BBC Commissions Simon Reeve Series

BBC has announced the commission of a new two part series that will follow Simon Reeve on his travels to the beautiful and troubled Burma.

Burma, also called Myanmar, was in the news in August of last year when a brutal military operation drove hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from their homes.

Mr Reeve travels around a divided country and encounters some whose lives are improving steadily, and others who still live in fear of the military and its huge power in the country.

In this two part series (2x60'), Simon travels to the biggest city in the country, Yangon to find out how the country is transforming. From there he drives north, into Burma's Buddhist heartlands and the stunning ancient capital of Bagan - a sight that rivals the great wonders of the world.

Simon visits Bangladesh to meet the refugees traumatised by the violence. In what is now the biggest refugee settlement in the world, he learns about a crisis that has been brewing for decades, with no sign of ending, and potentially grave consequences for the wider region.
And he discovers it's not just the Rohingyas suffering at the hands of the military as he travels secretly into one of Burma's many conflict zones to meet a rebel army who've been fighting the military for decades - in what has become the longest-running civil war in the world.