re: #3 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

Well, it’s one thing to paint in broad strokes, and quite another to substitute finger painting for Flemish masters like Rubens.

Here again is my beef: not the simplicity, but the presenting of science wrongly. The process that is described by the melodramatic music and narration betrays the real meanings of the data and what is behind the scientific process.

And even more importantly is the poor handling of words like “theory”, “proof”, and so forth. Add to that loaded words like “creation” and I think the narration really lets down the real meat of the project. The scientists interviewed themselves try to do a good job, but their explanations take up only a small portion of the hour long shows.

As much as I like the idea of making a major tv series about human evolution, given how poorly our society handles issues about which modern science gives definite answers (or raises important questions), I’d rather go for making the process and history (of the science) clear, rather than trying for drama that climaxes in the last 5 minutes of the show.

This series falls well short of the quality we’ve seen before, such as the one on Ardi a few years back.