Breaking Bad actor gives history lesson
PBS series will connect the historical dots
NEW YORK Bryan Cranston is a fine choice to narrate Big History, a new docuseries which pledges to reveal “one grand unified theory” for how every event in history (13.7 billion years of it) is intertwined by science. Cranston, after all, starred in the recently concluded drama Breaking Bad as Walter White, the nation’s favourite psychotic former highschool chemistry teacher.
“Walt was a passionate teacher,” Cranston laughs, “and even through the dastardly deeds that he found himself doing later on, he was still a teacher: He taught Jesse the chemistry of cooking meth.”
In Cranston’s current TV project, he is as much student as teacher as he confronts each script for the 16-episode-plus-finale series, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT and PST on the H2 network (an extension of the History channel).
“The series uses science and history to show how various things that we take for granted these days had their origins thousands of years ago,” Cranston said.
The Superpower of Salt reveals its subject to be far more than the thing you cut down on if you have high blood pressure.
“New York City wouldn’t be the city that it is without salt,” Cranston declares in the episode. Moreover, salt helped determine the road system of America and beyond: It “has silently engineered our global map.”
Salt’s all-important role in animal life was demonstrated eons ago by the genesis of the egg, a portable container for salty water that allowed a creature to leave the sea for dry land to procreate there. (Even the amniotic sack in the womb serves as a personal ocean for the fetus, he notes.)
The second episode, Horse Power Revolution, notes it was early nomads in Central Asia some 6,000 years ago who first rode horses.
Among many unexpected benefits the horse spurred was pants. Citizens of ancient Rome wore tunics, which were impractical for riding horses, as Roman soldiers must have realized anew while battling barbarian enemies who sported this sartorial innovation. The Roman cavalry soon got on board
“That’s what this series does,” said Cranston. “It describes the relationship we have to our history. It explains how and why this is important to ME. That’s what’s key!”