- Online 10 locations
- On DVD 2 available
- On TV 20 showings
- Cast & Credits 3 people
- Episode Guide 79 episodes
Episode Guide
- Freaky Remedies
Heroin addicts purge their habit in a brutal detox; an asthma treatment that involves swallowing a live animal; animal sacrifice for pain relief.
- Extreme Fighting
In many cultures, what is considered acceptable violence pushes the boundaries.
- Secret Lives
Individuals leading extremely opposite double lives.
- Odd Couples
Unconventional relationships including a woman in love with a man three times her height and a marriage made up of three partners.
- Forbidden Love
People with emotional, romantic and sometimes sexual attraction to an object.
- Prison Love
People in love with inmates serving time include a Texas inmate in solitary confinement who is married with the help of a radio host as the surrogate groom and a man serving life for murder who meets and marries a woman over the Internet.
- Hoarders
When 'stuff' controls its owner.
- Addiction
The lives of those haunted by addiction include a young boy hooked on video games, a woman addicted to anonymous sex and a man addicted to shopping.
- Fantasy Lives
Life collides with fantasy.
- Beauty
Women who mutilate their bodies.
- Beyond the Grave
The ways different cultures deal with the dead.
- Strange Love
Uncommon relationships.
- Narcotics
While some societies wage war on drugs, some embrace them for their medicinal or spiritual benefits.
- Misfits
People who dwell on the fringes of society.
- Fat
Fatness in the industrialized world.
- Prostitution
The hidden world of prostitution.
- Extreme Rituals
Young men leap head-first from a 70-foot tower in a potentially deadly ritual; a girl tattoos her face before marriage as part of her transition to womanhood; a 70-year-old man participates in a bloodletting ceremony.
- Spilling Blood
Animal sacrifice in Nepal; the traditional whale-slaughtering tradition, Grind, in Denmark; cockfighting in Bali.
- Initiation
Boys in Brazil put their hands in gloves filled with fire ants; boys have whipping competitions in West Africa; a woman in South Korea must become a shaman to save her life.
- Bizarre Bodies
The lengths people will go to to change their looks.
- Extreme Punishment
The lengths some societies go to to punish a crime.
- Sex
Love and what attracts the opposite sex can differ from one society to another.
- The Third Sex
Gender, sex and sexuality can be interpreted as cultural or genetic.
- Drugs
Some cultures incorporate mind-altering drugs into social and religious life.
- Outsiders
Every society contains people who live on the fringe, either by force or by choice, and must suffer the consequences.
- Extreme Eats
What people can and can't eat may be nothing more than a question of mind over matter.
- Trial by Fire
Many traditional cultures require boys to pass through initiations of pain and fear in order to become men.
- Extreme Healing
Stepping beyond the bounds of modern science to place health in the hands of the spirit world.
- Body Extremes
An Australian health therapist drinks his own urine; men and women in the Philippines sell their kidneys to wealthy foreigners; a woman in Papua New Guinea breast-feeds a pig.
- Supreme Devotion
Some religions measure piety by physical suffering and self-inflicted pain.
- Touching Death
A man evicts bodies from rented burial plots in Manila; an autopsy entrepreneur contracts out his services; a woman performs Buddhist rituals at the scene of a fatal car accident.
- Trials of Faith
Extreme rituals for testing one's faith.
- Possessed
Stories of the spirit world invading the real world.
- Pets
The devoted and bizarre world of pet ownership.
- Gender Benders
People who cross the gender lines.
Tuesday 28th February 1:00am PST - National Geographic Channel - Quest for Acceptance
Students of human behavior and cultural norms provide perspectives on extreme rites and tests of faith from around the world.
- Marked for Life
The lengths which people will go to identify with their community through skin markings.
- Mating
Some people go to extreme lengths to find mates.
- Gross Grub
People eat cheese crawling with maggots, rotten fish heads, grilled guinea pig and eyeballs, blood and brains.
- Rites of Passage
Cultural practices guiding people into the next phase of life.
Tuesday 28th February 2:00am PST - National Geographic Channel - Jobs
Some jobs are so disgusting that few people are willing to do them.
- Outcasts
People who have been cast out of their community.
- Bloodsports
Lure and horror of ritualized violence.
- Marks of Identity
Extreme tactics people use to distinguish themselves as part of a group.
- Tests of Faith
Extreme tests of faith.
- Rites of Manhood
People jump naked over the backs of 30 cows, undergo sex-change surgeries, or slice and scar their upper bodies to resemble crocodiles in order to be considered men.
- Sacred Pain
Religious devotees around the world offer their bodies to their gods.
- Initiation Rituals
Some people perform extreme acts to be accepted and to prove their worth.
- Gross Work
People who make a living doing uncommon jobs.
Sunday 26th February 1:00am PST - National Geographic Channel - Sexuality
Boundaries between what is man and what is woman.
- Crime Scene
People deal with the aftermath of fatal crimes.
- Blood Bonds
Unusual definitions of family.
- Evil Spirits
Good vs. evil spirits.
Sunday 26th February 12:00am PST - National Geographic Channel - Nudity
Shedding clothes as an act of expression or liberation, and even as a means of worship.
- Extreme Entertainers
Determining the line at which entertainment becomes grotesque.
- Drugs
The societal impact of mind-altering drug use.
- Body Art
The art, meaning and mystery of tattoos.
- Child Rearing
Child rearing techniques around the world.
- Marriage
Acceptable marriage practices based on culture.
- Proving Ground
Measuring people's worth by the ability to overcome the fight-or-flight instinct.
Sunday 26th February 2:00am PST - National Geographic Channel - Body Cutters
People who reshape their bodies by extremes.
- Body Perfect
Methods for achieving beauty.
- Witchcraft
Supernatural powers.
- Signs of Identity
Different ways individuals express themselves through their bodies.
- Extreme Childhood
Indian children participate in a self-mutilation ritual; young children kickbox for extra income for their families in Thailand; a 5 year-old continues to be breast fed.
- After Death
Cultural dealings with dead bodies.
- Voodoo
West Africa is the birthplace of voodoo.
- Sexual Identity
Some people go through their life feeling they were born the wrong gender.
- Extreme Cuisine
Food delicacies from around the world.
- Creature Cures
Using creatures like leeches, baboon claws and bees to cure common ailments.
- Tattoo
A look at what permanent skin art symbolises to different cultures all over the world
- Looks That Kill
Joan Bakewell continues her examination of censorship with an exploration of violence, using excerpts from film and television. Recent decades have witnessed some of the most extreme violent acts ever, raising the question of whether society has become desensitised to the unsavoury aspects of life portrayed on screen
- Skin Deep
Repeatedly cutting skin to create the effect of crocodile skin; a tribe of people's belief in physical perfection is so deep that some individuals kill their babies.
- Spirit World
Extreme measures people go to in order to get in touch with a higher spirit.
- Delicacies
Food delicacies from around the world.
- Healers
Some unorthodox healing practices go beyond science.
- Extreme Living
People who live in extreme conditions.
- Justice
Abandoning modern systems of justice for older and more controversial methods.
- Food
What humans eat.
