Helen Macdonald turned to hawking for solace when her father died, chronicling her grief in the award-winning book H is for Hawk. Now she's training her first goshawk since then on Nature. She spoke to us about the meanings give to animals and more.

Despite difficulties involving its creation and lukewarm reviews at its premiere, The Nutcracker has become perhaps the most popular ballet in North America. Its path to success on this continent runs through Disney, San Francisco, and CBS.

George schemes to ruin Drake, and Ross and Demelza search for a way to save the boy. But Demelza may hold the power to rescue him, if she makes a terrible choice. Dwight and Caroline's relationship founders in the wake of his traumatic prison experience.

Louisa is having a mid-life crisis. She's feeling old, now that Larry has moved out and taken up with a beautiful young woman and Sven supposedly has a youthful girlfriend. Gerry has been assigned a stodgy new tutor, and Leslie has taken up photography. 

In the Joffrey Ballet's new Nutcracker,  the main characters aren't wealthy but instead are working class immigrants living on the grounds of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair before it opens. How did the Joffrey reinvent a holiday classic?

November is packed with local productions about Chicago. Check out our highlights, from a new Geoffrey Baer tour to a national show looking inside the creative process of making a new Nutcracker, not to mention three other Chicago programs.

Zany as they seem, the family and friends in The Durrells in Corfu are based on real people: a naturalist, a famous novelist, a polymath. Meet some of the illustrious Durrells and the other characters they met during their real-life stay in Corfu.

Michael Kirk discusses his new Frontline investigation, Putin's Revenge, which looks at Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election and what drove Putin to order it. "The ideology of Putin right now is survival of Putin," Kirk says.

Ross adds action hero to his list of roles as he and his friends conduct a dangerous prison break to save Dwight. Drake and Demelza struggle to break things off, but George and Elizabeth force Osborne into the picture in exchange for social influence.

Larry's first novel has just been published in England, but no one in his family has read his book, driving a rift between him and especially his mother. Louisa tries to improve as a parent by organizing a reading and finding Gerry a tutor. And everyone gets drunk.

For a brief period, the new Apple Store off the Chicago River looked like a giant Macbook. What other buildings take inspiration from objects, in subtle or outrageous ways? Discover examples from the blatant to the futuristic and inspired.

Need a quick and easy but flavorful dinner? Try this recipe for Burmese Chicken from Christopher Kimball's Milk Street, in which you're saved the time of marinating by using an aromatic paste of lemongrass, garlic, ginger, and shallots.

Nature's program Animal Reunions examines the bonds that can form between animals and human caregivers, reuniting orphaned or rescued animals with the people who rehabilitated them. Learn about the work of some of these conservationists.

The Poldark airing now isn't the first adaptation of Winston Graham's historical novels. The BBC produced two extremely popular seasons about Ross, Demelza, Elizabeth, and George in the 1970s as well. How do the characters in the old and new series compare?