The Best TV Shows on ARTE

What would we be without mucus? Can we live on water? How much does life weigh? Finding out the answers is the aim of ARTE's new science show. In a nod to Douglas Adams's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where the figure 42 is the ultimate answer to all questions, 42 tries to provide the answers.

Then complex world of geopolitics broken down into ten minute, bite-sized chunks. You'll never sound uninformed at the dinner table ever again.

Durch die Nacht mit … is a German documentary film television series produced by ZDF for Franco-German television channel ARTE. Locations are mainly in France or Germany. The title of the French version is Au cœur de la nuit. Two Celebrities spend an filmed evening together. One of them is the host who sets the location and the program. There is no moderator.

Down with sexual diktats! Writers and broadcasters Ovidie and Sophie-Marie Larrouy examine prejudice and taboos around sex with humour and intelligence and encourage women to have it when they want, how they want, and most of all, if they want.

Forty years after the worst nuclear disaster in history, this ambitious investigation reveals, behind the chronicle of the disaster, the mechanisms of a state lie, echoing the Russian war of aggression ravaging Ukraine.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, most people thought the conflict would be over by Christmas; they could not imagine how wrong they were. An attack in Sarajevo ended up becoming a snowball that swept the world: a new kind of warfare had begun, waged with techniques and means never seen before. By November 1918, ten million people had died and the political map of the planet had been redrawn.

At the height of the Cold War in 1960, André Merlaux joins the French Secret Service and contends with enemies both foreign and bureaucratic.

Berlin, 1888. After penniless Ida’s life is saved at the Charité Hospital she must work off the treatment costs. While she becomes acquainted with the most brilliant physicians of this era at the world-famous hospital, the self-determined young woman discovers her passion for medicine.

Ambitious Jana is confronted with the unscrupulous machinations of the world of finance. Her working life is determined by egotism, the pressure to succeed and machismo. She soon has to decide how far she is prepared to go for her career.

Those who knew them best describe the sensational lives and premature deaths of iconic actors and musicians whose passing left a void in pop culture.

A look back at the social movements, revolts and youth subcultures from the post-war period to the present day: after the World War II, the left-bank of Paris became a mecca for jazz and alternative living, youth culture was born with trailblazing American movies, and rock became the soundtrack to a generation that wanted to change everything.

Shows selected bridges in the world that have a special aura, tells their history and the stories that entwine them and take place on them, today and yesterday. Each episode leads to two bridges in different places in the world that have something in common, be it their construction or their function.

Dramatic events unfold in Croatia and Ukraine. The first girl drowned, the second one died from a drug overdose. The main suspect in these deaths, however, soon turns out to be innocent - and dead too. While detective Vladimir and reporter Stribor struggle to solve these murders in Croatia, the niece of Olga, an Ukrainian philanthropist, goes missing in Kyiv.

The economic situation is a nightmare: only 20% of the population is employed. The Actives live inside the city. On the fringes, in the Zone, live the Jobless. Separating them is a wall.

Twenty-four short films by 24 female writers, performed by 24 women actors, all based on women’s real life experiences of sexism, harassment, and violence. A diversity of female voices and talent from across Europe come together for a series that tackles head-on the everyday brutality experienced by women.

At the age of 27, in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Etty Hillesum embarks on a spiritual and emotional journey, all chronicled in her diaries. In them, she unfolds her turbulent love affair with the psycho-chirologist Julius Spier, a relationship that becomes the catalyst for a radical inner transformation, accelerated by the growing threat she faces as a Jewish woman. Her unusual path ultimately leads her to an enormous act of solidarity.

Words, rituals, objects, references... Karambolage offers an amused comparative anthropology of the locals on both sides of the Rhine.