5/5 Superb documentary on progress in the 20th century
  by John Grabowski (USA)
(This review applies to the entire boxed set of Charles Osgood's "A Science Odyssey" with some comments directed towards this specific title in particular.)

We all hated science in school, right? Science was boring. Science was for nerds. Science was dry and dusty facts about rocks and larvae and the solar corona, which sounds kind of like a beer from the tropics.

Well, Virginia, science doesn't have to be dull, and this series is proof. "A Science Odyssey" is a superb, fascinating set of documentaries on the science *and* the humanity behind the science. It's all extremely literate, doesn't dumb-down its subject one bit, and is chock full of interesting scientists who are enthusiastic about their fields of endeavor. Yet this is science your grandmother could understand. These shows strike the perfect balance between being substantive and being accessible to the lay person.

"A Science Odyssey" ran on PBS late in 1999, and dealt with scientific learning through the 20th century, each episode starting in an appropriate 1900 location for that show's theme and ending in its modern counterpart. Rather than just deal with one narrow topic for two hours, each episode has a broad conceptual theme, and shows connections between each that are often not readily apparent: thus "Bigger Better Faster" deals with everything that got bigger, better and faster in the 20th century: cars, planes, spaceships, computers, and synthetics (which are often better or at least less expensive than their natural counterparts). Along the way we get the usual suspects (cars, airplanes, computers) as well as some you probably don't think about too often (synthetics, radio, mass production). The theme throughout is how, despite the best-laid plans, inventions often have a life of their own, and people start using them for functions other than their inventors intended. The radio, for example, was never intended for music and entertainment, but that's what happened. No one foresaw that the public would want interconnected computers, or that the Internet, intended originally for military communication and university research, would become the World Wide Shopping Mall, but it has.

Charles Osgood hosts, and fortunately does not talk in rhyme here. The scripts are extremely well-written, the "theatrics" are kept to a minimum and the historical footage is fascinating. It all moves very quickly, appropriate for this television sound-bite age, but you come away smarter after each one. This should not be out of print. In fact, it should be on DVD, but I'm not holding my breath. These shows were made for the millenium, and are probably considered too "dated" to be of interest today.

(P.S. 10/20/05: I'm happy to report I was wrong about my prediction--PBS has finally put these on DVD. [It's about time. What's the matter, PBS, did you run out of cooking videos and Andre Rieu?]

Also, a note if you do get these on DVD: For some unimaginable reason [other than stupidity], if you choose "Play" from the menu, THE DISCS DO NOT START AT THE BEGINNING. They start either after the Prologue, or after the Prologue and Introduction depending on the disk. You thus miss the whole "set up" of each episode, the central question or issue. So instead of pressing "Play" in the root menu, go into the chapter selections and start with the first chapter, "Prologue.")