James Burke's Connections, with each episode showing how one idea sparks a chain of inventions and innovations resulting in something seemingly unrelated several centuries later.
You should also check out Bronowski's Ascent of Man, it was made with many of the same people, before Connections. Later, they again worked on Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
I have a bias against Bronowski from years ago, when I heard him say that man is unique among animals because only man plays, and science is his play. I remember thinking - good lord, man, have you never seen a cat?
I had a lot of problems with him in the documentary, especially his dismissals of certain cultures based on extremely sparse data from archeological records. But it was still good overall.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/james-burke-connections/