Vaccine: The Inside Story
Channel: BBC Earth (DStv 184)
TX Time: 20h00
Genre: Documentary
This special follows the unprecedented global quest to develop, trial, manufacture and distribute effective vaccines to fight the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Vaccine: The Inside Story is rooted in extraordinary access during 2020 to the leading vaccine research teams around the world, including scientists behind the Pfizer/BioNTech, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/Moderna, and the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccines in development.
When news of the novel coronavirus pandemic broke, a small group of elite scientists around the globe launched into action to take on perhaps the biggest challenge in the history of modern medicine.
The scope and speed of this effort has been unprecedented: producing multiple vaccines using different novel technologies, to defeat a virus never seen before in humans.
The film tracks key individuals from vaccine teams in the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, following scientists, clinicians and manufacturing experts through the struggles and triumphs of their work, from recruiting trial subjects and inventing new supply chains, to facing down pressures to speed up science and potentially sacrifice safety.
The film also explores the contributions of the vaccine trial volunteers who have put their bodies on the line to make this medical progress possible.
John Rabe: The Good Nazi of Nanking
Channel: Curiosity Channel (DStv 185)
TX Time: 21h00
Genre: Documentary, History
He is revered in China as a Buddha, as the 'Schindler of Nanking', but his deeds have barely been recognised in the West.
The German John Rabe, a Siemens manager and fervent admirer of the Führer, saved the lives of more than 200,000 Chinese in 1937.
Rabe, a German businessman in China, used his Nazi Party membership to create a Safety Zone in Nanking.
He helped save over 200,000 Chinese from vicious massacre by the invading Imperial Japanese Army after the 1937 Battle of Nanking.
Rabe's 1937 diaries were used as source material for this documentary.
Mountain Monsters 5
Channel: Travel Channel (DStv 179)
TX Time: 21h10
Genre: Docu-Reality, Supernatural, Paranormal
Deep in the Appalachian Mountains, creatures both legendary and terrifying lurk among the shadows, evading capture at every turn.
This season, t surviving members of the AIMS team meet up for the first time after Trapper's passing to discuss the team's future and embark on brand-new adventures Trapper had set up for them before he passed.
Equipped with his personal journal filled with everything he ever learned about the woods, the team travels to the mountains of the Tygart Valley on a mission to prove that there are still wolves in West Virginia.
A bounty was put on them, and the last wolf was said to have been killed in 1900.
As the team investigates, they soon believe that not only are there wolves in the Tygart Valley, but something much more mysterious and deadly.
Throughout the season, the team learns from locals of massive K9 cryptids with glowing red eyes that inhabit the land and are known by locals as Smoke Wolves.
As they dig deeper, they realise that Trapper in fact knew about these creatures back in the 1970s.