Television
NATIONAL Geographic’s first scripted series, Genius, premieres on Sunday at 8.05pm, chronicling not only the brilliance of Albert Einstein but his tumultuous private life.
Exploring Einstein’s extraordinary professional achievements along with his volatile, passionate and complex personal relationships, the series is based on Walter Isaacson’s book Einstein: His Life and Universe and is executive-produced by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Gigi Pritzker, with Howard making his scripted television directorial debut with the first episode.
Featuring Einstein’s lovers, enemies and fellow scientific luminaries, the all-star cast includes Geoffrey Rush (The Kings Speech, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shine) as the celebrated scientist, Johnny Flynn as the young Einstein, and Emily Watson (Theory of Everything, The Book Thief) as his second wife – and first cousin – Elsa Einstein.
The 10-part series tracks Einstein’s rise from humble origins as an imaginative, rebellious thinker, through his struggles to be recognised by the establishment, to his global celebrity status as the man who unlocked the mysteries of the cosmos with his theory of relativity.
Delving deeper, the series follows Einstein’s alternately exhilarating emotions and heartlessness in dealing with his closest personal relationships, including his children, his two wives and the various women with whom he cheats on them.
The series is set against an era of global unrest over the course of two world wars. Faced with rising anti-Semitism in Europe, surveillance by spies and the potential for atomic annihilation, Einstein struggles as a husband and a father, not to mention as a man of principle, even as his own life is put in danger.
Filmed in Prague, Czech Republic, where Einstein lived and taught early in his career, the series also features scientific superstars from the turn of the 20th century, including Marie and Pierre Curie, Wilhelm Rontgen, Carl Jung, Werner Heisenberg and more.
In the first episode, as anti-Semitism reaches a fever pitch in 1930s Germany, Einstein wrestles with the decision to seek refuge in America with Elsa or to stay in solidarity with fellow Jewish academics.
The struggle evokes memories of his first days as a headstrong student at Zurich Polytechnic, during which he meets the first love of his life, Mileva Maric (Samantha Colley).
The Detour (M-Net 101, 11pm): Season two takes place 19 months after the events of season one, which saw the Parker family on a road trip full of cringe-worthy mishaps and a massive misunderstanding.
The comedy was written by real life couple Jason Jones (who also stars) and Samantha Bee, apparently based on their own experiences, which is somewhat disturbing but hilarious at the same time.
This time we find the Parkers trying to navigate living in New York City, and as it turns out, they don’t need to be on the road to accidentally trigger chaos.