Two strange production choices make this turgid four hours a bigger slog to get through than it might have been and should have been: Talking heads, no doubt knowledgeable, but not necessarily pleasing to listen to, not just for the non-English speakers but others as well. So the choice was to use their (sometimes grating) voices and put the translations in script at the bottom of the screen. But if I wanted to READ about DaVinci, I'd crack a book. The problem with superimposed text is that the viewer eye track is on the text and not on the always-compelling visuals. This would matter less with many topics but we're here to appreciate DaVinci so what on Earth were you thinking? Bad choice two is the text itself: Small size, strange font and worse, rendered in mellow yellow/key lime green that vanishes into illegibility depending on the visual/artwork that's on the screen. Dear lord. So you make the viewer read (not absorb visuals) but even THAT mission is a failure. It needs to actually be readable -- ALL of it. Perhaps I'm a minority and most viewers won't be bothered by any of the presentation. I spent 25 years in TV production (news, documentaries) so I perhaps look at things with a different eye. But even the content isn't compelling enough to compensate for the ...suboptimal...visual production.
