Watchers 10 Part 1: DNA

One of the most important and exciting historical research of all time, the study of the DNA of the navigator Christopher Columbus, finally answers two fundamental questions: where do his bones rest? What is his true origin?

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?

In 1986 Michael Morton’s wife Christine is brutally murdered in front of their only child, and Michael is convicted of the crime. Locked away in Texas prisons for a quarter century, he has years to ponder questions of justice and innocence, truth and fate. Though he is virtually invisible to society, a team of dedicated attorneys spends years fighting for the right to test DNA evidence found at the murder scene. Their discoveries ultimately reveal that the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man’s loss of freedom.

Joe Kenda's investigation into the brutal rape and murder of 24 year old wife and mother Mary Lynn Vialpando goes cold until DNA technology leads cold-case detectives to the most unlikely of killers 30 years later.

A DNA detective digs into the past to find a young woman's real father.

In a dystopian future, Dredd, the most famous judge (a cop with instant field judiciary powers) is convicted for a crime he did not commit while his murderous counterpart escapes.

A geneticists working on a drug to stop ageing tries it upon himself with horrendous consequences.

Geneticist seeks to make a name for herself by saving the planet from disease by using eons-old antibodies, harvested from enlarged six legged creatures. The creatures don't like being big and escape. Send for help.

A taxi driver, already struggling to support his wife and children, finds an abandoned baby in the back of his cab.

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.