Lives Less Ordinary

Love Stories: The matchmaker

At 83, Gina Ceccarelli thought the romantic chapter of her life was over. Then she met Dwight Moberg, a 91-year-old widower from California. There was just one complicati

Love Stories: Our own romcom

Karan and Roshan’s real-life romance inspired their film A Nice Indian Boy, and the success of the Hollywood/Bollywood romcom has healed many family rifts on the way. Ka

Love Stories: My two husbands

Kris Armstrong and Brandon Smith took their marriage vows seriously. But after Brandon suffered a major brain injury, Kris made a decision that led to their unique blende

Love Stories: Do you remember me?

A secret tore apart their teenage love. Four decades later, they got a second chance. In 1970s Nottingham, two teenagers fell head-over-heels in love when Mark Bethel ar

Love Stories: Finding you in a warzone

In 2016 Janay was a journalist in London and needed footage of the conflict in Syria, so contacted camera operator Habak in Aleppo. What followed was a love story neither

Introducing: Love Stories

Introducing a new season of five remarkable true stories in which love rises above prejudice, waits decades, crosses oceans and survives war. From India to Italy, Syria t

I crash-landed inside an active volcano

Chris Duddy survived 28 hours in Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano after his helicopter crashed. Cinematographer Chris Duddy has worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest movies like

Why I don't hate the person who tried to kill me

In July 2011 Bjorn Ihler was a 20-year-old performing arts student and a member of the youth division of the Norwegian Labour Party. He participated in the Party's summer

The prisoner who was forced to celebrate a World Cup victory

Miriam Lewin was never much interested in football. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she cared far more about politics than the team her family supported. But in 1978, when Ar

My father and the curse of the golden egg

Serena Kutchinsky was 10 years old when her jeweller father Paul unveiled his masterpiece to the world: a giant, golden, diamond-encrusted egg. Paul had recently taken ov

I had a baby – then lost my memory, part 2

After an undiagnosed case of pre-eclampsia caused catastrophic brain damage and amnesia, Samina Ali returned home from hospital to begin a long recovery. At 29, she foun

I had a baby – then lost my memory, part 1

When Samina Ali gave birth to her first child in California in 1999, what should have been a joyful moment quickly turned into a medical emergency. An undiagnosed case o

Could a sitcom save a man from death row?

Juan Catalan was facing the death penalty for a murder he didn’t commit. There was one man he thought could save him: US comedian Larry David. On 12 May 2003, Juan atte

I was kidnapped by North Korea

In the 1970s and 80s, a spate of mysterious disappearances were reported along Japan’s coast. One of those was 19-year-old nurse Hitomi Soga, who was walking with her mot

I was forced to rob my own bank, part 2

Many years after he’d held a gun to her daughter’s head, Michelle wrote to Robert Ortiz seeking closure. It took him years to write back – and then they met. In 2000, Mi

I was forced to rob my own bank, part 1

In 2000, armed men burst into Michelle Renee's home and held her child hostage while she was forced to rob her own bank. None of them could have predicted what happened n

Kangaroo Dundee: I gave it all up to become a ‘kangaroo mum’

Chris 'Brolga' Barns fell in love with joeys and became a kangaroo 'mum'. He rescues orphaned baby kangaroos, or joeys, carrying them around in a pillowcase to mimic thei

I'm a champion boxer, but couldn't tell my mum

Ramla Ali's family fled Somalia and settled in the UK; she then went from overweight bullied child to champion boxer and model who later brought the sport back to her hom

Strangers to coworkers to friends to...sisters?

Cassandra Madison and Julia Tinetti met working at the same bar in their 20s and were struck by how similar they looked. Their adoption records didn't match, but a surpri

Taught to kill – my childhood under the Khmer Rouge

Separated from her family and trained as a child soldier, Loung Ung's unbreakable spirit helped her survive Pol Pot’s regime, which killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s