The Cell (Season 1)

The Cell (2009) is a BBC documentary series you can watch online on iFILM, presented by Dr Adam Rutherford and directed by Andrew Thompson.

Every organism on Earth — from bacteria to human beings — is made of cells, microscopic structures of extraordinary complexity. Rutherford tells the story of how science came to understand them: from the earliest microscopes to the discovery of DNA, from the riddle of how life began to how a single cell can divide and differentiate into an entire human body. The series is anchored in real experiments and real scientists, not dramatized reconstructions.

Clear-eyed and intellectually honest, this is one of the better BBC science documentaries of its era — it doesn't oversell wonder, it just shows you something genuinely astonishing. Stream all episodes of The Cell online on iFILM.