For all history buffs out there we have a special treat today – 11 best history channel documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015.
While it may be true that History Channel has long ago moved its focus from history to reality TV – with shows about pawn shops and aliens – there are still plenty of watchable documentaries on air. And yes, it is easy to take pot shots at them for their programming, but let’s face it, it is very hard making history a popular watch for the average viewer. If aliens and pawn shops get them to watch few real history shows, then so be it. It is a small price to pay, after all. At least these shows aren’t as grim as the best health documentaries on Netflix.
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To rank history channel documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015, we had to devise a system. Going simply by IMDb rating just wouldn’t cut it, although we did include it in our final ranking. We also went over a dozen of lists on most popular sites to get an accurate feel for public opinion. We mixed it all together and came up with a genuine Insider Monkey ranking. Let’s see who made it to our list of 11 best history channel documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015.
11. The Lost Book of Nostradamus
Site score 1, IMDb score 1; Overall score= 2
Directed by Kreg Lauterbach
Year: 2007
Based on a 1994 discovery made by an Italian journalist Enza Massa at the Italian National Library in Rome, the show depicts a mysterious document named Nostradamus Vatinicia Code. It was signed by Michel de Notredame in 1629. Michel de Notredame is, of course, famous Nostradamus and his book quickly seized the imagination of the audience. Kreg Lauterbach’s shows us how the book came to be forgotten in the archives, as well as trying to decipher its content.
10. Journey to 10,000 BC
Site score 2, IMDb score 3; Overall score= 5
Directed by David Padrusch
Year: 2008
David Padrusch’s film explores one of the most dramatic periods in our planet’s history. The period is marked by the extinction of mammoths and saber tooth tigers, as humans started colonizing North America. Mammoths were one of few food sources for the new inhabitants, and their hunt was one of the factors that contributed to their extinction. Try to imagine how hungry our predecessor must have been to go after a 10 ton animal armed with huge tusks with nothing but a wooden spear. Huge climate changes, brought upon by geological cataclysms, didn’t really help mammoths, designed to survive in bygone ice ages.
9. Ice Road Truckers
Site score 3, IMDb score 1; Overall score= 5
Directed by: Tamara Marie Watson and others
Year: 2007 –
One of the most popular shows on History channel is currently in its 9th season. If you have been living in a cave for the last 9 years, the show features daredevil truck drivers delivering their cargo deep in the Arctic Circle in frozen wastelands of Alaska and Canada. The roads they travel on aren’t roads at all, but solid snow and ice on the permafrost. They are only passable in winter when the temperature falls well beneath the freezing point. Driving through hundreds of miles of nothing but the snow-covered landscape is not for everyone, and these guys (the show featured few female drivers as well) are a very special group of people. The premiere was watched by 3.4 million viewers, setting a record viewership at the time for any History Channel show.
8. History of the World in Two Hours
Site score 4, IMDb score 4; Overalll score= 8
Directed by Douglas Cohen
Year: 2011
Ill-wishers would say that only Americans would aspire to jam the entire history of the world from Earth’s creation to Moon landing in two hours. But once you weed out all the less important details, like which king fought whom, which battle was waged on what river and when, two hours seems like a decent time frame. By focusing on the important stuff, like the creation of life and spread of human civilization, the show heavily uses CGI to illustrates the most important events in history and explain how they affect our life today, even though millennium may have passed since they happened. For instance, how did the spread of vast grasslands 7 million years ago forced apes to abandon trees and adapt to their new environment, eventually evolving into Homo sapiens.
7. America: The Story of Us
Site score 5, IMDb score 6; Overall score= 11
Directed by Marion Milne and others
Year: 2010
Written by Ed Fields and Daniel Hall, America: The Story of Us is a 12 part miniseries that covers the history of the United States of America since the events leading to the American Revolution to 9/11. The series devotes a single episode to every important period in the US history, covering them in detail. It features various guests, from Buzz Aldrin and Newt Gingrich to Bruce Jenner (now known as Caitlyn Marie Jenner) and Vera Wong. This part was heavily criticized, because many felt that too much airtime was devoted to celebrities, as opposed to real historians. Still, the series offers a comprehensive view into how a backwater British colony rose to the most powerful nation on Earth.
6. A History of God
Site score 6, IMDb score 5; Overall score= 11
Directed by N/A
Year: 2001
Based on a book with the same name by Karen Armstrong, the film focuses on one of the most popular quests in human history, the search for God. Following the rise of great monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the film explains how each of them came to be and presents us with their histories. Starting from the creation of Judaism in 2000 BC, over the development of Christianity and its many sects, up to 20th Century developments like Iranian Revolution in 1979, it offers a comprehensive insight into world’s most popular religions, as well as devoting time to Hinduism and Buddhism and drawing parallels between them.
5. Vietnam in HD
Site score 7, IMDb score 10; Overall score= 17
Directed by Sammy Jackson
Year: 2011
Being narrated by Dexter Morgan himself should be enough to secure Vietnam in HD a place among best history channel documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015. But this miniseries consisting of 6 episodes has much more to offer to history buffs. It shows Vietnam War not as we are used to being presented but from a viewpoint of 13 Americans who had the misfortune to be involved in it. All of their stories are illustrated by original video material, enhanced to modern standards, similar to those used in WW@ in HD, another History channel show. People in question include a Comanche pilot, journalist, ordinary grunts and a wife of a colonel.
4. Modern Marvels
Site score 10, IMDb score 8; Overall score= 18
Directed by Andrew Thomas, Fred Peabody and others
Year: 1993 –
Modern Marvels is one of the oldest and longest-running History Channel shows. From its premiere in 1993, over 650 episodes have been aired. The show features technology and its use in modern society, but most of all, it explains its history and development. It has presented almost every facet of modern technology, from construction and nuclear energy to robot development. The show managed to keep its popularity over all these years by keeping the original formula intact: interesting facts presented in an entertaining manner. Engineering Disasters are also a part of these series and focus on catastrophic failures of human constructions.
3. How the States Got Their Shapes
Site score 9, IMDb score 9; Overall score= 18
Directed by David Konschnik, Amber Engelmann and others
Year: 2011
Some states’ borders look suspiciously like a kid drawing a line with a ruler and then accidentally running the pencil over his fingers. The show, based on the book with the same title by Mark Stein, follows the host Brian Unger as he travels across the US trying to explain how the state lines were drawn and why they look like they do. Unger also discusses proposed states that never happened like State of Lincoln or State of Jefferson. He also goes into proposed state partitions. The show has 30 episodes, divided into two seasons.
2. Ancient Aliens
Site score 11, IMDb score 7; Overall score= 18
Directed by Susan E. Leventhal and others
Year: 2009 –
And of course we had to have aliens, since no list about History channel documentaries can be complete without them. The show premiered in 2009 and it is still going strong today, 8 seasons and more than a hundred episodes later. Its often criticized methods are usually dubbed “pseudo-science” or “pseudo-history” by many experts. But without going into the scientific merits of the show, it has given us one of the most popular Internet memes of all times and even South Park dedicated one of its episodes to it. While some would argue that it isn’t exactly a high praise, the show is interesting to watch.
1. The Men Who Built America
Site score 8, IMDb score 11; Overall score= 19
Directed by Patrick Reams and Ruán Magan
Year: 2012
And the first place on our list of best history channel documentaries on Netflix streaming in 2015 goes to The Men Who Built America. One of the best shows made by the History channel, it deals with the captains of industry who created the modern day America. In the 1870s, the US was a country ravaged by a civil war that left it divided. These men – Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and Henry Ford – play essential roles in bringing it to the world stage and creating the most powerful nation the planet has ever seen. The show is divided into four 90 minute episodes.
