Forces of Nature

As always a very enjoyable series with the brilliant Prof Brian Cox what more can I say except go out and buy it !!!!

Love all documentaries Brian Cox. This one makes you think about the world around you a bit more and is also pretty good for younger kids. Perhaps a little less awe inspiring than some of his earlier work but Wonders Of The Solar System is hard to top. Arrived well packaged.

Gotta have all of Brian's docs on bluray. Yes indeed.

As always with prof. Cox beautiful pictures explaining complex concepts in a way most people are able to understand.

Bought as a present and recipient is happy with it

As described

Hi, Brian Cox is to science documentaries who David Attenborough is to nature documentaries, and Cox as a presenter is clearly very passionate and enthused by his subject matter. His documentaries are very well written, succinctly delivered and feature interesting concepts delivered in remote majestic foreign locales with subtle use of CGI visual effects to communicate their points and tell their stories. One cannot fail to be engaged each time a new series comes along, but therein lies the rub. Brian Cox and his team within the BBC have produced simply too many of them, each in turn raking over the same ground that was covered by the previous series. There are only so many times you can communicate the position of the planets within the solar system by using the examples of rocks spaced out in sequence on the arid terrain of some deserted stretch of non-descript land before the content starts to repeat itself. Cox seems to feel the need to walk several thousand yards from a lit-up coastal lighthouse at night-time to demonstrate the position of our solar system within the Milky Way etc. We understand Brian and we certainly hope you had a nice evening! This is not to say this particular show was not welcome (demonstrating how a wetsuit changes colour underwater due to the amount of light bouncing off it was genuinely interesting) but pace yourselves better in order to maintain your audience, your ratings and indeed your revenue!

I've thoroughly enjoyed all Brian Cox's other work, both his documentary series ('Wonders of...') and his excellent radio series the Infinite Monkey Cage, but was disappointed with this overblown and sentimental documentary series. The science is very similar to his earlier and better series 'Wonders of Life'. The idea - and it's an appealing one - is to include various people around the world and relate their personal stories to the scientific concepts being presented. Thus for example a family living at the mouth of the Amazon river are shown making preparations against a seasonal tidal wave. The same wave is enjoyed by a surfer. And herein lies part of the problem for me. The complex cultures of various parts of the world are beautifully filmed, but their interactions with nature are reduced to simple, or more often simplistic storylines. So, for example, the migration of the Maasai to take their cattle to water is made into a narrative of the wife waiting at home for the husband to return, with a sickening sentimental and obviously staged sequence where the children run to be embraced by their returning dad. Worse still is a sequence in the last episode where a child has his cataracts removed and can see for the first time. Of course this is a great thing and to be celebrated. But it is presented in a way which unequivocally depicts blindness as something to be pitied. The child is led around by his mother, and held by his father looking sad whilst his friends play together. This is nonsense - blind children can play with their friends (whether they subsequently recover their sight or, because their condition is different from this child's, never do). I was shocked and disgusted that the BBC have so little sensitivity and ethical and moral sense as to present disability in this way. I will be writing to them suggesting they re-edit this sequence to remove this insult to the disabled and the consequent really objectionable opinions such as that the child 'was not a whole boy' because he could not see. He was and other permanently blind children also are. This sequence is so, so wrong. So, go to Cox's previous series Wonders of Life which covers the same science exactly but in much more detail and without the sentimentality and patronising attitude to the disabled and other cultures. Shame on you BBC - in 2016 a responsible broadcasting company should at least know the basics of ethical behaviour.

Can not play it on my Canadian DVD player but have seen it before, excellent

I own every series Brian Cox has released with BBC. When this one finally showed up in the US I was APPALLED that they had replaced Cox with some boring generic narrator. The beauty of these series (among other things) is the obvious passion (and knowledge) Cox has for the subject. It’s like when BBC Life came out and they replaced Sir David Attenborough with Oprah!?!? BLASPHEMY!!!! I don’t get it. Do they think US audiences will be turned off by his accent? IMO he is the heir to Carl Sagan for the sciences. Even Attenborough said if he had a torch to pass along he would give it to Brian Cox. If you like this check out his “Wonders” series. They are all fantastic. Wonder of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe, Wonders of Life and Human Universe.

I thoroughly enjoyed all episodes.