The Weather
The Weatheris a major BBC documentary exploring the extremes of the world's climate with the engaging presenter Donal MacIntyre. The four one-hour programs focus on wind, wet, cold, and heat, and explore how these produce hurricanes, monsoons, ice storms, and tornadoes, as well as regulate the global environment. MacIntyre, best known for his British investigative seriesMacIntyre Undercover(1999), travels the world, from beneath the North Pole to the saturated humidity of the Belize tropical rainforest. Bringing to mind previous daredevil hosts, MacIntyre skydives, is battered by a wild tunnel, is frozen in an ice-box, is subjected to a reservoir flood, and endures a marathon across the Sahara. Survivors' accounts tell the stories of such disasters as Hurricane Andrew, a New York state snow storm and the flood of Britain's eastern coast in 1953. The intelligent use of computer graphics enhances clear explanations of the jet stream, ocean currents, and other phenomena, in a series that is part geography lesson (but with a great teacher), part reality TV entertainment show. Occasional flash-cut editing and some inappropriate techno/drum & bass on the soundtrack will irritate viewers who remember life before MTV, but otherwise this is an excellent mainstream documentary series.--Gary S. Dalkin