This 75 minute BBC special Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic was released in order to mark the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic that swept the world infecting around one third of the total human population and is estimated to have killed 50 million people.

In this film we see broadcaster Hannah Fry conduct a nationwide citizen science experiment, those who wanted to get involved could download an app called BBC Pandemic, and contribute their movement and contact data for a day. From this data the ‘maths team’ were asked to run a model which would reveal how a pandemic would spread throughout the United Kingdom.

It’s scary to think that just over a year later we have found ourselves in the midst of a real life pandemic due to the outbreak of Coronavirus (Covid-19). This documentary will hopefully shed some light on how important it is to observe social distancing at this time.

Directed by: Cressida Kinnear