Besieged Fortresses
Channel: Curiosity Channel (DStv 185)
TX Time: 19h00
Genre: Documentary Series, History, Docu-Drama
Built at strategic points, and fitted with impressive fortifications and ingenious systems to counter attacks, fortresses are thought to be impenetrable.
And yet, certain skillful warlords have successfully stormed them. How did they manage this?
By recounting how some of the most remarkable sieges - in ancient times or in medieval history - played out, this series revisits the construction of these megastructures and reveals the different strategies used to lay or to endure a siege.
Thanks to CGI, dramatised scenes, and with the help of key experts, it immerses us in the compelling confrontation between the construction genius of the military strategists and the ingenuity of some exceptional warriors.
Serengeti Speed Queen
Channel: Nat Geo Wild (DStv 182 / StarSat 221)
TX Time: 18h00
Genre: Wildlife, Documentary
Nzuri, a first-time Mom, is forced to add strategy to speed in order to avoid predators, feed her cubs and steer them successfully to adulthood.
Project Greenglow - The Quest for Gravity Control
Channel: Da Vinci (DStv 318)
TX Time: 22h00
Genre: Documentary, Science, Technology
This is the story of an extraordinary scientific adventure - the attempt to control gravity.
For centuries, the precise workings of gravity have confounded the greatest scientific minds - from Newton to Faraday and Einstein - and the idea of controlling gravity has been seen as little more than a fanciful dream.
Yet in the mid 1990s, UK defence manufacturer BAE Systems began a groundbreaking project code-named Greenglow, which set about turning science fiction into reality.
On the other side of the Atlantic, NASA was simultaneously running its own Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project.
It was concerned with potential space applications of new physics, including concepts like 'faster-than-light travel' and 'warp drives'.
Looking into the past and projecting into the future, this programme explores science's long-standing obsession with the idea of gravity control.
It looks at recent breakthroughs in the search for loopholes in conventional physics and examines how the groundwork carried out by Project Greenglow has helped change our understanding of the universe.
Gravity control may sound like science fiction, but the research that began with Project Greenglow is very much ongoing, and the dream of flying cars and journeys to the stars no longer seems quite so distant.
Sanditon
Channel: BBC Brit (DStv 120)
TX Time: 19h00
Genre: Drama, Period Drama
Inspired by Jane Austen's unfinished final novel, Sanditon is a compelling depiction of a developing Regency seaside town at the forefront of the great social and economic changes of the age.
When a carriage accident introduces the young Charlotte Heywood to the Parker family, she embarks on a journey from the only home she has ever known to the seaside idyll of Sanditon.
Carried along by the enthusiasm of entrepreneur Tom Parker for the development of the once small fishing village into a fashionable seaside resort, Charlotte quickly finds herself at the heart of a diverse and unexpected community.
From the direct but miserly Lady Denham, on whose fortune the Sanditon project relies, to the bitter fight between the numerous relatives hoping to inherit Lady Denham's money, Charlotte quickly discovers that not everyone is as they first appear.
With the arrival of a wealthy mixed race heiress, and a succession of hypochondriacs seeking saltwater 'cures' flooding in, Charlotte must learn for the first time to navigate the complex social structures evident in the town.
And then there is Sidney Parker. Handsome, but also the most wild of the Parker brothers, Sidney and Charlotte almost immediately clash.
Charlotte - spirited, open and inexperienced - is tactlessly forthright about Sidney's family and he is affronted by her stridency and naïve ignorance.
With the dark sea stretching out behind them, and the bustle of a regency ball just out of ear-shot, the battle lines of this central, winding and heated romance are drawn.
Amidst the rival suitors and unexpected danger, can Charlotte and Sidney see past each other's flaws and forge a real relationship?
Against the backdrop of Tom's ambitious vision for the town beginning to crumble, can Sanditon – and Charlotte's place within it – be saved?
This rich, family saga stretching from the West Indies to the rotting alleys of London, leads us to the heart of a town consumed by class divide, ambition, power play and romance.
In Sanditon, Charlotte Heywood comes to discover herself... and ultimately find love.