Genius

I couldn't not write a review of this after I saw some of the negative 3/10, 1/10 reviews near the top. Thankfully scroll down a bit and you'll see nothing but 10/10, 9/10. This is a really fantastic, excellently crafted television series that delves into the discoveries and the life of Einstein and other notables around him.

Watching the warm and intense and completely unique love story deteriorate into the bitter breakdown in his marriage (not a spoiler, you know through the flash forward that his first marriage didn't work out) is tragic and immensely frustrating as you see this great mind struggle to grasp basic emotional empathy or understanding.

I've seen some reviews calling this 'hollywood trash'. It's not. It's deeply unfair in places, it's uplifting and exciting in others, there are no foregone, predictable conclusions, it's funny and the characters are multi layered and brilliantly written and acted. Johnny Flynn's brilliant! It's also wonderfully shot.

The only negatives I'd have would be that it can, at times seem a little expositional in the dialogue, but rarely, and that Geoffrey Rush takes over as the older Einstein a little too early - testament to Johnny Flynn that such a great actor as Geoffrey Rush has to work hard to follow.

They're making Picasso next and I hope by then this goes onto Netflix as no one seems to know about it. I had to buy it and it was money well spent.

I am amazed to read all the negative reviews here. I was hooked on Genius from the first episode. Yes, there's not an awful lot of science in it (up till now anyway - I've just watched episode 4), but the bio of Einsteins life fascinates me, as I am always keen to know more about the real person behind their work. The acting is superb, Rush is always amazing and Johnny Flynn is a pleasant surprise. Love the production, its a fascinating story very well told.

This is a review on series 2 on Picasso. I just came back from Barcelona and after visiting the beautiful Picasso museum and discovering what incredible pictures he already painted as a young boy I felt the need to learn more about him. I found the series both educating and entertaining. The episodes are not in chronological order and jump from Picasso being a young man to him being older, with various stages of his life in between. WW1, Spain's civil war, WW2, it is all there. It is fascinating to get to meet all the artists, painters and poets Picasso befriended and all the women he loved and needed. The whole subject of his treatment of women can fill a whole book. But still, according to the series they all wanted him, regardless of his behavior.. What really bothered me is that most of the series takes place in France. Most actors were French but had to speak in English with a French accent! Why couldn't they speak French! It would have been so much better. Antonio Banderas was fabulous. I wish we could have heard him speak more in Spanish. The actor who played Picasso was excellent too. In fact the acting was very good. Altogether I really enjoyed this series and feel that I have learned a lot.

After reading other reviews about this show I was hesitant to watch it. But there are e few points I'd like to make after seeing it up until now:

First of all: as anyone should know this is not a documentary. Don't expect a 100% accurate description of Einstein's life or complex explanations of his theories. It's a drama and you should know this while watching it. That being said: The first episode is actually a really bad introduction for the rest of the series: the drama aspect is way too high, they jump back and forward (which they don't in later episodes) and the focus of the episode is all over the place. In later episodes you get a much more structured way of looking at Einstein's life. There is a clear story line which you can understand and empathize with.

In conclusion: don't judge the entire series in the first 20 minutes of the first episode like seemingly a lot of others have done here.

I managed to find this 4 DVD set at my public library. Ten episodes at 50 minutes each, over 8 hours on the life of Einstein.

In college and graduate school I studied Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry. As a result I became very familiar with the contributions of Einstein and his fellow Physicists during the first half of the 20th century. The reason I enjoyed this series so much is that it put Einstein's whole life in a proper perspective.

Surely there are many "created" situations and conversations as the filmmakers' way of making all this interesting enough to invest 8+ hours in watching it. To me it doesn't matter if everything happened the way depicted here, as long as everything depicted is plausible, and it all is.

Other than that the story told here appears to be very faithful, historically, to Albert Einstein's whole life, his early struggles to get accepted, his marriages and romances, his difficulties with his sons, his being forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, his being hunted by J Edgar Hoover in the 1940s after Einstein became a USA citizen and professor at Princeton.

Overall a superb series especially for someone who has made a career in the sciences.