Genius of the Ancient World

The first episode interviews a woman, Lakshmi Singh about the cultural mileau of the Buddha. The interviewee gives the typical marxist claptrap about the caste system while not even knowing the names of the classes. That is the extent of the knowledge of the experts in this documentary. So cringe worthy that I could not help turning it off and watching a funny cat video instead.

Ridiculously incorrect it portraying ideas of these great thinkers. Annoying clip style filming where the camera can't show something longer than 5 seconds.

This is a 3-part BBC show. Host Bettany Hughes examines three ancient world changers; Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius. It's a lot of surface work. It's the basics. I found Buddha to be the most enlightening, no pun intended. I would think that Bettany would dig more closely into Socrates' personal life. As for Confucius, the counter to his philosophy is left almost entirely to the last part and it's mostly down to the Cultural Revolution. An hour each for such big figures is not enough but it's fine for an introductory course.

The first episode is basically footage taken from a movie interspersed with a talking head visiting a few random historical sites and filler places

In the second episode the narrator tells us that we need to see Egypt from space in order to understand. You'd think we would see Egypt from space, right? Wrong. We see a talking head blabber on and then randomly jump to a conclusion. The story progression reminds me of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

This is hard to watch. It is Hollywood crap. Make a story overly complicated and unfocused and pass it off as grand. This series is nothing but filler

Bettany Hughes presents an engaging rewiew of Buddhismm, Socratic method and Confucianism- The series looks at the historical contect of these three great leaders and also distills the core philosophies into their core essence so that the viewer can appreciate them as much as possible. Ignore the critics - judge for yourself!