Saved by a Stranger

The series begins with Karl, a trainee clinical psychologist who was a passenger on the first carriage of the Picadilly Line London Underground train - one of the four targets of the 7/7 bombings. After the bomb exploded, Karl was comforted by a woman who held his hand in the smoke-filled carriage as he feared for his life. Cameras also follow Emina, an NHS researcher living in Nottingham. She and her younger sister Edina, who was diagnosed with Down Syndrome as a baby, were born in Sarajevo. Edina is searching for the doctor who helped her family evacuate to safety, and gave Edina the chance of a better life.

In episode two we meet Marc, a public health worker, who was diagnosed with HIV aged just 17 in the late 1980s, when the stigma surrounding the disease was at its peak and a diagnosis was considered a death sentence. Struggling to cope, Marc found support at the Landmark Centre in Brixton, where he had regular counselling sessions with a volunteer called John - opening up about his fears and hopes for the future ahead.

This episode features Navy veteran David, who was just 20 years old when he found himself heading towards a warzone most people had never heard of - The Falkland Islands. He was aboard the SS Atlantic Conveyor, a hastily refitted container ship carrying munitions and aircraft, with no defence capabilities. On 25 May 1982 the Conveyor was struck by two deadly Exocet missiles, setting the ship ablaze and forcing David and his fellow crewmates into the freezing South Atlantic Ocean. Tragically twelve men lost their lives in the attack, two of whom were from David's unit. In the nearly 40 years since, David has struggled to come to terms with what happened and is desperate to reconnect with his fellow crewmen who survived alongside him, to find out how they have coped with the trauma of that tragic event.

Identical twin brothers George and Peter who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 search for the family of the man who helped them escape. Plus, Clare, who housed 21 child refugees from wartorn Bosnia, looks for their mystery schoolgirl translator Petra, whose language skills allowed the children to properly communicate and share the horrors they had fled.