PBS: Monday 16 June at 6.35pm

The Flu That Killed 50 Million

In 1918, as Armistice bells rang out across the world to celebrate the end of the Great War, a silent killer made its way home with the soldiers. Over the next two years, the Spanish Flu would kill up to one third of the world’s population – a higher death toll than both world wars combined.

Drawing on new evidence, this documentary uses dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony to explore the origins of the disease, the horrors experienced by those who lived through it and the efforts of pioneering scientists desperately searching for the cure.

Narrated by Christopher Eccleston, the film also asks whether, more than a century later, the lessons learnt from Spanish Flu might help us fight a future global pandemic.