Full stream ahead
Digital platforms are chock a block with educational content that could pique your interest, tickle your fancy or just simply make you smile.
Decades ago, condemnation of the television set as a “goggle box” that would give you square eyes always sold short the best programmemakers (and the best programmes). Even back then there was usually something educational and enlightening to be found in the schedules. Today, however, with streaming, we have our own Library of Alexandria on tap.
Investigatory digest Explained (Netflix, two seasons) provides a handy, subject-per-episode primer on all manner of topics: the concept of beauty (in art, architecture and flesh); the “meat is murder” idea that slaughtering factoryfarmed animals is killing the planet; and the next pandemic, which doesn’t care that we’re still grappling with the present predicament.
Talking of comestibles, should your curiosity about the origins of what we eat extend beyond believing it magically appears on supermarket shelves, then sign up for a Food Factory shift with
BBC First. How it’s made, processed, bottled, canned, boxed, shrink-wrapped or otherwise readied for sale is revealed here; series five coming soon.
If you wish to educate yourself in matters historical, the digital pantry overflows. History 101 (Netflix) chops into digestible chunks the emergence of China as a superpower, the space race, plastic’s perils and more. But if you want laughs along with your learning, try The Who Was? Show (also Netflix), which takes a riotous approach to everybody’s favourite school subject. Deceptively informative, it provides everything you’ll ever really need to know about Bruce Lee (“the cha-cha champion of Hong Kong” and “China’s first global movie star”), Tutankhamun, Frida Kahlo, Genghis Khan (a prototype postman) and others, their stories told in graphics, cartoons, live action and – indispensable when studying Marco Polo – rap.
But if you prefer to know where we’re going rather than where we’ve been, and reckon finding out about how we’re messing the place up is all part of changing our behaviour, eco-documentaries are plentiful on streaming platforms – and the Now True channel offers some required watching.
Current Sea follows the efforts of British activist and ex-police officer Paul Ferber to create a protected marine zone in Cambodia, an ambition that clashes with the interests of the illegal fleets stripping the Gulf of Thailand of fish. Australian reporter Matt Blomberg, helping Ferber to inspire a new generation of eco-warriors in Cambodia, notes that the country has been called “the most dangerous place to be an environmental journalist”.
Across the planet, devastation of a different order afflicted the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded. The Great Invisible, also showing on
Now True, investigates the continuing planetary and personal cost of the
United States’ worst maritime oilindustry catastrophe, which killed 11 workers and innumerable mammals, birds, reptiles and fish.
Fortunately, the universe is full of more edifying wonders; and some of them queue up to amaze in Netflix documentary The Most Unknown. Director-screenwriter Werner Herzog served as an adviser on a film that tracks nine wide-eyed scientists – cognitive psychologist, ecologist, particle physicist included, all strangers – dipping into each other’s specialist fields to tackle existential puzzles together. It’s a mission that begins in an Italian cave with a geomicrobiologist, who declares her admiration for “the most beautiful slime” she’s ever seen.
The Most Unknown posits that we become smarter the more we experience. So after all that heavy-duty finding out stuff, why not learn how to do something really cool – such as be a rock star? Jack Black teaches you how in School of Rock (Amazon Prime). It’s a long way to the top if ya wanna rock ’n’ roll.