday lives of famous personalities around the globe. In addition to the 15-minute weekday magazine, there is a particularly detailed one-hour weekend edition on Sundays with additional reports and background reports on the celebrities.

Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and are now also sold on DVD. The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV Network. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, Canada Post Power Broadcasting, and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The Dominion Institute to become The Historica-Dominion Institute. While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes, they have made them freely available, and in the early years paid to have them run in cinemas across the country. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each minute counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.

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Stories of extraordinary lives and extraordinary lands across the globe.

Australia's leading international affairs program featuring fascinating, in-depth stories from the ABC's unrivalled network of foreign correspondents.

HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime-schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition.

Documentaries showing faces and places that make up the way we live today.

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Globe Trekker is an adventure tourism television series produced by Pilot Productions. The British series was inspired by the Lonely Planet travelbooks and began airing in 1994. Globe Trekker is broadcast in over 40 countries across six continents. Each episode features a host, called a traveller, who travels with a camera crew to a country—often, a relatively exotic locale—and experiences the sights, sounds, and culture that the location has to offer. Special episodes feature in-depth city, beach, dive, shopping, history, festival, and food guides. The show often goes far beyond popular tourist destinations in order to give viewers a more authentic look at local culture. Presenters usually participate in different aspects of regional life, such as attending a traditional wedding or visiting a mining community. They address the viewer directly, acting as tourists-turned-tour guides, but are also filmed interacting with locals and discovering interesting locations in unrehearsed sequences. Globe Trekker also sometimes includes brief interviews with backpackers who share tips on independent travel in that particular country.

Where Are They Now? was a television series on VH1 that featured past celebrities and updated on their current professional and personal status. Each episode was dedicated to another genre. Though not always in sequence, some episodes were a continuation of the motif of episodes from the past. Those episodes sometimes had Roman numerals in their title to signify their sequel status.

Showcasing the best in international documentaries, Storyville has developed an enviable reputation since its inception more than a decade ago. Screening over 340 films, from some 70 different countries, the strand has garnered a staggering array of awards: five Oscars, 15 Griersons, three Peabodys and two International Emmys. In true, unique, Storyville style, the new series promises to deliver the strand's usual eclectic mix of compelling stories from across the globe.

Hosted by Bill Kurtis, American Justice looks at groundbreaking criminal cases, presenting viewers with an inside look at the case through the eyes of those directly involved, ranging from law enforcement officers to the victims.

A documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.

For more than twenty-six years, the show has offered reports abroad, surveys of social phenomena and portraits. Because it is sometimes difficult to understand the life of your neighbor or of everyone you meet in the street, Special Envoy will do it for you: listen, question, understand, investigate.

Prematurely deceased people are given the opportunity to correct something that went wrong in their lives and thus change them for the better.

The flagship documentary series show distinctive, compelling films that offer a snapshot of life in Britain today.

Based on the popular BBC series running since 1979, the PBS Antiques Roadshow combines history with discovery. Each year, the show visits a handful of cities to appraise items brought in by viewers. Are these items worth a lot of money, more than the visitors expect?

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British television series which features unusual and often elaborate architectural homebuilding projects.

An educational series explaining the operation of the solar system using 3D animation. Its 52 episodes provide a week-by-week description of the operation of the solar system.

HBO First Look is an American television show on HBO that chronicles up and coming movies. It first started in 1992 with a documentary on A League of Their Own starring Tom Hanks, and still airs today. The series shows behind-the-scenes looks at the filming and interviews with the actors. The show is part documentary and part advertisement. It airs on HBO with no set schedule.

True Life is a documentary series running on MTV since March 24, 1998. Each episode follows a particular topic, such as heroin addiction as in the first episode, "Fatal Dose." The show is created by following a series of subjects by a camera crew through a certain part of their lives.

Time Team is a British television series which has been aired on British Channel 4 from 1994. Created by television producer Tim Taylor and presented by actor Tony Robinson, each episode featured a team of specialists carrying out an archaeological dig over a period of three days, with Robinson explaining the process in layman's terms. This team of specialists changed throughout the series' run, although has consistently included professional archaeologists such as Mick Aston, Carenza Lewis, Francis Pryor and Phil Harding. The sites excavated over the show's run have ranged in date from the Palaeolithic right through to the Second World War.

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Zembla is a Dutch television documentary programme by VARA and NPS. The documentaries are based on in-depth research which can take months. The subjects are often controversial. A documentary in 2001 about fraud in the Dutch construction sector led to parliamentary inquiries. In May 2006 the programme exposed the fact that politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lied in her claim for asylum, which led to her resignation from parliament.