Hosted by the multi-talented Adam Hart-Davis, The COSMOS: a Beginner’s Guide takes you on a trip through time and space connecting us with our galaxy and the possibility that what lies outside of our own galaxy can one day provide us with answers to where we came from. You’ll visit teams all over the globe that work as a conglomeration of explorers and discoverers to take us into the future and reveal endless possibilities when it comes to intelligent life outside in the far reaches of space.

I come from a household that jumps at the opportunity for discovery when it comes to space, aliens, science, and the unknown so when I see a program that covers any of these idea’s I’m highly skeptical and or judgmental about how the information is presented. Fortunately The Cosmos has the instant charm of its host Adam Hart-Davis (who reminds me of an older Harold Ramis) who puts the information of the show in words with such a passionate and fresh way that your never bored. Over the six episode collection Hart-Davis not only takes you to places like SETI, CERN, and deep into the depths of the Hadron Collider, but he makes sure to simplify things with short intermissions from the more complex attributes of the episode by presenting more accessible models of presentation. For instance your every day examples like radio waves and television transmissions, these make more sense in the smaller scheme of things so that you can apply the logic to the larger scaled examples.

Visual aid is a very big plus in the presentation of information here. Visuals borrowed from a variety of sources add another dimension to some episodes giving you a better grasp on what’s going on. Most of the locations where Hart-Davis travels to there is always someone who is willing to put on a display of their findings from models made up to show you how they discovered Super Massive Black Holes in the galaxy to significant clues about planets that could possibly sustain life, ours or otherwise. Other presenters like Janet Sumner and Maggie Aderin also supply visual models and explanations easy enough to wrap your head around to connect with the idea’s found in the collection. Sumner’s explanation of Hubble’s discovery on distances between our planet and heavenly bodies located in our own galaxy are as easy as explaining the closer they come they are blue and the further away they are they are red, but open ended discoveries such as Hubble’s discovery that almost all of the bodies surrounding Earth are moving further away leave you room for thought.

Its mentioned several times in The Cosmos that there will never be a point in time when we can absolutely say that there is nothing more to be learned from star gazing, that we’ve unlocked every secret in our galaxy and beyond. With that in mind the fact that most of the episodes end without really giving you a definitive answer on anything is just something your going to have to live with. Your given the insiders look into experiments being held all over the globe and what they hope to accomplish. Everything else, any quest to delve deeper into the mysteries of these experiments is left for you to discover on your own. Sometimes I was frustrated, the episodes last about twenty six to twenty eight minutes long, hardly enough time to really give you the opportunity to explore fully the places you visit or the information your being fed, but all in all I was fascinated and intrigued by The Cosmos: The Beginners Guide. With a runtime of one hundred and sixty nine minutes it’s a fairly short investment if you wanted to give the series a chance but if your anything like me one hundred and sixty nine minutes seems like such a shame when your willing to continue your journey with this charming and accessible program. I highly recommend. Enjoy.