The BEST episodes of Panorama
Every episode of Panorama ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Panorama!
Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme. First broadcast in 1953, it is the world's longest-running public affairs television programme.
#1 - Are the Net Police Coming for You?
Season 2010 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/15/2010
Jo Whiley looks at how a proposed new law could end up disconnecting the millions of internet users who unlawfully download free music, films and TV.
Watch Now:Amazon#2 - Poor America
Season 2012 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/13/2012
Panorama's Hilary Andersson comes face to face with the reality of poverty in America and finds that, for some, the last resort has become life in a tented encampment. Just off the side of a motorway on the fringes of the picturesque town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mismatched collection of 30 tents tucked in the woods has become home - home to those who are either unemployed, or whose wages are so low that they can no longer afford to pay rent. Conditions are unhygienic. There are no toilets and electricity is only available in the one communal tent where the campers huddle around a wood stove for warmth in the heart of winter. Ice weighs down the roofs of tents, and rain regularly drips onto the sleeping campers' faces. Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities - they represent the bleak reality of America's poverty crisis.
Watch Now:Amazon#4 - England's Shame
Season 2000 - Episode 20 - Aired 6/20/2000
In a special investigation, Panorama goes undercover with English supporters at Euro 2000.
Watch Now:Amazon#5 - Educating North Korea
Season 2014 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/3/2014
It's one of the most closed and repressive societies on earth. Its ruthless young leader Kim Jong-un has threatened nuclear war against America and recently executed his own uncle. Yet in the heart of North Korea's absolute dictatorship, a remarkable university - paid for by the west - is attempting to open the minds of the secretive state's future elite. Panorama has gained unprecedented access to this most unusual of academic institutions - which is educating the sons of the brutal regime. Reporter Chris Rogers lives with them on campus and asks: can the class of 2014 help to bring the hermit nation in from the cold?
Watch Now:Amazon#6 - Drivers Who Kill
Season 2014 - Episode 28 - Aired 7/21/2014
Every day five people die on Britain's roads - but they seldom make headlines. Is this complacency leading to a lack of justice for victims and their families? Tonight's Panorama investigates whether a change to the driving laws has seen our justice system go soft on dangerous driving and questions whether in car technology is driving us to distraction behind the wheel.
Watch Now:Amazon#7 - Ebola Frontline
Season 2014 - Episode 43 - Aired 11/17/2014
NHS doctors and nurses have been working on the front line against Ebola in clinics in West Africa. Panorama spent a month in Sierra Leone with British-born Dr Javid Abdelmoneim filming his every moment working at a treatment centre run by the charity MSF. Using specially adapted cameras, Dr Javid records the physical and emotional impact of this deadly virus on whole families and on the medical staff treating them. Even in these desperately difficult circumstances there are moments of euphoria as patients who have been cured leave the centre.
Watch Now:Amazon#8 - Iraq: The Final Judgement
Season 2016 - Episode 20 - Aired 6/29/2016
As the country awaits next week's verdict from the long-delayed Iraq Inquiry into why we went to war and what the lessons should be, Jane Corbin returns to southern Iraq. With her are parents who lost a son, a soldier, there and the general who led British troops into battle. Why did it all go so wrong?
#9 - The Operation that Ruined My Life
Season 2017 - Episode 47 - Aired 12/11/2017
Women across the UK are suffering after an operation they were told would transform their lives. Instead, some of them say their lives have been ruined. For years women have been fitted with mesh-like devicesto treat prolapse or incontinence - often caused by childbirth. Although it's been a successful treatment for many of them, thousands of women in the US, the UK and Australia are now suing, after finding themselves in agony or suffering other serious complications. Reporter Lucy Adams meets women living with constant pain. She investigates how and why these devices were approved for use in the first place and asks whether manufacturers and regulators should have acted sooner to take some of them off the market.
Watch Now:Amazon#10 - Violent Women
Season 1996 - Episode 33 - Aired 11/4/1996
Statistics show that British women are committing more and more violent crimes. Panorama investigates the shift in the traditional role of women as victims or accessories to crime to the aggressor. Su Pennington talks to women who get a thrill from their own brutality, and to some victims of the disturbing trend.
Watch Now:Amazon#11 - Aftershock: The Turkey-Syria Earthquake
Season 2023 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/13/2023
More than 30,000 people are known to have been killed in the earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria last week, and the death toll is expected to increase. With the help of teams from BBC Turkish and BBC Arabic, Panorama follows survivors and rescue workers from both sides of the border, and asks if more could have been done to save lives.
#12 - Smart Motorways: When Technology Fails
Season 2024 - Episode 14 - Aired 4/22/2024
The rollout of smart motorways has been stopped because of safety fears, but there are still 250 miles of the network with no hard shoulder. The government says new technology will make existing stretches of smart motorways safe. But what happens when the technology doesn’t work? Panorama reveals how equipment failure and power cuts can leave motorists in danger if they break down. When the system isn’t working, the cameras won’t see you, the radar won’t find you and you’ll have no idea the motorway isn’t smart anymore. Reporter Richard Bilton meets the people whose lives have been changed by the roads that keep failing.
Watch Now:Amazon#13 - White Fright
Season 2007 - Episode 17 - Aired 5/7/2007
The show looks at several communities which have been split by colour and religion.
Watch Now:Amazon#14 - Murdoch's TV Pirates
Season 2012 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/26/2012
As Rupert Murdoch faces accusations of law-breaking and corruption at his British tabloid newspapers, Panorama reveals fresh hacking allegations striking at the heart of News Corporation's pay-TV empire. The investigation examines the role of former senior police officers in recruiting people to break the law - in order to bring down Murdoch's commercial rival. Vivian White reveals fresh allegations of hacking at the heart of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, this time involving its pay-TV services. The investigation examines the alleged role of former senior police officers in recruiting people to break the law in order to bring down one of the media mogul's commercial rivals. Postponed from Monday March 12.
Watch Now:Amazon#15 - Ukraine's War Diaries
Season 2023 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/21/2023
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Panorama asked five Ukrainians to start filming their lives. The result is a powerful documentary marking the first anniversary of the war.
Watch Now:Amazon#16 - Obesity: Who Cares If I'm Bigger?
Season 2022 - Episode 16 - Aired 4/20/2022
Eighteen months after the prime minister launched his strategy to help the nation lose weight, EastEnders actress Clair Norris, who is overweight herself, wants to know if it is working.
#17 - The Drug Wars That Killed Olivia
Season 2023 - Episode 13 - Aired 4/3/2023
When Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead in her home, the nine-year-old became the youngest victim of Liverpool's drug wars. There have been dozens of deaths in the city as rival gangs fight for control of the lucrative drug trade. Reporter Bronagh Munro investigates how the city came to dominate the UK drug market and how organised crime brought death to Olivia’s door.
Watch Now:Amazon#18 - Scientology and Me
Season 2007 - Episode 18 - Aired 5/14/2007
The show looks at the Church of Scientology which was founded in America.
Watch Now:Amazon#19 - California 2000
Season 1966 - Episode 23 - Aired 8/18/1966
A look at California's technology industry and its potential impact on the future. The Californian technology industry is by far the most advanced and pioneering of its kind across the developed world. John Morgan investigates how this distinctly Californian industry developed and the questions it raises for Britain and Europe.
Watch Now:Amazon#20 - Kony: Hunt for the World's Most Wanted
Season 2012 - Episode 29 - Aired 8/20/2012
Somewhere in the vast, dense jungles of central Africa, is hidden Joseph Kony, one of the world's most wanted men. For the past 25 years, Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army have waged one of the continent's darkest conflicts; using an army of abducted and brutalised children to kill and maim tens of thousands of people. But how has one man, said to take his orders from the spirit world, managed to escape capture for so long? In the wake of the infamous 'Kony 2012' internet campaign to bring him to justice this year, Bafta-winning reporter, Sorious Samura, investigates the myths surrounding Kony and travels to the front line of the fight to bring one of Africa's most bizarre and brutal leaders to justice.
Watch Now:Amazon#21 - North Korea Undercover
Season 2013 - Episode 10 - Aired 4/15/2013
While North Korea's 'Supreme Commander' Kim Jong-Un has been threatening thermo-nuclear war against the United States, Panorama reporter John Sweeney spent eight days undercover inside the most rigidly-controlled nation on Earth. Travelling from the capital Pyongyang to the countryside beyond and to the de-Militarised Zone on the border with South Korea, Sweeney witnesses a landscape bleak beyond words, a people brainwashed for three generations and a regime happy to give the impression of marching towards Armageddon.
Watch Now:Amazon#22 - Seb Coe and the Corruption Scandal
Season 2016 - Episode 18 - Aired 6/16/2016
In his first year as president of world athletics, Lord Coe has had to deal with the fallout from the biggest corruption scandal the sport has ever seen. Mark Daly investigates what Lord Coe knew about the scandal and when, and also uncovers links between the IAAF president and the man at the centre of the corruption.
#23 - Trump Voters: One Year On
Season 2018 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/15/2018
Donald Trump has changed the face of American politics, but what do the people who voted for him make of his tumultuous first year in office? Filmed over a year in Michigan, Wyoming, Texas and Florida, this programme hears from Trump supporters who hoped that he would 'make America great again'. But with so much promised, Panorama asks whether his supporters are still happy and if they would vote for him again.
Watch Now:Amazon#24 - Profits before Pupils? The Academies Scandal
Season 2018 - Episode 30 - Aired 9/10/2018
More than 7,000 schools in England have been turned into academies and are now run by private trusts. The people in charge are not supposed to profit from children's education, but what's to stop them from cashing in? Reporter Bronagh Munro investigates a businessman whose companies have been paid millions from school budgets and asks whether it's the pupils who are paying the price.
#25 - Who's Protecting Our Kids?
Season 2021 - Episode 30 - Aired 9/6/2021
Mariella Frostrup meets teenage girls who say they have been abused, assaulted or raped by teenage boys, and asks whether we should be doing more to protect our children. With exclusive new data from police forces, she reveals how reports of abuse have risen sharply in the past four years, despite government promises to tackle the problem. She asks if social media and pornography could be to blame, and if schools could be handling the problem better.
Watch Now:Amazon