Origins: The Journey of Humankind

◦ An overacted and melodramatic series of speculations, conjectures, dramatizations, & fictional speculations woven into a 'story' of key elements of mankind's progress: i.e., fire, cooking, gunpowder.

◦ The narrator, Jason Silva, presents dialogue with overacted caffeinated gusto, using a repetitious series of stiff, wooden gestures reminiscent of President George Bush. The format and style of the show is so amateurish that it made me wonder if the target audience was elementary or junior high. LCD in High-Def.

Look, I don't disagree with all the negative points that others have raised: flagrant inaccuracies; glaring omissions; irritating narration; poor acting; too America- / Euro-centric; and a dumbed-down patronising style. Nevertheless, I watched Origins primarily in order to learn interesting new facts, and it did teach me quite a few: Kublai Khan's pioneering use of paper money (although the show is inaccurate - the Song Dynasty were the first to issue paper money, before the Mongols); the work of Nostradamus as a plague healer (although the show inaccurately portrays him as a proper doctor, which he wasn't); Tollense (Germany) as the world's oldest large-scale battlefield; Robert Koch's role as the founder.of microbiology; and El Castillo (Spain) as the home of the world's oldest known cave painting. Therefore, in my opinion, it's not a bad show.

Was so psyched to see this. Such an interesting subject matter but the way this is presented with reality TV style commentary and cringe worthy dramatizaions, ruins what could have been a very interesting and educational series. Why oh why did you have to make it in this format? Such a waste. This is definitely for the "American Idol" audience. Going to have to look elsewhere to find some mentally provocative programming. Seems this is the way Nat Geo is going now.

For a science and history documentary series with an obviously huge budget, Origins: The Journey Of Humankind does just about everything it can to ruin itself. There is obviously some genuinely fascinating information in here but it has been drowned in Hollywood melodrama. With ridiculously over-the-top historical re-enactments, including silly and unconvincing "pre-historic" scenes, relentlessly pounding music all the way through, and Jason Silva wildly over-acting his three-camera presentation, this smacks of a production by people who think their audience is so dull and short on attention span that they need history explained to them as a sci-fi adventure movie. It doesn't inform as much as it irritates. What a waste of an opportunity to explore history.

The era of Murdoch has arrived at National Geographic. The sneaky indoctrination, the half-truths, the thinly disguised falsehoods and the pandering for the lowest common denominator. Origins, their new "documentary mini-series", is a disgusting product of the Fox "imagination". I'd be very, very surprised if there are scientists that appear here and there that are comfortable with the editing. From homo sapiens "swinging in the trees" to fire being a game changer a stupidifing mere 12,000 years ago, in an age with "no society, no protections, no guarantees", to cooking at such a time mandating a society were "women cook and men hunt." A totally idiotic, scientifically-illiterate, mischievous narrative of nonsense. Fire predates homo-sapiens. The protections of society are a major hominization driver from millions of years ago, and there are no evidence whatsoever that points to a women-cook, men-hunt, sexual division of labor at such times. This is what you get when scientific literacy takes a nose dive. this is what you get when you pander to the prejudices and illusions of knowledge from the dregs of your costumer base. This is where National Geographic goes to die in everything but a hollow brand name. Yes, I am furious. You should be too.