Evolution; Triumph of Life

During the mid-19th century, Darwin's peers--both professional and lay society--thought that the complexity of the human eye was proof positive of the hand of God. Today, we not only know that the eye evolved, but also that, in functional terms, the journey from the cup eye of primitive creatures to the camera eye of homo sapiens involved only a few key evolutionary steps. Evolution, one of two new series on the origins, flowering, and extinction of species, is a 7-video, 8-hour, PBS-aired epic from WGBH Boston Video that opens with a 2-hour episode--Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Interweaving dramatic reconstructions from Darwin's life with contemporary commentary from noted scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, the lead-off program peeks into the evolutionary aspects of current research in widely divergent areas such as outwitting the mutating HIV virus and simian intellectual development. Students and general viewers will gain a good understanding of Darwin's revolutionary concept of natural selection, formulated in the years following his groundbreaking voyage as the naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836) to South America; examine the proof of Darwin's theories in the fossil record and in studies illustrating the fact that 98% of human and chimpanzee DNA is identical; and trace the heated debates of Darwin's day--disagreements that extended even to Darwin's own family in the person of his Christian wife Emma. Successive episodes--Great Transformations, Extinction, The Evolutionary Arms Race, Why Sex?, The Mind's Big Bang and What About God?--explore the scientific underpinnings of nature's diversity, the reasons for extinction, the importance of sex, the evolution of the human mind, and the place of religion in evolutionary theory. Recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. Triumph of Life, PBS's 6-hour series on evolution that originally aired on Nature, takes an entirely different tack, with the occasionally leaden script ("all was chaos, but order and complexity emerged"), narrated by Liev Schreiber, taking a backseat to the extraordinary visuals. In the opener, The Four Billion Year War, viewers follow a timeline that originates with the building blocks of life found in the primordial soup eventually giving rise to amoebas some two billion years ago, and then more complex organisms as cell specialization allowed for an explosion of multifaceted life forms--crustaceans, amphibians, insects, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals, and (in a notable step backward) Tom Green. While viewers will learn some of the basics of evolutionary theory, very nicely illustrated with exquisite footage, the program drags a bit from repetition (with combative terms such as "struggle", "triumph" and "battle" rolled out with somewhat weary frequency) and from extraneous ratings-boosting shots of animals eating other animals (at times the focus is too much on survival of the fittest). Still, the computer-generated footage of Earth's early inhabitants, combined with the truly breathtaking shots of contemporary critters in all of their majestic natural wonder, makes this visually rich survey a worthwhile acquisition in its own right. The other 5 episodes in the boxed set are: The Mating Game, The Eternal Arms Race, Winning Teams, Brain Power and The Survivors. Recommended. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)