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eiremike-84699
Reviews
Railway Murders (2021)
Slowwwest Show EVER
I have never in my life seen a TV show that moves more ponderously than this. I don't like being so critical, but this show is the very definition of "mind numbing." If you're looking for a potent soporific, look no further! The presenters speak soooo slowly, and repeat the same information over and over again. It's like a five minute script that has been stretched to an hour. It reinforces every negative stereotype I've ever had of glacial British documentaries. And there are fully six episodes of this exercise in watching paint dry! I can't imagine anyone having the mental stamina to hang in there to the bitter end. For mindless entertainment, this is gold!
Nature: Super Hummingbirds (2016)
Fantastic Photography but Poor on Evolution
This documentary gets a 10 for the photography and a 10 for the science that the scientists are shown conducting, but a big 0 for the frequent references to "design" or suggestions that the creatures are somehow deciding to adapt themselves to their environments in particular ways. This kind of casual misrepresentation of evolution does a profound disservice to one of the most powerful scientific ideas in the history of humankind. David Attenborough, by way of contrast, always gets this kind of thing right, referring to evolution as a process that operates blindly on creatures without conscious intent or goal. Many of the American produced (or dubbed) nature documentaries take the inaccurate approach of Super Hummingbirds, which is a travesty.
This is very persnickety of me, but I also did not care for the narrator, Patricia Clarkson. She had a whispery, rather precious delivery that I found very distracting.