The Museum — Season 1

A curious breed of experts cares for some of the BM's most important and fragile treasures; they are the conservators. Metals conservator Alex Baldwin is giving a makeover to a corroded Roman bronze statue affectionately known as Charlie, Karen Birkholzer is approaching the end of a six-year project conserving Egyptian wall paintings from the tomb of Nebamun, and gallery manager Brendan Moore has a problem with a stuffed monkey.

Iron Age bodies preserved in a bog, Sudanese sacrifice victims, and 40 or so mummies are just a few of the body parts in the collection. But do human remains belong in a museum? Two Tasmanian aboriginals have come to London to reclaim the remains of their ancestors, that have been in the museum's collection for 125 years. The British Museum is the first national museum to hand back human remains since British law was changed in 2004.

The museum wants to bring some of China's Terracotta Army to London, but will they get the warriors they want, and how much will it all cost? The museum is also facing the challenge of shifting 30 tonnes of enormous, fragile and irreplaceable works of art from London to Shanghai. This episode follows the 'heavy mob' as they try to ensure that ancient Assyrian reliefs reach the other side of the world intact.

As well as caring for over seven million historic treasures, the British Museum has a 250-year-old, grade one listed building to look after. This programme tracks how the BM is constantly being fixed, restored and upgraded to keep it up to the mark.

A collection of 90 drawings by Michelangelo are being brought together in one place for the first time since they left the artist's studio over 400 years ago. The pressure builds for Hugo Chapman as he prepares the museum's major blockbuster event of the year. Will the show draw the crowds? Will it live up to the hype? And will there be the all important approval of the critics?

This programme follows curator Chris Spring's mission to buy La Bouche du Roi, an anti-slavery installation made of petrol cans. He can't afford it without help from the Art Fund, but will his pitch result in success? Meanwhile Philip Attwood is on a Rotterdam barge buying contemporary medals, and Judy Rudoe receives a Soviet-style gift from the modern entrepreneurial Russian industry.

The BM wants to inspire people who don't usually visit the collections, so they're taking drugs to Pentonville Prison, all safely contained in an art installation. Meanwhile, Venetia Porter is playing guinea pig for another new policy. The Museum wants to show how present cultures are just as important as the past, and her ambitious exhibition of modern art from the Middle East brings together artists from across religious and political divides.

Irving Finkel, an expert in the world's oldest writing, is called to Scotland Yard to help the police with an enquiry. In the museum's laboratory Rebecca Stacey is hunting for a trace of opium in a small pot 3500 years old. Meanwhile Colin McEwan attempts to try and crack a code - the silent language of the Nasca, the ancient and mysterious South American tribe, famous for etching huge symbols in the Peruvian desert.

Mike Neilson is an artist and specialist replica-maker who is responsible for making copies of some of the Museum's most important treasures. He is currently casting an exact copy of a colossal Egyptian statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III. Down in the basement curator John Taylor examines a collection of what seem to be mummified Egyptian animals, but x-rays reveal an entirely different story. Meanwhile, curators from the Museum's Middle Eastern department are called on by customs to help sort out a possible case of smuggling.

In the British Museum's Great Court a spectacular 18 foot image of the Hindu goddess Durga is being crafted from straw, clay and paint. At the climax of the Durga Puja festival the goddess is immersed in the River Thames - the first time such an event has happened in the UK. Each year the museum takes thousands of artefacts around the country. Jill Cook encourages people in Norwich to handle prehistoric axes, whilst Irving Finkel displays the famous Lewis Chessmen in Leicester.