CONTINENTAL CAKE

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 @ 9:00PM

And then there were six. The remaining bakers now face three European cakes. For the Signature, bakers are asked to make yeast-leavened cakes. Their work’s cut out for them in the most demanding Technical challenge yet: they have two hours to make the 24-step Swedish Princess torte. And finally, for the Showstopper, they must create a contemporary version of the Hungarian Dobos torte.

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FRIDAY, MARCH 3 @ 9:00PM

Russia’s intrusion in the U.S. presidential election continues to distract the Trump administration.  Less than a month in office, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is under fire for two conversations he had with Russia’s ambassador to the United States last year, which he denied during his confirmation hearing in January. While the attorney general now says he did not discuss the presidential campaign during his meetings with Russian officials, Sessions recused himself from any investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

The story of Alexander Hamilton is most remembered for its dramatic conclusion, which saw Hamilton killed in a duel by Vice President Aaron Burr. But the full story of this political genius – a poor immigrant who built himself up from nothing to become one of the nation’s most vital architects – has largely been forgotten by history…until now.

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COMMERCE AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 @ 11:00PM

In the series’ final hour, host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. brings the story of “Africa’s Great Civilizations” into the nineteenth century, when a fierce competition for resources and trade stimulated ingenuity, while also enticing European powers and inciting conflicts that would threaten the stability and wellbeing of the continent. Gates begins his journey along South Africa’s eastern coast, where, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the legendary warrior Shaka Zulu transformed a chiefdom into the feared Zulu empire, seizing territory with intensely trained, disciplined regiments of soldiers, amabutho, and deploying those regiments in new, close-combat battlefield formations with a formidable new weapon, a short, stabbing spear. It was an era of tumultuous change on the continent, known as the Mfecane, when African kingdoms felt the squeeze of their rivals, no less encroaching foreign traders, and conflict and environmental challenges disrupted borders and displaced populations.

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THE ATLANTIC AGE

THURSDAY, MARCH 2 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

The series’ fifth hour examines the tremendous changes wrought in Africa by the opening of the Atlantic World between the 15^th and 18^th centuries. For centuries, Eastern Africa, West Africa and Northern Africa had all been tied deeply into long-distance commercial networks linking across the Eastern Hemisphere. However, the encounter between West African kingdoms and, first, Portuguese mariners travelling farther and farther south along Africa’s Atlantic coast, and then the European colonization of the New World, transformed those relations. Across the continent kingdoms and empires would rise and fall, with some 12.5 million Africans suffering enslavement in the crosshairs.

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A NATURE MINISERIES

MEET THE SPIES

SATURDAY, JULY 18  @ 8:00PM & 12:00AM

The final episode explains how the concept of the Spy Creatures evolved at John Downer Productions from the original Bouldercam to the Penguincams that inspired the next-generation “spycams” featured in this series. It shows the painstaking work that goes into building the lifelike models and how the team deploys and operates the robotic cameras on location all over the world.

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EMPIRES OF GOLD/CITIES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

The third hour in the series marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several regions on the continent. It begins with the revolutionary transformation of North and West Africa. On the shores of the Sahara Desert, farmers, traders, warriors and nomads turned this region into the crossroads of some of history’s most advanced, and wealthiest, civilizations. Intricate networks of long distance trade would link up productive commercial centers established by rulers of empires and kingdoms.

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