The Unexplained Files

Tales of the Unexpected is a new strand of provocative, confronting and thoroughly entertaining science documentaries. Each episode reveals a fascinating, sometimes awkward, and frequently unsettling world where peculiar ideas are put to the test. Come with us to where nothing is quite as it seems, where diseases are diagnosed by palm-readers, where paternity uncertainty drives the mating game, and where breasts are a toxic health hazard.

Stephen Hawking’s Science of the Future investigates the very latest game changing innovations. Each episode takes one area of progress and sends five top scientists out to actively test the inventions and breakthroughs that are driving it. The team explore human upgrades, the virtual world, bio-mimicry, high-tech emergency responses, and more. Featuring a wide range of examples, from advanced robotics and breathtaking digital actors, to cutting edge smart homes and electronic brain stimulation, the series reveals how science is delivering astonishing improvements to all our lives. Using the evidence they gather, the team reveals the year when each innovation will be rolled out for us all to benefit from, and Hawking then draws out his own uniquely insightful predictions about what our world will be like in the years to come.

In the series, "Wallace will take a light hearted and humorous look at the real-life inventors, contraptions, gadgets and inventions, with the silent help of Gromit. The series aims to inspire a whole new generation of innovative minds by showing them real, but mind-boggling, machines and inventions from around the world that have influenced his illustrious inventing career" (the BBC press statement). Peter Sallis reprised his role as the voice of Wallace. The filmed inserts are mostly narrated by Ashley Jensen, with one in each episode presented in-vision by Jem Stansfield. John Sparkes also voices a portion in the unseen character of archivist Goronwy.

Professor Brian Cox embarks on a mission to guide viewers through 350 years of British science, laying bare what science really is, who the people are who practise it, and how it connects to the past, present and future of each of us.