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FROM TPT REWIRE: This Show Will Make You Think Like a Genius

May 24, 2016

photo by PBS Genius By Stephen Hawking

Rewire-Post

From Rewire — public media with a twist

By David Gillette


PBS isn’t an island. Turn on Genius By Stephen Hawking, and you’ll see plenty of production techniques pulled straight from the reality TV playbook: team challenges, contestants recapping the action while sitting in fields, and lots of surprised laughing as new emotional twists are revealed.

And yet, you’d never think this show was anything but PBS. The entire run may be only six hours long, but each hour-long installment takes on a HUGE idea (Can we time travel? Are we alone? Where did the Universe come from?), and it challenges ‘average’ people – reality TV would call them contestants – to explore the idea using puzzles, games and riddles.

genius-four-images-1

For those of us in the television business, it’s not just the type of show we want to watch, it’s the type of show we want to MAKE. Literally a producer’s dream.

The show is a love letter to hands-on mechanics – machines, catapults, fireworks. It’s real STUFF, built by real people… with their HANDS (although CG does play a tasteful and essential role). In short, it’s big kids playing… with toys… and big ideas… and toys.

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The fifth episode in the series, is one I can’t get out of my head. “Big” doesn’t come close to describing the question they’re hoping to tackle…

“What are we?”

That’s not just any question, Mr. Hawking. That’s THE question. The one we’ve been struggling with since we started walking around on ten toes.

And yet, in just one hour, the Genius team creates a remarkably visual (and memorable) overview of self-assembling amino acids, the mechanics of evolution and even the incredible scale of geologic time. In. One. Hour.

To me, this is PBS at its best. They take all the disjointed ideas bouncing around in our heads (I remember my 9th grade science teacher saying something like this!) and they tie them together with plastic putty and glowing dishes of bacteria, and voila… somehow it all makes sense.

Bottom line. Watching Genius doesn’t feel exactly like “learning,”… it feels like “experiencing, exploring and understanding.”

And THAT is the stuff of genius.

Watch Genius By Stephen Hawking Wednesday nights at 8 PM on TPT 2, online at TPT.org or on the PBS app.

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2016. All rights reserved.

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