First Flower (NOVA/WGBH)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Episode: B

 

 

The anti-environmentalists just cannot help themselves.  They ignore science and disaster in heaping measure and if “denial ain’t just a river in Egypt” then the seconds location is where they reside.  Flowers are often dismissed as effeminate curios and unimportant, but without them, the world would die, ecosystem would collapse and food would not grow.  The evolution of them has remained an amazing mystery, but the recent NOVA installment First Flower gives us their history and then travels to China to find the very first ones fossilized.

 

More specifically, we go al the way to The Hengduan Mountains which may very well turn out to be a cradle of life as much as Africa.  The questions include how they got all the way from there to the rest of the world, unlike people, who can travel more easily than plants.  As usual, the show is loaded with all kinds of inquiry and tries to answer many of the questions, but it leaves you thinking like their best shows and you’ll come away with a new respect for flowers and evolution.

 

The 1.78 X 1 letterboxed image looks good, likely shot all in digital High Definition, but limited by this tradedown without anamorphic enhancement.  Color can be beautiful, as you would expect, but I would like to see this one in particular in HD in the near future.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is simple and has no surrounds.  The only extra is DVD-ROM printable materials.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo