Rating: 
Summary: The PBS TV Series, -not- the David Duchovny film..
Review: This series has very well chosen scientists who say very interesting things. Several of my favorite authors including Peter D. Ward, Simon Conway Morris, and Stephen Jay Gould provide explanations for their ideas on the subject. Compared to similar efforts, the animations of Burgess Shale organisms are a bit stiff and unrealistic. And it's maddening that all of the DNA helices seen in animations are left-handed, i.e. the mirror image of what DNA really looks like. But this series is touching all the right bases, from my p.o.v. and provides much valuable food for thought.
Rating:
Summary: A good Start
Review: This show is not a perfect introduction to evolution, but it is a good one. Evolution education in the USA is poor, mainly due to the interference of religious groups who oppose it. Since so few people understand evolution and the evidence that supports it, it is easier for those religious groups to mislead people as to what evolution is all about.I decided to write this after seeing the review from the "viewer in Seattle"
He claims to believe in Common Descent and to be a trained anthropologist.
But if he were, he would know that the evidence for human evolution is much too great to "fit into a medium-sized shoe box". This is a frequent creationist distortion, and an odd claim for someone who accepts common descent. He also says "Princeton-educated mathematicians, Physicists, biochemists, molecular biologists, etc. are not YEC ruffians. There are real scientists with genuine complaints about Darwinism. Can't Darwinists even admit that?" Note that only one field noted deals with biology, and remember that none of these people have written anything in the scientific press. Anyone can get a book published, but it is not so easy to write scientific papers for peer-reviewed journals. Why haven't any of these "scientists" ever done so? The truth is they do not do science; at least not where evolution is concerned.
Also, note that Darwinism is not evolution. Watch the show and you will understand this. Darwinism, or Natural Selection, is the theory that explains the observation of evolution. Funny that an anthropologist would not have this basic grasp of science. The program is quite well done, though I wish it had hit creationism and Intelligent Design (creationist pretending to do scientist) a lot harder. The enemy of creationism is not science; it is honesty.
Portraying why evolution became accepted and remains so is sufficient to do away with any of the claims of YEC or ID style creationist. This program does a good job at hitting the basics, but since it deals with science it does not deal much with creationism. We do not know everything about life and how it evolved. Any scientist will tell you that. But the evidence shows that life did evolve, and this show gives a good background as to what we do know, and how we know it.
I give it 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Agnostics are smarter than atheists
Review: Those who use evolution as proof there is no creator are, in my opinion, narrow minded. Evolution only disagrees with written texts of creationism. One needs to look well beyond.
If I were God I would want my people to be able to neither prove or disprove my existence...yet I would leave some doubts or unanswerable questions for man to ponder...like science that breaks down at the moment of the Big Bang.
Those that study the human body have barely glimpsed the complexities of this evolved life form and I find I have a gnawing feeling about how adaptive evolution alone got us all the way here. A bit of doubt leaves that door to God open, albeit not a god exactly like one's holy book might have posited.
Many great scientists are believers of sorts so I find atheists to be arrogant, and agnostics perhaps closer to the truth. Who knows...if string theory is in fact reality, perhaps God resides only a dimension away.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and Easy to Follow
Review: Very entertaining. It held my attention throughtout. The narration and interviews with the scientists involved was always clear and easy to follow. It was also very consistent - the "episodes" are all equally good.
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading and bigoted propaganda from start to finish
Review: What a blot on Australian SBS that they showed this propaganda piece founded by Microsoft bigwig Paul Allen. What is missing is more conspicuous than what's added. They evidently aim at anaesthetizing the non-atheists to the radical anti-theistic nature of evolution, and dress it up with glossily illustrated science. What they missed: They interviewed Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis for several hours and filmed an entire seminar, but omitted all his SCIENTIFIC objections, e.g. how natural selection adds no information. They also refused to show any Intelligent Design objections except on their "religion" episode, so they rightly pulled out. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett were among the talking heads, but none of their bigoted hostility towards theism was shown, because the producers knew that blatant atheism would turn off many viewers. But they are very happy to let people think that evolution and Christianity are compatible, because if they do, they have to separate Christianity from the real world. Among the mistakes was the claim that our eye is wired backwards. Fact, if our eye was wired forwards, as advocated by the modernist Catholic evolutionist Kenneth Miller (who has no qualifications or expertise in ophthalmology), there would be no way of regenerating the light receptors quickly. The cephalopod eye is NOT like a correctly-wired vertebrate eye but like a compound eye with a single lens, and is not as acute as a vertebrate eye. Fortunately, it is not necessary for me to provide a too-detailed critique, since the Discovery Institute has already produced a very good one. And in my opinion, Answers in Genesis has produced an even better one, available from their site, as is their CD jam-packed with information.
Rating:
Summary: What about other countries?
Review: Why there is not another DVD format that can be viewed in other countries? I am living in South America and I cannot order this DVD series because the format is NOT the same we are using here!
Rating:
Summary: It's actually INTERESTING!
Review: Wow! This series was a big surprise because of how well-done and informative it is. We had to watch "Evolution" in my 9th grade biology class (which made me think, "Oh, no, not another PBS series") and it was actually interesting! I think that the "Great Transformations" video was great. Where else could you learn about the evolution of whales without falling asleep? Or how about watching a documentary and be INTERESTED? This is what makes "Evolution" unique. Well, I'll keep this review short and say one thing: If you don't want to buy the DVD, then at least watch the program whenever (if ever) it re-airs. If you don't see "Evolution" at all, you're really missing out.
Rating:
Summary: If ony this series wasn' t limited to 4 DVDs.
Review: Wow!!! This series is as amazing as any laypersons textbook I've ever read on evolution. Each episode is not only a discourse (in the most envigorating way possible) about a different aspect of evolution, and not only does each explain the theories within that aspect but each does a great job of making them relevant to life today. What does 'cultural evolution' of transportation have to do with the cycle of extinctions. How can is the success of the AIDS virus to be attributed to what can only be called a flaw in its copying apparatus? How can we use that knowledge to our advantage in the struggle against its effects? Honestly, there are only slight criticisms I have about each. The first - and how relatively trivial it is - is that for every episode, I was able to think of 4 more episodes that I would have liked to see, or at least 4 more topics that each could've covered. Evolutionary psychology was, to a large degree, left unexplored but for a 10 minute passage. The punctuated equilibrium vs. Dawkinian incremental evolution debate - for as specialized as it seems it is still a HUGE debate within biology - was ignored and most of all, sociobiology was not touched on. So many facets so little DVD space! Still, I couldn't take away a star just for these trifles. Here's a brief overview of each episode and its highlights. Darwins Dangerous Idea - Probably the dullest episode of all. Alternates between Darwins relevance today and BBC style reenactment of his life Great Transformations - The origin (or suspected origin) of life and from it, the quadropods - that is, four leggeed spined creatures. Interesting discussion of our similarities to other quadropods in past and present. Extinctions - If 99% of animals are extinct, will we be and why are we not yet? Good discussion of interconnectedness of eco-system - one thing propping up others. Evolutionary Arms RAce - Fascinating episode about the head-to-head competition for survival. Why are adaptations handy and what really is human beings helpul adaptation? Is it language, tool making, conceptual thinking...what? Why Sex? - Why males are on the surface superfluous (gulp) but really a good thing evolutionarily (see, I always tell women we're good for something). Different male/female connections in different species and how species attract opposite sex. Good but short lead into evolutionary biology, especially ideas of Geoffrey Miller. The Minds Big Bang - Another great episode dealing with how, why and when the mind may have developed. Why did such a strange mutation prove successful? Was it all at once or in small improvements? The episode is a bit one-sided as it speculates that by in large, language was the brains function rather than conceptual thought. What about God? - One of the best episodes and the most philosophical in nature. Why do creationists dislike evolution and why do evolutionists go out of their way to block creationism from schools. Meet high school and college (Christian college) students who are striving to find a connection between evolution and God. As one of the few atheists I've met who DOES NOT take evolution as given, I found this episode, chock full of Christians who believed in evolution, too, a good closer of the series. Overall, the only other comment/complaint I had (again, no subracted star) was that contrary to the last reviewer, I think that any science that calls itself a science needs to be able to welcome criticism. It would've been good for this series to focus a bit more on, not only outside criticisms like creationism, but criticisms from the inside, like Steven Gould's 'spandrel' concept. Still, if the intersted viewer wants to digest those, there is a surfeit of literature. This DVD set will get you more interested in evolution than you thought possible. Check it out!
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