NatGeo's "Genius": Starring Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson, first ep directed by Ron Howard

[Guestx]

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Just finished watching the first ep of this. It's NetGeo's first scripted drama.

Older Einstein is played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson plays his wife. Young Einstein is played by Johnny Flynn.

Ron Howard is helping to produce the show and also directs the first episode. So if you're curious about what it would look like if NatGeo gave a director like Ron Howard a TV-sized budget and asked him to make a show about Albert Einstein, well here it is.

After one episode I think it's pretty good. It's not going to knock your socks off, but it's not bad. I give it one of these:



The first ep is available to stream here:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/genius/

Anyone else checked it out?

 

[liljoe]

Yes, enjoyed very much. Einstein is my favorite person from the 20th century.

 

[TrippleOG]

Didn't know he was such a horn dog !

 

[no fat chicks]

The perv side of Einstein

 

[Guestx]

Didn't know he was such a horn dog !

Since it's NatGeo one would think they are sticking pretty close to the facts. But I do know that the History Channel has taken a lot of creative liberties with their scripted programs so one does have to wonder.

 

[TrippleOG]

Since it's NatGeo one would think they are sticking pretty close to the facts. But I do know that the History Channel has taken a lot of creative liberties with their scripted programs so one does have to wonder.

I just have a hard time believing Einstein really acted like that , I feel like they are trying to make him more arrogant , macho , ADD then he actually was but I guess they need to make it over the top a bit to not bore the average viewer .

 

[Guestx]

I just have a hard time believing Einstein really acted like that , I feel like they are trying to make him more arrogant , macho , ADD then he actually was but I guess they need to make it over the top a bit to not bore the average viewer .

Yeah, could be. I guess we'd have to do more research on Einstein to know. My understanding is that this whole series is based upon a particular biography of Einstein--the name of the title escapes me at the moment--so I wonder if those details are in the book.

But they do call it a "scripted drama" and, as we know, scripted dramas often sacrifice historical details for the sake of entertainment value. Take History Channel's Sons of Liberty mini-series, for instance. I enjoyed it quite a bit but there are a great many historical flights of fancy in it.

 

[Joe_Armstrong]

I can never get into dramatized science docu's
I want someone to explain stuff for 45 minutes.
Feels like a soap series. I've seen 4 or 5 docu's on Einstein
from BBC and NOVA. He was unique, and makes me wonder
what could be possible if someone of his intellect was born again.
His brain was different, both halves were much more connected.
And was later stolen after he died.

 

[AronaBeatsJones]

The commercials were brutally bad, and turned me off completely from a topic I'm otherwise extremely interested in.

In a thirty-second commercial, Einstein is seen making out with women no less than SIX times. WTF is this shit? I want to see him working on formulas and stuff.

They tried to market to a female audience, and thus, missed the actual demographic this should've been targeted to. I predict they'll find this out the hard way once the ratings come in.

Nobody wants to see scripted dramas on NatGeo anyway. More documentaries on animals and lost artifacts and shit.

 

[Guestx]

The commercials were brutally bad, and turned me off completely from a topic I'm otherwise extremely interested in.

In a thirty-second commercial, Einstein is seen making out with women no less than SIX times. WTF is this shit? I want to see him working on formulas and stuff.

They tried to market to a female audience, and thus, missed the actual demographic this should've been targeted to. I predict they'll find this out the hard way once the ratings come in.

Nobody wants to see scripted dramas on NatGeo anyway. More documentaries on animals and lost artifacts and shit.

Damn, kinda harsh.

Having seen the first ep, at least so far the focus is less on his liaisons with women--though, yes, there are some scenes about this--and more on his fascination with science, his early education, and his increasing discomfort with the rise of Nazism in Germany.

And while I do think that NatGeo should maintain a focus on educational documentaries, I think a few scripted shows about important people or events could be fun.