The title is somewhat misleading, since there are plenty of things that Charles Darwin probably never knew about, from Twitter, Jennifer Aniston and the rather baffling commercial success of the Alvin and the Chipmunks films to nuclear proliferation, the stunning hotness of French
TV anchor Melissa Theuriau and the cottage industry of response he would eventually provide to all those ichthus fish car magnets. Still, the new documentary What Darwin Never Knew actually sheds some fascinating light on one of history’s most intriguing and controversial scientists.

On the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the award-winning NOVA series revisits Darwin’s (in)famous work, and fills in some of the blanks within it. As the DVD’s back cover text points out, Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals — including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles alone. The source of life’s seemingly endless forms was a profound mystery until Darwin’s revolutionary idea of natural selection, which he showed could help explain the gradual development of life on earth. But Darwin’s radical insights raised as many questions as they answered, both about humankind’s relationship to evolution (heresy to most organized religions) as well as what about what factors actually drive evolution and turn one species into another.

Stunning breakthroughs in a brand new science are linking the enigma of origins to another of nature’s great mysteries, the development of an embryo, and it’s at this interstice which What Darwin Never Knew exists, using cutting-edge testing to link past and present. To explore this exciting new idea, NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the Cambrian explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today, where scientists are beginning to crack some of nature’s biggest secrets at a genetic level. It’s all quite fascinating stuff, and nicely pitched at a level which both science nerds and the average layperson can almost equally enjoy.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, What Darwin Never Knew comes to home video in both Blu-ray and DVD, the latter presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of this title. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, save chapter stops. To order a copy of What Darwin Never Knew directly from the manufacturer, call (800) PLAY-PBS or
click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)