Top Arctic Movies / TV

Enter the largest land-habitat on Earth, home to great Boreal forests and the barren tundra where the seasons bring both challenges and opportunities.

It may take two to make a baby - but not necessarily two to bring it up. So what makes a parent decide to stay or go? Especially if that parent is a dad. From the California mouse mother who has to kick-start her partner's paternal instincts, to Adelie penguin parents who can't leave their eggs alone for five minutes; from cheetah mums practicing promiscuity to keep the dads on side, to flamingo parents both producing milk for their young. We see just how far these incredible parents go in order to protect and nurture as many offspring as possible through to adulthood.

This edition looks at the Arctic Ocean, as after 4 months of winter darkness the sun returns. Mother polar bears emerge from their dens, a pod of beluga whales confined to an ice hole wait for release, harp seal mothers teach their pups.

The series begins by travelling from pole to pole revealing the frozen worlds that exist across the world and the animals that live in them. Antarctica, the Himalaya, the Great Steppe, boreal forest, tundra and the Arctic are visited.

Trees are earth's largest organisms and are also one of the planet's oldest inhabitants. Seasonal forests (unlike tropical rain-forest) the largest land habitats. A third of all trees grow in the endless taiga of the Arctic north. Northern America has forests that include California's sequoia's, the earth's largest trees. There and elsewhere, their vast production of photosynthesis and shade presides over a seasonal cycle of life and involves countless plant and animal species.

The polar caps have the most extreme seasonal contrasts, growing and melting vast ice masses, so wildlife adapts by annual migrations. The majority of Antartica is a vast barren permafrost. Only 3% of the coast and peninsular peaks are where life migrates to in the spring, for a short fertile summer, attracted by rich supplies of krill and fish. Only the Emperor penguin males breed 4 months in winter 100 miles inland. The Arctic has a more complete fauna which migrates back North from the continent. Here, the Polar bear is threatened because global warming defrosts its seal hunt platform ice too fast.

In Nunavut, four girls who like horror and alien movies, love their phones and even their poor elders who believe in shapeshifters because "they didn't have the internet" realize local disappearances are linked to a shapeshifting alien.

A government researcher, sent to research the "menace" of wolves in the north, learns about the true beneficial and positive nature of the species.

Scientists and American Air Force officials fend off a bloodthirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost.

Follows a new mother as she prepares to navigate motherhood in the challenging world that polar bears face today.

A journey alongside the filmmakers behind Disneynature's Polar Bear (2022) as they face profound challenges 300 miles from the North Pole to film one of the planet's most intriguing creatures.

An intrepid team of 300 scientists spend a year in harsh conditions deep in the Arctic, on a pioneering expedition to secure vital answers to help us deal with climate change.

Scientists on a daring polar voyage to uncover the Arctic's climate secrets.

A historian races to find the legendary Templar Treasure before a team of mercenaries.

Stranded in an Arctic mine, two lone survivors are forced to fight for their lives, evading and hiding from a new kind of terror.

Romesh travels the furthest he's ever travelled outside his cosy comfort zone as he heads to the Canadian Arctic. The comedian spends a week, guided by Inuit actor Johnny Issaluk, learning about life in this extreme environment.

USN nuclear sub USS Tigerfish must rush to the North Pole to rescue the staff of Drift Ice Station Zebra weather station.

A Canadian aboriginal woman journeys to the Arctic in search of a missing member of her tribe, and falls in love with a man from a rival clan.

A pilot and his passenger struggle for survival after crashing in the Arctic tundra.

When a young Inuit hunter needlessly kills a bear, he is magically changed into a bear himself as punishment with a talkative cub being his only guide to changing back.

In small-town Alaska, a news reporter recruits his Greenpeace-volunteer ex-girlfriend on a campaign to save a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly-forming ice in the Arctic Circle.

From the northern ice comes a gentler kind of hero.

Steve Backshall leads a team on a mission to make the worlds first ascent of a remote mountain in Greenland.

Explorers head to Greenland in the Arctic, where they kayak through the world's largest fjord during the spring melt, the most dangerous time of the year. They kayak for 5 days up the fjord on the east coast of Greenland, facing numerous dangers including a polar bear.