Portraits are one of the great subjects of British art, and from school photos to passports portraits are also central to all our lives. In two films for five, Fiona Shaw goes on a journey to explore pictures of people in history and today, starting with her own startling portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. She meets artists including the controversial painter Stuart Pearson Wright, Victoria Russell, who painted Fiona in 2002, and caricaturist...

Dorian Gray is young, arrogant, and devastatingly handsome. Confronted by his beauty in the form of a portrait, and struck by the terrible realization that he will age, Dorian wishes to retain his charms forever and finds his desire granted. He abandons himself to a life of hedonism, vice and murder, yet his face remains unmarked by his evil. But, hidden in his attic, the painting ages and corrupts, and one day Dorian must stand face to face with...

Emma worries that her family portrait won't be able to match the beauty of her friends' portraits, until her family wriggles and squeezes into a pose that only a worm family could do.

Unwillingly rendered an object of obsession by the Kommandant occupying her small French town in World War I, Sophie risks everything to reunite with her husband a century before a widowed Liv tests her resolve to claim ownership of Sophie's portrait.

Collects pictures of dancers striking poses in everyday places and while doing everyday things, including in libraries, on subway platforms, at restaurants, and on beaches.

Highlights the life and achievement of the Harvard Law School graduate, legislator, and civil rights lawyer who became the forty-fourth president of the United States through photographs and articles from Time Magazine.