MUMBAI: For the 4,200 passengers on board the Costa Concordia, the events of 13 January were all too real and terrifying. Now, US infotainment broadcaster Discovery Channel will dissect the anatomy of this devastating disaster at sea in a world premiere special airing this year.

What happened at the time of the accident? Just what role did Captain Francesco Schettino play? How did the crew evacuate the ship? What are the mechanics of searching the site while safeguarding the waters against environmental damage? And what lies next for the massive, unprecedented salvage mission? Discovery goes beyond the breaking news and current headlines exploring whether salvage teams will even be able to save the ship and successfully dismantle its once mighty hull and frame.

Only hours after leaving port in Civitavecchia, outside of Rome, the luxury cruiseship ran aground just off Giglio Island. With 11 confirmed dead and 23 passengers still missing, the Costa Concordia is a huge human disaster but in the months ahead it will be marked by epic engineering challenges. Discovery crews will be covering the teams charged with figuring out a way to salvage a shipping vessel larger than the Titanic.

Discovery Channel executive VP production and development Nancy Daniels said, "The world has been horrified and captivated by the real life drama of the Costa Concordia disaster. With so many unanswered questions, Discovery will piece together not only the immediate events but the bigger story of what comes next in recovery and restoration".

MUMBAI: Discovery Channel is launching Wildest India, a five-part series that will premiere on 22 January at 12 noon.

The show will air every Thursday at 8 pm, starting 26 January.

With this new series Discovery Channel is hailing India?s diversity showcasing India?s wildlife, secret locations, epic landscapes and colourful beauty.

Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific South Asia Sr. VP and GM Rahul Johri said, ?Wildest India will take viewers on a safari around the country without ever having to leave their living rooms. With the unique and distinctive content, Discovery Channel aims to present for its viewers the unseen and enchanting Indian wildlife.?

The series explores the wildest and most remote parts of India, from the Himalayan Mountains, down the River Ganges and across to the world of the North East. It will showcase India?s wildlife and grand terrains, while bringing to the fore the relationship that exists between land, wildlife and human beings in the subcontinent.

MUMBAI: The documentary team behind ?Planet Earth? and the co-production partners of ?Life? will present ?Frozen Planet? in March 2012 on Discovery Channel in the US. The series will be narrated by actor Alec Baldwin.

Discovery Channel, TLC group president Eileen O?Neill said, "Discovery Channel is very excited to have someone as passionate and talented as Alec Baldwin to lend his voice to such an important landmark television event."

A Discovery Channel/BBC co-production four years in the making, the show aims to provide the ultimate portrait of earth?s polar regions, where the scale and beauty of the scenery and sheer power of the natural elements are unlike anywhere else on the planet. The show will reveal a world filled with creatures, variety, colour and spectacle including the birth of an iceberg bigger than the largest building on earth, a caterpillar with antifreeze in its veins, the greatest concentration of sea birds on the planet, and tiny baby polar bears, who at birth are 25 per cent smaller than human babies. Never-before-filmed sequences will include the growth of a saltwater icicle (brinicle) that freezes everything it touches and orca whales working as a team to create killer waves that wash seals off ice floes.

To capture nature?s majestic power - as well as its ultimate fragility the filmmakers utilised the latest cinematographic techniques and technology to capture groundbreaking imagery both above and below the ice in some of the most extreme and remote regions of our planet. Combined, the team filmed in every nation inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles during a record 2,356 days in the field, 1 1/2 years at sea, more than 6 months on the sea ice and 134 hours beneath that ice, filming in the polar oceans.