Told through the drama of the dig, the stunning discoveries and stylised fresco-inspired animations, which imagine what life was like in Pompeii before the eruption and the horror faced by the residents as Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

The excavation aims to unearth the buildings, their purpose, who lived there, and what happened to them during the eruption. Alongside the present tense story of the dig, the series investigates the timeline of the eruption. From the violent earthquakes that shook the city in the years before the eruption to the day of the disaster, Vesuvius first slowly buries Pompeii and then delivers the killer blows in the form of pyroclastic flows.

And, for the first time, pioneering new research finds hard evidence that some Pompeiians escaped the city and survived the eruption. From evidence hidden in Pompeii’s storeroom of prominent Pompeiians, the investigation discovers inscriptions that date from after the eruption and bear the same name in the area surrounding the destroyed city.