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Exclusive: The BBC has tied with PBS on a Chris Packham-fronted series about evolution, as the corporation reveals it has doubled its number of blue-chip science shows.

Evolution will tell the story of the millions of generations that gave rise to animals today, tracking one animal per episode. Species in focus will range from the bat, whose ultrasonic hearing makes it one of the deadliest hunters on the planet, to the peacock and its magnificent feathers, to the kangaroo, which owes its impressive leaping not to its legs but to its teeth.

Packham, who also hosted last year’s Earth for the BBC, will take viewers back in time to chart evolution utilizing advances in genetic analysis and CGI.

“This is new, shiny and immediately accessible,” BBC Head of Science Tom Coveney told Deadline. “It’s full of animal-based facts but also because there are millions and millions of...

Cillian Murphy is the favorite to win the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on Sunday Night. The actor spent almost six months researching and prepping to play the role of the Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. It was not the first time the actor did extensive research for a role. One such research for a $34 million movie changed him from an agnostic to an atheist.

Cillian Murphy as physicist Robert Capa in Sunshine

In the 2007 sci-fi film Sunshine, Cillian Murphy played another physicist role, Robert Capa. The film takes place in the future and tells the story of a group of astronauts on a dangerous mission to save the Earth by reigniting a dying Sun.

Cillian Murphy’s Belief System Was Changed By His Research For Sunshine

Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, and Troy Garity in Sunshine

Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle...

BBC Greenlights Three Science Shows Including Brian Cox Mars Doc

The BBC has greenlit three science programs including a series in which Brian Cox heads inside the mission to Mars. In Arrow Media’s Seven Days on Mars feature doc, the celebrated TV scientist will be granted special privilege to access the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mission control Mars. In 1980 he wrote to the laboratory asking for photos from Voyager and the Viking Mission to Mars and it was a source of inspiration to his becoming a physicist, and the show, shot over a week, will allow Cox to realize his dream as he navigates the Rover’s every move. In the process, Cox will reveal how the mission could potentially transform our understanding of life not just on Mars but Earth as well. “The Perseverance Rover, and the Mars Sample Return missions to follow, may answer a deeper question...