Best New Zealand history series

The Great Acceleration (2020)

This remarkable science-history series investigates the blistering pace of human endeavour in space exploration, computing, energy, resources, Earth science and our understanding of the evolution of life itself.

101 Events That Made The 20th Century (2017)

The history of mankind is a never-ending story of change, revolution, and evolution - but surely no span of a hundred years can claim to have changed the world so dramatically, rapidly or so irreversibly as the Twentieth Century. At the start of the twentieth century the map of the world was colored to illustrate the pervasiveness of the great European empires. Everywhere, from China in the east to all but a couple of countries in Europe, ancient dynasties wore their crowns in apparent security. None of that survived the next one hundred years. But change does not come in on the wind. Change proceeds from events - a political row, an assassination, a natural disaster, a human error or stroke of genius. Great changes flow from such events. The most tumultuous events of the twentieth century altered the world on a scale unprecedented in human history. In this series we examine the 101 Events which, in the judgment of experts, including those who contribute to the series, most influentially shaped the century, our world, and our way of life.

Constructing Australia (2007)

Lucinda Brayford (1980)

Based on the novel by Martin Boyd (1946) this miniseries tells the story of many generations of a family who migrate from England to Australia and eventually back to England, suffering poverty and becoming social climbers. The family's social ambitions lead to conflicts between Lucinda and her parents over the attentions of Tony Duff. She therefore marries wealthy Englishman Hugo Brayford and moves to England with him. A series of failures and adulterous episodes in England lead to her experience of "geographical schizophrenia" and personality disintegration.

Frontier (1996)

A comprehensive account of Australia's hundred and fifty year land war, following the invasion of the colonisers.