Titanic at 100: Your complete TV guide

This week the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. As the world remembers, television is filled this week – as well as for the rest of the month – with special TV programming looking at what was billed the "unsinkable" ship.

We have your comprehensive Titanic TV guide, with what terrific shows you can watch, when – and what it’s about.


10 April Tuesday 11:50
Hollywood Science
BBC Knowledge (DStv 251)
Leading experts look at how realistic the terrifying events at sea are and how far - or not - filmmakers are stretching the truth in movies such as Titanic, The Poseidon Adventure and The Perfect Storm.


10 April Tuesday 19:00
Titanic: Case Closed
National Geographic Channel (DStv 260)
A massive and beautiful, brand-new two-hour TV special, billed as "the definitive examination of the Titanic's ill-fated voyage and the devastating final hours that claimed the lives of more than 1 500 people in the North Atlantic Ocean". The documentary makes use of first person testimonies taken from archives to create a dramatic interpretation of the hours immediately before and after the collission of the Titanic with an iceberg.

Tim Maltin, Britain's foremost authority on RMS Titanic, heads to locations across Europe, North America and the Atlantic Ocean to meet experts and perform a series of eye-opening experiments that piece together the chain of events that resulted in catastrophe.


11 April Wednesday 14:00
Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron
National Geographic Channel (DStv 260)
James Cameron and some of the world's foremost Titanic experts recreate a massive life-size replica of the Titanic and then do a forensic investigation, applying dynamic scientific research to find out exactly how and why the ship sank, also employing amazing computer-generated imagery.


11 April Wednesday 21:25
Nazi Titanic
History (DStv 254)
This two-hour special looks at a bizarre chapter of World War II when the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels decided to make an obsessive movie based on the sinking of the Titanic.

This epic movie was so large in scale that the Nazis were forced to divert men, material and ships from their war effort in order to complete the film. The film never received the large premiere that Goebbels intended and only surfaced in Nazi-occupied Paris and footage used in the 1950's Hollywood film, A Night to Remember. This special reveals the little known story.


12 April Thursday 09:00
Titanic: The Final Secret
National Geographic Channel (DStv 260)
It was the grandest ship ever built, but its final resting place was a mystery. How was the wreck's discovery linked to the Cold War's darkest days?


12 April Thursday 13:00
Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard
National Geographic Channel (DStv 260)
Bob Ballard who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, returns to the site where the Titanic is under threat again - from treasure hunters and tourists who want to see the remains of the Titanic. In this special documentary he retraces the path of the Titanic from Northern Ireland's dockyard where it was built, to New York and examines the most serious threats to the ship's future.


12 April Thursday 20:30
Titanic
e.tv
e.tv has the broadcasting rights for South Africa of James Cameron's epic movie masterpiece of 1997 and the most commercially successful movie ever made about a doomed love aboard the doomed ship with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. A third-class man meets a first-class woman and they fall in love against the backdrop of the "unsinkable" ship on its maiden voyage.


13 April Friday 00:15
Seconds from Disaster
e.tv
In the golden age of oceanliners, one ship has been built to outpace and outshine them all: the Titanic. Billed as the "unsinkable" ship, the Titanic was a mechanical marvel, a combination of innovative and luxurious design. Using a groundbreaking experiment that mimics the conditions of the Titanic as it scraped the iceberg, experts in this National Geographic TV special, find new evidence than enables them to finally conclude what brought the "unsinkable" ship down in the middle of the icy Atlantic.


14 April Saturday 17:25
Titanic: Anatomy of a Disaster
Discovery World (DStv 250)
Investigative scientific research is shedding new light upon the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic. What can new technology and this investigation teach us about this tragedy which took place exactly 100 years ago?


14 April Saturday 18:20
Treasure Quest
Discovery World (DStv 250)
An archeological survey of the second most famous shipwreck in history: The Lusitania - the ship which came to the Titanic's aid first and picked up the survivors. The ship is covered in fishing nets and badly deteriorated.


14 April Saturday 20:30
Heroes of the Titanic
History (DStv 254)
The poignant story of self-sacrifice by the Titanic's engineers, stokers and firemen who remained onboard the sinking ship in the face of impending death.


14 April Saturday 22:20 Lost Worlds
History (DStv 254)
The construction of the "unsinkable" Titanic needed an army of workers and the resources of a purpose built town and docks to construct it.


14 April Saturday 23:10
Titanic: A Tale of Two Journeys
History (DStv 254)
Rob Goldsmith joins a Russian research submarine to explore the wreck of the Titanic featuring never-seen-before footage of the sunken ship.


15 April Sunday 09:30
Last Mysteries of the Titanic
Discovery World (DStv 250)
James Cameron documents the innermost spaces of the Titanic, revealing previously unseen footage of the famous shipwreck.


15 April Sunday 19:10
Titanic: The Aftermath
Discovery World (DStv 250)
When the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, 1 500 people died. This brand-new drama documentary begins where other accounts usually end and tells the story of the remarkable mission to recover and identify the bodies of the victims.

Meeting the descendants of three people involved in one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century, this programme explores the fate of their forebears and reveals the impact of the sinking of thise they left behind. From the violinist who died playing soothing music, to the richest man aboard who perished after ensuring his pregnant young wife was safely aboard a lifeboat, and the Halifax registrar whose methodology became the model for modern forensics, hear the poignant tales of 3 families whose lives were changed by this tragedy.


15 April Sunday 19:30
Titanic (new four-part mini-series)
BBC Entertainment (DStv 120)
Part I & Part II - 15 April
Part III & Part IV - 22 April
This brand-new four-part mini-series (to be aired in two back-to back episode broadcasts) written by Julian Fellowes (who is responsible for the brilliant Downton Abbey) is a new dramatic costume drama taking place aboard, and tracing the fateful voyage of, the Titanic. This lavish mini-series was filmed in Hungary with a great British cast.

Titanic follows different characters travelling on the ill-fated ship - from steerage passengers in third class to upper class guests. The show is phenomenal in the way in which all of the different stories come together as the ship starts to sink - heart-wrenching stories through the Titanic's last hours. Who will survive?


15 April Sunday 19:40
Titanic 100: Mystery Solved
History (DStv 254)
This two-hour TV special to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, is an exclusive underwater expedition in which History, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and RMS Titanic, Inc. conduct the most extensive exploration and imaging of the Titanic's wreck site ever undertaken.

CGI will illustrate what happened structurally to the ship minute for minute after the collision with the iceberg. How and why was it that the Titanic split apart as she sunk? Did the unsinkable ship have fatal flaws, and if so, who was responsible?


15 April Sunday 21:00
Titanic: Birth of a Legend
Discovery World (DStv 250)
How did the Titanic come into existence? This brand-new documentary combines cutting-edge computer graphics, dramatic recreations, painstaking research and first-hand evidence to chart the progress of the "unsinkable" ship from dream to drawing-board and ultimately, to disaster.

This documentary seeks out the untold stories of the men who designed and built her at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, investigates the financial pressures, political dramas, tragedy and shame that affected them all before and after the ship's launch. The documentary also includes a focus on the lives of a few of the workers who were privileged to be chosen to travel on the Titanic's maiden voyage and who died when she sank.


24 April Tuesday 08:00
Titanic 2
The Universal Channel (DStv 108)
A cheesy B-grade schlock film and a direct-to-DVD disaster movie which Titanic fans will want to watch out of interest.

On the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, the new Titanic ship - Titanic II - departs as a new oceanliner. Because of global warming in an outrageous plot, an iceberg and a tsunami (faster than the speed of sound) is on a collision course with the Titanic II.