The Ascent of Man (1973) was a groundbreaking
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
documentaryDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
series, produced in association with
Time-LifeTime Life is one of the world's creators and direct marketers of books, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. Its products are sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales.Time-Life was founded in...
Films, produced by Adrian Malone, and written and presented by
Jacob BronowskiJacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.-Life and work:...
.
The 13-part series was shot on 16mm film. Executive Producer was Adrian Malone, film directors Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Kennard, David Paterson. Malone and Kennard later emigrated to Hollywood, where they produced
Carl SaganCarl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences...
's
CosmosCosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as global presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers and...
.
The Ascent of Man (1973) was a groundbreaking
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
documentaryDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
series, produced in association with
Time-LifeTime Life is one of the world's creators and direct marketers of books, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. Its products are sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales.Time-Life was founded in...
Films, produced by Adrian Malone, and written and presented by
Jacob BronowskiJacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.-Life and work:...
.
Overview
The 13-part series was shot on 16mm film. Executive Producer was Adrian Malone, film directors Dick Gilling, Mick Jackson, David Kennard, David Paterson. Malone and Kennard later emigrated to Hollywood, where they produced
Carl SaganCarl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences...
's
CosmosCosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as global presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers and...
. Jackson followed them, and now directs feature films.
The title alludes to
The Descent of Man by
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
. Over the series' thirteen episodes, Bronowski travelled around the world in order to trace the development of human society through its understanding of
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
. It was written specifically to complement
Kenneth ClarkKenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
's
Civilisation (1969), in which Clark argued that art was a major driving force in cultural evolution. Bronowski wrote in his 1951 book
The Commonsense of Science: "It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests". Both series had been commissioned by
David AttenboroughSir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS is a broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the respected face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...
, then controller of
BBC2
, although he had moved on by the time
The Ascent of Man aired. Quotations were read by actors
Roy DotriceRoy Dotrice OBE is a British actor known for his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance in the revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten.-Biography:...
and
Joss AcklandSidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland CBE , known as Joss Ackland, is an English actor who has appeared in more than 130 films in his career. He has appeared extensively on television, notably as C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands ....
.
The book of the series,
The Ascent of Man: A Personal View by J. Bronowski, is an almost word-for-word transcript from the television episodes, diverging from Bronowski's original narration only where the lack of images might make its meaning unclear. A few details of the film version were omitted from the book: notably, Part 11, "Knowledge or Certainty," begins by showing the face of Stefan Borgrajewicz as an elderly man who had known suffering; at the end, after Bronowski shows us the ruins of
Hiroshimais the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest island of Japan. It became the first city in history assaulted by nuclear armament when the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on it on August 6, 1945, near the culmination...
and the ash-strewn pond of Auschwitz, we see a photograph of a younger man, with the name "BOR-GRAJEWICZ, Stefan" and the number 125558, which may be his official record in the archives of Auschwitz.
Just over a year after the series appeared, Bronowski, aged 66, died of a heart attack.
Series outline
- Lower than the Angels — Evolution of man from proto-ape to 400,000 years ago.
- The Harvest of the Seasons — Early human migration, agriculture and the first settlements, war.
- The Grain in the Stone — Tools, development of architecture and sculpture.
- The Hidden Structure — Fire, metals and alchemy.
- Music of the Spheres — The language of numbers.
- The Starry Messenger — Galileo's universe
- The Majestic Clockwork — Explores Kepler and Newton's laws.
- The Drive for Power — The Industrial Revolution.
- The Ladder of Creation — Darwin and Wallace's ideas on the origin of species.
- World within World — The story of the periodic table.
- Knowledge or Certainty — There is no absolute knowledge.
- Generation upon Generation — Cloning of identical forms.
- The Long Childhood — The commitment of man.
Reruns in the UK
In the late 1990s
Douglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a...
recorded new introductions and afterwords for a
rerunA rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. Some viewers find reruns annoying, although many viewers appreciate the opportunity to re-watch a program they enjoyed or watch one they missed the...
of the series on the British satellite channel
UK HorizonsUK Horizons was a television channel broadcast in the United Kingdom, as part of the UKTV network of channels, showing mainly BBC documentaries. Most programmes were abridged for commercial timing purposes. It took its name from the BBC series Horizon, which formed a staple of its output in the...
. This was billed as the first complete rerun of the series in more than a decade. However, each episode was cut by up to five minutes to make room for the new material and for commercial breaks.
In about 2000 it was reported that the BBC had been approached by Channel 5 who wanted to screen the series in prime time, but the BBC refused to lease the rights.
Shortly afterward, BBC Two began a rerun as part of its
Learning Zone block, in late night and early morning time slots, and cut by five minutes per episode. The reason for the cuts in this case is unclear as BBC Two has no commercials.
In fact the complete series has not been broadcast uncut in Britain since 1986, although the
BBC KnowledgeBBC Knowledge was an early BBC digital television channel, available by cable, satellite, or terrestrial digital broadcasting, providing a programme of documentary, cultural and educational television. It was launched on 1 June 1999 broadcasting 6 hours of educational material a day.On 17 November...
channel (the forerunner of
BBC FourBBC Four is a BBC television channel available to digital television viewers in the UK. The part successor to BBC Knowledge. BBC Four launched on 2 March 2002....
) screened some selected complete episodes.
United States and Canada
The series is available from several suppliers - including
Ambrose Video Publishing (
video or
DVD) and
Documentary-Video (
video or
DVD).
United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand
The series was belatedly released on PAL VHS and on Region 2 & 4 PAL DVD in the UK in early 2005, initially on
mail orderMail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer...
only. It received a general release on April 18 2005. This version does not include the pieces by Douglas Adams; the only extra feature, apart from a comprehensive illustrated booklet on the making of the series, is a short reminiscence by Sir David Attenborough, who commissioned the series. This DVD set has also been released in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
External links