I wouldn't call it perfect (but then I absolutely wouldn't call the original perfect either), but this show really rekindled that feeling from when I was young and I think that's who this show is for, and why the tone is the way it is.
Caught the first episode. WAY too fast paced. They should have picked one subject and stuck with it. I watched it with my daughter and she was completely lost by the time the calendar thing came around.
Most people don't understand that light travelling from objects will show that object as it was when the light first left it. You never see anything in real time...you're always looking into the past. They could have did a whole show on that first to get people up to speed on what coming later.
How old is your daughter? I wouldn't worry about her feeling lost, as long as that's not something that kills her curiosity. Likely the later episodes will explain it further and bring it back full circle, and so repeat viewing will be "a-ha" moments for her.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself. This is more, hey there's this cool stuff out there here's some visualizations of it. This idea, the vastness of the cosmos, that seems so simple was once a huge idea that was so crazy that people were put to death over it. Then they're trying to get across the scale of time using the calendar analogy.
I believe they actually did touch on that a bit, but that's actually a pretty high minded concept. Literally everything you see is "in the past", but everything is relative, which is not an introductory topic, but is an important one as it is fundamental physics to our universe. The changes to our perception of time is one of the main things I think they were wanting to update (IIRC Sagan does talk about it, even mentions how gravity impacts it in the original, but there's quite a bit more they can say, for instance how we even measure time).
Re: my comment on the religious bit-
It seemed very obvious that the church was being portrayed as evil during their little skit. Past church, present church, whatever...I'm certainly not upset by it. It made me giggle.
But it's the kind of crap that will ruin the show for these dumb unwashed masses that everyone seems so concerned with. Why put the show on an imbecilic level if you're just going to do things like prod the religious folk with pointy sticks? They're just going to be even more sure of how your science is, in fact, heathen witchcraft.
Again, Brian Cox and the BBC struck a much better balance of 'everyone can understand' and 'actually interesting to those who are already somewhat familiar with these concepts.' I also like how they balanced CGI with practical, non-CGI analogies.
This isn't distortion of facts and whitewashing it to ignore would actually detract from the lesson. In fact, they actually sanitized it compared to what really happened so as to make it less about the Church's evils (which if you actually know history, the church did straight up evil Nazi level shit), plus, you seem to ignore how it wasn't just the Church (actually churches which you ignore as well), even Oxford, one of the most renowned institutions of learning in the world, he got the same treatment. They don't even idolize the guy, they point out that he was a victim of his own flaws, which were actually religious focused (he was in fact arguing religious theology). They even straight up say he wasn't even a scientist and really isn't a scientific figure. But, he played an important role because he questioned things and his ideas opened things for others later. He was just a normal guy with a guess, but eventually he was shown to be right. That whole part served as a lesson for understanding the basis of science. Question, or make a guess, and then test it. But, like they point out, he had not the tools to be able to investigate it, but that changed. Later people were able to, and they got similar treatment from religion, but as science, and our ability to support and prove our theories grew, people changed. That is the greater point, ideas can change as our ability to understand and study them change.
You also don't put them in a powerwheels while wearing a helmet and an inexplicable pair of water wings.
You can make educational TV that is beautiful, fascinating, and mesmerizing to the 'educated' as well as the 'uneducated.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkjuIoCorTE
Not once does he say anything that is over any reasonable person'd head. He explains and defines things as he goes. If you didn't know anything of the things he said prior to him saying them, you feel smarter. If you did know that information, you still don't feel like you're being talked to like a child, and you can appreciate the 'cool' factor of what is being shown.
The 'Wonders...' series is like the 'spiritual successor' to Cosmos. Like some of the beloved video games that developers slaved over for years as 'unofficial' sequels to their older works. Meanwhile, 'Cosmos 2' is like something Electronic Arts churned out in three months because they still held the rights to original game's name/content.
I don't even know what you're actually bitching about. The BBC shows (and other shows) are good, but your argument is fairly senseless mostly because other than the bitching about historical fact you don't seem to actually have an argument.
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