Throng

9:35pm Tuesday, March 23 on Prime

Documentary

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Thursday 18 March, 8.30pm

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, June 1962. In the still of the night three prisoners - Frank Lee Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin - attempt the impossible. Desperate and dangerous, they escape from Alcatraz. Only traces of their bold breakout were found in the frigid San Francisco Bay. The three men were never seen nor heard from again. Until now their fate remains a mystery. Did they survive their bid for freedom or did they lose everything to the San Francisco Bay?

CRIME & INVESTIGATION - Wednesday 17 March, 8.30pm

The real story that inspired Scarface and Miami Vice. Chronicling the drug influx of the 70s and 80s and the resulting gang wars and violence - Cocaine Cowboys is an eye-opening profile of the Miami underworld. Featuring candid interviews with key figures on both sides of the law, Cocaine Cowboys is a picture of a city over-run by drugs and warring gangs. Taking centre stage are ex-drug dealers/smugglers Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday, who lay out the structure behind the production, import and sale of cocaine, as well as providing their own reminiscences on the excessive heyday of Miami's vice. When the drug business boomed - Miami banks almost ran out of space to store cash deposits - violence inevitably followed. An inside perspective is provided by Jorge Rivi Alaya, a convicted former hitman for Griselda Blanco, the notoriously bloodthirsty Colombian godmother.

HISTORY CHANNEL - Wednesday 17 March, 7.30pm

Ned Kelly, the son of Irish emigrants and the Robin Hood of Australia has become an international icon since his death on the gallows at the age of 25, but there has been little agreement on whether he was a martyred hero, a failed revolutionary, or a cold blooded murderer. In 1906 he was the subject of what is alleged to be the first feature film, "The Story of the Kelly Gang" and since then he has featured on every known medium from the printed word to big-budget feature films. This documentary directed by Barry Dowdall uses film archive, period photos, lithographs, and dramatised re-enactments, inputs from experts and family members as well as clips from the latest Ned Kelly film starring Heath Ledger.

Tuesday March 16 at 8.30 PM on Maori Television

Samoan culture calls it tatau, Maori call it moko or puhoro and Hawaiians refer to it as kakau, or uhi. Many others know it as tattoo and each one has a story that reveals clues about the person who chooses it.

DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL - Sunday 14 March, 9.30pm

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Sunday 14 March, 8.30pm

They are striking works of art by any standard: but what purpose did they serve? Some of the theories put forward suggest that the lines were ancient running tracks, runways for aliens and even a giant astronomical calculator. But after decades of misunderstanding, modern archaeology may finally have an answer to the puzzle of the Nasca lines. An international team, including National Geographic-funded scientists, has taken an array of high-tech tools to the desert in an unprecedented effort to build a comprehensive digital model of the lines. At the same time, excavations are uncovering new clues about the Nasca, their rituals and beliefs, and the extremes they went to in order to survive. The mystery of the Nasca Lines is bound up in an unforgiving climate, droughts, clan warfare and mysterious caches of severed human heads.

HISTORY CHANNEL - Sunday 14 March, 8.30pm

Beginning at dawn on D-Day, Allied reconnaissance planes flew up and down the coast every hour on the hour, photographing the largest invasion in history. By the end of the day, a visual record unlike any other was logged on film. As soon as the invasion ended, however, these images were lost. Until now. These never-before-seen images give a first hand account of D-Day from the air as they unfolded.