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'It was a terrific place to work and on a clear day you could see the curvature of the Earth,' says a survivor of the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre at the beginning of 9/11 (TVB Pearl, Monday, 8.30pm). The docu-drama, broadcast on the fifth anniversary of that day, records the events as they unfolded minute by minute through the eyes of the people who were there. 'While billions of TV viewers had grandstand views of unfolding events,' explains the narrator, 'they knew nothing about what was going on inside the towers.'
The film follows the stories of 12 people - some of whom survived, others who didn't - using archive footage and reconstructions based on transcripts of phone calls and accounts from survivors, victims' families, emergency workers and city officials. There is Hong Zhu, a broker who survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre: while his colleagues leave the building, he chooses to stay at his desk, telephoning the emergency operators for instructions. Then there is firefighter Jay Jonas, of the now famous Ladder Company Six, and Christine Olender, assistant general manager at Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower.
The details about the towers' inadequacy in an emergency are particularly poignant because, when the planes hit, the buildings' vital systems instantly malfunctioned. In the North Tower, 70 levels below impact, ceilings buckled and doors jammed. When the Port Authority Security Command Centre told people to evacuate the North Tower, most did. But some stayed put ... because they were told to - the PA system instructing people to 'remain at their desks' could not be switched off. Those who chose to evacuate via the stairs (it took 50 minutes to reach the bottom) had to negotiate an escape route wide enough for only two people. And, in order to accommodate lift shafts and machinery, two of the stairwells (there were three in each building) didn't descend in a straight line - people had to cross the buildings to continue their journey down.
Office workers in the South Tower, which was the second to be struck, had no idea what was happening outside. After evacuating, they were told to return to their offices. 'Had I known that a plane had gone into the building next door,' says Stanley Praimnath, who worked on the 81st floor, 'I wouldn't have gone back up. I would have gone straight home.'
The issue of when is an appropriate time to start dramatising such a traumatic event will always be debated (Oliver Stone's film World Trade Center premiered in New York last month to mixed reactions) but 9/11 is just about saved from sensationalism by its sober, objective narration. The use of drama to illustrate what was going on inside the towers makes for disturbing viewing - the smoke, the fire, the darkness, the confusion - but it is the interviews with the survivors and the relatives of those who died that are the most affecting. Filmed in a photographer's studio against a plain backdrop, their words are far more harrowing - and stay with the viewer longer - than the elaborate reconstruction of devastation and chaos.
Years before September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists were realising the effectiveness of the internet to promote jihad. In The New Al Qaeda: Jihad.com (below; Monday, Discovery Channel, 9pm), Peter Taylor, a BBC journalist who has been reporting on terrorism for the past 30 years, explains how, since September 11, al-Qaeda has become more fragmented and more heavily reliant on the internet as a uniting force.
In this three-part series (the other instalments follow on Tuesday and Wednesday, at 9pm), Taylor interviews a host of experts who warn the internet has become a vital weapon in al-Qaeda's arsenal. As a medium for recruiting terrorists, it is uncensored, almost impossible to control and extremely effective. FBI consultant Evan Kohlmann, who specialises in monitoring sites devoted to jihad, says they are aimed at a generation of young, tech-savvy, middle-class Muslims in western cities 'for whom the internet is as easy as 1, 2, 3'.
Taylor also meets controversial webmaster Mohammed al-Massari, a Saudi dissident and a supporter of Osama bin Laden who has been given sanctuary in Britain. He puts inflammatory material - images of suicide bombings in the Middle East and terrorist training manuals - on his website because, he says, he is merely a publisher of other people's material.
This documentary focuses mainly on London, but the repercussions are global and the consequences chilling.
