Equator

For most people the equator is just an imaginary line around the globe but, in this series, author and broadcaster Simon Reeve comes face to face with reality. He takes viewers on a 25,000-mile journey that reveals the equator as a unique region of the planet, home to both the world's greatest concentration of human poverty and natural biodiversity. Beneath the sweltering heat of the equatorial sun lie paradise beaches, strange foods and exotic wildlife, along with some of the world's most extreme terrain: dense rainforests, towering volcanoes and perilous rapids. Simon encounters conflict, environmental damage, dictators, poverty, tourism, pollution, unemployment and desperation – in a spectacular travelogue.