Every season of 40 Minutes ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best seasons of 40 Minutes!

Portrait of a fractious Welsh village near Merthyr Tydfil.

Rough Justice

Portrait of a Comprehensive School in the heart of the Falls Road, Belfast.

Sister Genevieve

Story of a Hijack on Independence Day 1977 in New York.

Hijack

Test case for inmates of mental hospital to get the vote.

Give Us the Vote

Life style of Quentin Crisp-esque 'Queen'.

Lol: A Bona Queen of Fabularity

Attempt to beat record run from John o' Groats to Land's End.

Marathon Man

Gary Glitter stars in Gerry Cottle's Circus.

Rocky Circus

Gorilla N'Pongo gives birth to Kumi in Jersey Zoo.

Gorilla G Gorilla

Hereford family educating children at home.

The Harrisons Don't Go to School

Spastic girl's struggle to live a normal life.

Alison

Sex, Drugs and the Vicar

An anthology of various children's parties.

Children's Parties

The bald facts revealed: What men will do to counter hair loss.

The Great Cover-up

The London to Brighton vintage car rally.

Brighton or Bust

Glenthorne high security prison for youngsters.

The Last Resort

Biopic of renowned comedian and ukulelist.

The George Formby Story

Burglary - Britain's fastest growing industry.

Burgled

Sheffield's Herol 'Bomber' Graham and Brendan Ingle his trainer in bid for boxing glory.

Bomber and Brendan

1943 Mutiny of British soldiers in Salerno.

Mutiny

Artefacts saved from demolished buildings.

Saved in the Nick of Time

Michel Odent and 'natural' childbirth at his clinic in Pithiviers France

Birth Reborn

Cameras follow shock troops of anti-hunt demonstrators disrupting hunt.

Hunt Saboteurs

Magdi Yacoub and his surgical team at work at Harefield Hospital.

Heart Transplant

Heart Transplant: 2 - A Fight for Life

Heart Transplant: 3

Heart Transplant: 4 - Bruce Anderson, New Heart

Heart Transplant: 5 - Recovery

Heart Transplant: 6 - A Matter of Life and Death

Heart Transplant: 7

Roedean

Four 'skins' in 1982 London; their lifestyle and the skinhead culture.

Skinheads

Looks at the increasing militancy of activists protesting at experiments on animals.

Rabbits Don't Cry

The senior education officer in Durham County and his difficult decisions to close certain schools.

An Emotional Matter

Problems of loneliness. Five people who are trying to find their own ways to deal with overcome loneliness are in a compartment in a train. They tell their stories to us, but do not communicate with each other, despite their shared problem.

Lost in a Crowd

A typical week for Howard Wolfenden, one of 250 NSPCC inspectors who investigate child cruelty cases.

The Cruelty Man

Looks at the lives and beliefs of miners in a small Yorkshire mining community.

Miners

The life and career of Frankie Vaughan, the entertainer.

Mr. Moonlight

The charity dinner for the Stable Lads Welfare Trust.

The Lads' Night Out

Extreme slimming remedies including wiring jaws together and surgery.

How Do I Look?

Bernard Perks, who has spent 15 of his 20 adult years in prison, is about to be released and his problem in combating alcoholism.

Mister Perks

Holiday makers on a flight from Manchester to Spain, their impression of their holidays in Benidorm and their return to Manchester.

Package Tour

The domestic and commercial uses of video including surveillance.

Something to Do with Video

Tranmere Rovers FC, fighting for survival in their centenary season

The Rovers

Children who have to look after their elderly parents.

Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother

New arrivals at Liverpool University coping with their first time away from home, especially the problems of a blind student, Gillian Wake.

Freshers

Nine Polish seamen who sought political asylum in the Falklands where they were caught up in the war and their later stateless existence in London.

English Lesson

Female circumcision in the Sudan and the evidence that it is practiced in the western world.

Female Circumcision

Fishermen from the North-East attempt to lobby the EEC on the issue of fishing rights.

A Minor Incident at the Berlaymont

The first of 6 films on the work of the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 1

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 2

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 3

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 4

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 5

A Gentle Way with Cancer: Part 6

Mistress

The M.C.C. Cricket tour of Australia in 1931 and the controversial tactics of the M.C.C. Captain Douglas Jardine.

Bodyline

Mr Universe, Bachelor of the Year and others competitions for men.

Something for the Ladies

The religious cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

House of Love

The remand system in the UK and the lives of untried prisoners.

Innocent Until Proved Guilty

The maximum security unit at Maidstone Prison.

Jail Within a Jail

Who's a Pretty Girl, Then?

Professional pranksters and singing telegrams.

Pranks

Comparison between life in Orwell's novel and the reality of life in 1984.

1984 Voices in a City

Health Farm

Three English girls at Institut Villa Pierrefeu in Switzerland.

Swiss Finishing School

The effect of a divorce on a couple and their children

Divorce: Unreasonable Behaviour

How parents' access to children of a broken marriage is determined.

Divorce: The Law... and After

The annual 'crack' at Lisdoonvarna in Ireland visited by a group of Chicagoan women in search of romance.

The Mating Season

The history of Skiffle and the development of 'home-made' music.

Skiffle

Pigeons: Queer Facts

Working class children in assisted places at public schools.

Educating Michael

Attitudes in a small Cornish community to two lovers and their baby.

Delmelza's Baby

A Problem with Sex

Lagan College in Belfast, a school planned for the integration of protestants and Roman Catholics.

The School on the Hill

Animal Antiques

Travelling Hopefully

Sun City

Bertrand Russell and the founding of CND.

Bertie and the Bomb

How the world would look to a being from another planet.

Oh Alien

The career of cricketer Geoffrey Boycott.

Boycott

Gigolo

The Happy Medium

Grendon prison in Buckinghamshire, Britain's only voluntary psychiatric prison.

The Grendon Experiment

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in self-imposed exile.

Love in Exile

On the Throne

Young male prostitutes in Manchester and Birmingham.

Rent Boys

The mental asylum in Choroszcz in Poland where patients work in the community.

Asylum

The Loved Ones

Britain forty years ago, contrasted with present day Britain.

The Promised Land

Accents and dialects provoke strong prejudices and reactions. In a 40 Minutes film that examines why this should be, broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, Radio 4 announcer Susan Rae and actor Peter Bowles are among those who have suffered because of the way they speak. Meet the Queen's English Society, which keeps a candle burning for the purity of the spoken word, and the Devon Dialect Society, which has very different ideas about how vowels should sound. Eavesdrop on an elocution class, hear from Scottish schoolchildren whose accents might affect their job prospects, and go behind the scenes at the BBC Pronunciation Unit and the northern auditions for the Speaking Clock. See how fashions have changed over the years, and how trends are likely to develop in the future as we enter a world of talking robots and computers.

Talking Proper

The group 'Fascinating Aida' and the making of their first pop record.

Sweet F.A.

The problems of putting on a show in the old style of pier entertainments at Cromer, Norfolk.

The End of the Pier Show

A group of 'Hell's Angels' in East Anglia.

The Outcasts

Love Story

Old Victorian mental hospitals are being closed down and the former patients face problems.

Free!

A local Council has a compulsory purchase order on the home of two elderly men.

Whose House Is It Anyway?

The first film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.

The Eternal Triangle: The Mistress

The second film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.

The Eternal Triangle: The Wife

The third film in a trilogy which examines the Eternal Triangle.

The Eternal Triangle: The Husband

Union Street

40 Minutes was a BBC TV documentary strand broadcast on BBC Two between 1981 and 1994. The documentaries could be on any possible subject, the only connection being that they last forty minutes.

Some documentaries in the original series were revisited and updated in a 2006 version, Forty Minutes On.

The Best Seasons of 40 Minutes

The Best Seasons of 40 Minutes

Season 1

Season 9

Season 5

Season 7

Season 4

Season 2

Season 3

Season 6

Season 8

Season 10

Season 11

Season 12

Season 13