This is why people use RAID. Because one drive failing means you lost the data.
They also take backups. Because more than one drive can fail at the same time.
You've lost the data, if the drive is dead. There's no practical way to retrieve it, unless you're willing to pay enormous amounts of money to someone who can dismantle the drive and try to read the data directly from the disk platters in a clean room.
It's insane that BBC just threw out material. Talk about some short-sighted bullshit.
But of course there are immense amounts of material just rotting away out there, I'm sure.
Wasn't it Verbatim also who started selling normal looking Blu-ray recordables but stamping them "M-Disc"? M-Disc is supposed to be glassy carbon and have that huge archival time. Honestly, Verbatim is looking like a scumbag company nowaydays after being sold and bought.
Physical media is sadly dying. It's stupid, there's no good alternatives for some applications. Very annoying.