User reviews

Season 1 does justice to the series' title. Portrays Albert Einstein in an interesting perspective and combines many elements of his scientific work along with his personal life. I rate season 1 as 9/10.

Season 2 portrays Pablo Picasso. I guess the idea was that the "genius" tag should not be solely reserved for STEM people, but artists should also be praised for their revolutionary contributions to their field. Although some same good actors from season 1 were included, this season significantly lacks the spark of the first season. On the other hand, Antonio Banderas adds significantly with his quality. 7/10.

Season 3 portrays Aretha Franklin and really makes you wonder if you have actually changed series without noticing. What an admittedly great voice has to do with "genius" still remains puzzling to me. On top of that, the season rather revolves around the US civil rights movement than actually presenting the character's virtues that stood them apart from the rest. Even the pace has changed and compared to the previous two seasons feels absolutely boring and at times even painful to watch. Dropped watching mid-season. 4/10 and only assuming that this was actually a different series. Nothing to do with the "genius" concept.

Unfortunately, it seems that the series has been a victim of the current trend of the film industry on its anti-racism campaign and promoting diversity which has resulted in it losing its identity. It has been also announced at the time of writing that a season 4 has been developed portraying Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Note here that Dr King was also briefly portrayed in Season 3 - thus the next season revolves around the same period, the same concepts, the same characters as season 3. Where the genius is on that, remains definitely elusive.

I was so hoping that this series would have continued on the same path as season 1 and showing the lives and achievements of distinguished scientists and how they revolutionized human understanding of nature. In that case I think I'd rate the series as one of my all time favorites. Instead, it is now in my list of the most disappointing ones...

I couldn't not write a review of this after I saw some of the negative 3/10, 1/10 reviews near the top. Thankfully scroll down a bit and you'll see nothing but 10/10, 9/10. This is a really fantastic, excellently crafted television series that delves into the discoveries and the life of Einstein and other notables around him.

Watching the warm and intense and completely unique love story deteriorate into the bitter breakdown in his marriage (not a spoiler, you know through the flash forward that his first marriage didn't work out) is tragic and immensely frustrating as you see this great mind struggle to grasp basic emotional empathy or understanding.

I've seen some reviews calling this 'hollywood trash'. It's not. It's deeply unfair in places, it's uplifting and exciting in others, there are no foregone, predictable conclusions, it's funny and the characters are multi layered and brilliantly written and acted. Johnny Flynn's brilliant! It's also wonderfully shot.

The only negatives I'd have would be that it can, at times seem a little expositional in the dialogue, but rarely, and that Geoffrey Rush takes over as the older Einstein a little too early - testament to Johnny Flynn that such a great actor as Geoffrey Rush has to work hard to follow.

They're making Picasso next and I hope by then this goes onto Netflix as no one seems to know about it. I had to buy it and it was money well spent.

This is a review on series 2 on Picasso. I just came back from Barcelona and after visiting the beautiful Picasso museum and discovering what incredible pictures he already painted as a young boy I felt the need to learn more about him. I found the series both educating and entertaining. The episodes are not in chronological order and jump from Picasso being a young man to him being older, with various stages of his life in between. WW1, Spain's civil war, WW2, it is all there. It is fascinating to get to meet all the artists, painters and poets Picasso befriended and all the women he loved and needed. The whole subject of his treatment of women can fill a whole book. But still, according to the series they all wanted him, regardless of his behavior.. What really bothered me is that most of the series takes place in France. Most actors were French but had to speak in English with a French accent! Why couldn't they speak French! It would have been so much better. Antonio Banderas was fabulous. I wish we could have heard him speak more in Spanish. The actor who played Picasso was excellent too. In fact the acting was very good. Altogether I really enjoyed this series and feel that I have learned a lot.

I managed to find this 4 DVD set at my public library. Ten episodes at 50 minutes each, over 8 hours on the life of Einstein.

In college and graduate school I studied Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry. As a result I became very familiar with the contributions of Einstein and his fellow Physicists during the first half of the 20th century. The reason I enjoyed this series so much is that it put Einstein's whole life in a proper perspective.

Surely there are many "created" situations and conversations as the filmmakers' way of making all this interesting enough to invest 8+ hours in watching it. To me it doesn't matter if everything happened the way depicted here, as long as everything depicted is plausible, and it all is.

Other than that the story told here appears to be very faithful, historically, to Albert Einstein's whole life, his early struggles to get accepted, his marriages and romances, his difficulties with his sons, his being forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, his being hunted by J Edgar Hoover in the 1940s after Einstein became a USA citizen and professor at Princeton.

Overall a superb series especially for someone who has made a career in the sciences.

Genius Season1 revolves around the life of Albert Einstein. The key point to note here is 'life' of the genius - not about the theories of the Genius. It shows the human side of Einstein and throws light towards his life journey - his hardships, his love, his happiness and his sorrow. If you are looking to get the understanding on how Einstein came up with E=MC2 and other of his great discoveries, this is not for you. But if you would like to understand and get to know Einstein as a living being, this series is a must watch.

All the actors acted quite remarkably. The background score could have been better and there are times in the series when you feel that things are going too slow and then there are parts where you would be like- 'did I miss something'. Overall, a good series to watch

After reading other reviews about this show I was hesitant to watch it. But there are e few points I'd like to make after seeing it up until now:

First of all: as anyone should know this is not a documentary. Don't expect a 100% accurate description of Einstein's life or complex explanations of his theories. It's a drama and you should know this while watching it. That being said: The first episode is actually a really bad introduction for the rest of the series: the drama aspect is way too high, they jump back and forward (which they don't in later episodes) and the focus of the episode is all over the place. In later episodes you get a much more structured way of looking at Einstein's life. There is a clear story line which you can understand and empathize with.

In conclusion: don't judge the entire series in the first 20 minutes of the first episode like seemingly a lot of others have done here.

I read one review that said the viewer was disappointed after watching the first episode for its switching between past and present. Interestingly, the first episode was the least enjoyable to watch as it was a little disconcerting. But the production of the show was very well thought-out in the sense that this series (season one) BUILT the story of Einstein. It didn't just TELL a story, but allowed you to "get into Einstein's head" and understand what made the man the way he was.

To watch this series, commit yourself to watching it and stay with it. A few times I thought it was slow and some of the detail written into the script was "fill", but the fact is that at the end of the last episode.. and the end of the last scene.. every part of the filming that made this production ALL came together!

Kudo's to the writers and production team for an EXCELLENT production! Movies nearly always tell a story, but they don't frequently make you feel as though you've been a PART of that story or lived the experiences of the people in that movie. Genius: Einstein successfully did exactly that!

Without giving away anything, it appears to be close to real life (though does take some creative license as you would expect, plus it doesn't completely write out some of the details of his life.. but that's probably because the seasons appear to be a straight 10 episode "adventure). You'll learn about his life from his childhood to his death, his influences, the tragedies, his family, his success, AND his failures (with many in his own personal life). You'll learn that this true genius certainly has his human flaws!

Really worth watching! Entertaining (though don't expect fast-paced, heart-pounding adventure as it's not that type of series and does move slow at times), very informative, and educational as well. Don't let negative reviews influence you to not watch this.. and certainly watch at least two or three episodes before forming an opinion (as at least one reviewer clearly did). If you watch one episode and say "not for me", you won't know what the series is really like. It takes a few.. and you WILL be hooked!

This is a biography of a figure who is shrouded in hagiography and myth, so it is important that they are following the carefully researched semi-scientific biography of Walter Isaacson, which, for a refreshing change, actually bothered to READ and UNDERSTAND the entirety of what Einstein wrote. Einstein authored hundreds of scientific papers, covering about a dozen subjects, and several books, including one popular book on the history of the field idea.

The phrase "Mozart's metronome" in the series was singled out earlier by a likely anti-socialist or anti-Semitic negative reviewer. While a metronome is anachronistic for Mozart, Einstein wouldn't have known that. Einstein didn't have google, nor would he have cared to fact-check his pithy quotes. Unlike other made up Einstein quotes, this one, he actually could have said. Although he probably didn't. all the more credit to the writers. The dialog is true to Einstein's personality, and Einstein's rough and tumble working class sense of humor.

The early role of Mileva Maric as discussion partner, sounding board, proof-er and scientifically literate copy editor, is portrayed plausibly, although it is conjecture. Einstein's job, unlike the portrayal, often allowed him to go to the library ostensibly to research a patent. This allowed him to do much more work alone. Nevertheless, Maric was obviously one of the discussion partners in the early years, a role also taken by Besso and Grossman, and much later by assistants Peter Bergmann, Nathan Rosen and Robert Kraichnan. Einstein is neither portrayed inaccurately as stealing her ideas, nor is he portrayed as in a conventional marriage.

There are minor inaccuracies in the dates, the falling elevator idea is in 1907 at the patent office, not in 1910, although the fleshing out of the idea didn't come until later. The majority of the early work on molecules and statistics was started in 1902-1904, including two forgettable early papers. The relativity work was following Poincare closely, who was close behind.

The General Relativity part is remarkably true to the preserved history, and extremely illuminating. Einstein is shown living alone in 1915, like a hobo, in a small flat, without adequate food, with nothing but notebooks to keep him company, as he completes the calculations for the precession of Mercury and the field equations. The rivalry with Hilbert is given more dramatic license, but it was actually more intense than it was portrayed in emotional terms. Hilbert tried to steal General Relativity from Einstein (to "nostrify" it, in Einstein's phrase), because he thought he could do the math better. He couldn't. He did discover the proper action principle for Relativity right after, and Noether in Hilbert's school also contributed a major result on the interpretation of the symmetries of the action, but Hilbert just didn't have a knack for the physical aspects, the energy, the waves, etc. This was something Einstein's intuition was nearly a century ahead on, as revealed by the work on the stress-energy pseudo-tensor. This part is portrayed relatively scientifically accurately, although, the hole argument is left out except for an oblique portrayal through Maric's possibly fictional Serbian lover. The point that the 1914 theory was lacking covariance was known to Einstein, and bothered him a great deal.

The work on quantum theory and photon theory in this period is neglected, but it took up about half of Einstein's scientific time. The majority of his time was spent along, working, probably about 12-14 hours a day. The personal story, the relationships , are portrayed honestly and correctly according to biographies. His physical collapse from overwork toward the end of the GR work is underemphasized, it marked the end of his most productive period.

The only thing that sticks out is perhaps the over-bourgeois tone. Einstein was not only on a project of personal self-emancipation, he was pointedly demonstrating how to do so as a "new socialist man", and he became a role model for what a scientist should be in BOTH the United States, AND in the Soviet Union. This dual role, as both "emancipated bourgeois" and "new socialist human", the ambiguity, is what makes Einstein so interesting in human terms, and this part is portrayed mostly from the "emancipated bourgeois" point of view, due to the obvious fact that no socialists were consulted in the making of this series, with the notable exception of Albert Einstein.

Although the story about Einstein's life as depicted in this show might not be the accurate to every detail, the show captures the nuances that highlight his brilliance via great acting and directing. There are not one, but many scenes where I am exhilarated by the way everything is presented - the story, the emotions and the science. There are a lot of scenes where I was hit by a train of emotions that left me tearing up. I agree with the most reviewers that view this show as an incorrect portrayal of his work and his life, but I don't agree with them in rejecting it straightaway. I always give time to a series to develop, despite it's inconsistencies. It helps the people involved to learn from their shortcomings. Where would our world be if we start rejecting stuff by just a glance of it? Thankfully, they brought the series back on track giving it the edge it needed to become a masterpiece. I thank the producers, the directors, the writers and the actors for venturing me into this incredible journey to witness the life of a great man.

I am amazed to read all the negative reviews here. I was hooked on Genius from the first episode. Yes, there's not an awful lot of science in it (up till now anyway - I've just watched episode 4), but the bio of Einsteins life fascinates me, as I am always keen to know more about the real person behind their work. The acting is superb, Rush is always amazing and Johnny Flynn is a pleasant surprise. Love the production, its a fascinating story very well told.

Looking at the reviews, it seems that many people either came in with preconceived notions, or felt that they were required to get huffy over a show actually treating its subject as a real person, with a real life and real problems. Granted, this wasn't the greatest show ever, but it hardly qualified as dreck, especially since a rather large (disturbingly large, in fact) number of people felt that the most important thing they could mention was a sex scene. They seem to be under this bizarre impression that Einstein was a pure physicist who neither ate nor screwed nor indulged in any of the usual vices of humanity (the pipe he so famously kept around was a prop, to be sure, to fool the human beings he might come in contact with.) Even more bizarre is their impression that a season of a show about Einstein that discussed only his science would be a keeper. I grant that audiences for TV shows and movies have been adamantly loyal to productions that discussed the minutiae of fairly esoteric (to the lay audience) scientific formulations, but isn't time we stopped catering to the will of the majority, who love nothing so much as endless reams of scientific argumentation, and start exploring what the tiny percentage that value storytelling and characterization might want to watch.

Let me put it this way -- little that I saw came as a surprise to me because I was, unlike most reviewers here apparently, actually familiar with the kind of man Einstein was. He had a life, one filled with triumphs and failures, with surpassing virtues and undeniable flaws. This was a show about Einstein the man, not just Einstein the physicist. Being a physicist made him famous; being a man made him interesting. The pretentious twaddle of criticizing the show for doing exactly what it promised to do is simply ridiculous, and doesn't somehow make people seem smarter for claiming they wanted more about the physics than the man. If they want to feel smarter, they should go and actually learn the physics. A TV show isn't the way to do that.

I am amazed that so many people would dismiss the whole series as "all sex and no substance." It was based on a fantastic book (in my view) by Walter Isaacson who paints a portrait of a Jewish man, husband, father and scientist who lives through WWI as a convinced pacifist and "free thinker." He is a ground breaking scientist, respected by his peers who becomes an important element in convincing Roosevelt to begin the process of developing an atom bomb which helps end WWII. He is slow to warm to the idea of a State of Israel but he does help in fund raising for it, advises on the establishment of its first University and was considered for the presidency of this new country. Einstein the proud US citizen could not help but condemn Nazi treatment of Jews and American treatment of black US citizens.

I found the visualization and explanation of some of his insights very helpful.

I found him to be funny, thoughtful, collaborative, religious, political and definitely "an original."

My only criticism was that I found the "time switching" to be confusing at the start - child, student, newly married, teacher, world celebrity scientist and aging scholar at Princeton University.

Read the book if you are interested in "the whole story" of Einstein the man. Be frustrated with the movie if you are looking for a simplified explanation of his scientific studies. Stay away from it, if you see no need for any of the sex scenes or political involvement.

I disagree with 95% of all the reviews submitted.

At last a long overdue series on Albert Einstein the greatest mind of his generation. And as well as it's made and acted why do the cast deliver there dialogue as if a German were speaking English? The show would be much better if they just spoke plain English or German with subtitles? Surely if you are going to make an acutare portrayal of somebody as important as Einstein he should speak German? A real shame as only three episodes in, I just can't take it seriously. Anyone from the UK who remembers the comedy Show Allo Allo will know what I mean.

This is a wonderfully acted melodrama with a story line that is riveting. I've read the disparaging remarks from other viewers, but don't listen to poorly tuned critics, the show is great. The young actors who play Einstein are terrific, absolutely terrific! It helps if you have some knowledge and background on Einstein and his work, and be willing to rewind your DVR to catch important tidbits and clues. The only knock on this is the use of Geoffrey Rush as Einstein in 1919?? Albert was 40 at that time (born in 1879)! What's up with that??? Ron Howard really blew this time frame and it is VERY distracting. 1932 is still too young, better to have Rush play Albert in 1940 . . . then he fits the part perfectly. But NOT 1919- 1932+, arghhh! Frustrating! Johnny Flynn has really nailed the young Einstein into his late 30's (we last see him in 1917-18), but then Rush is placed in the next scene. Flynn could have really played it through the entirety of Albert's life and should have been written in up to at least 1940. Excellent actor!! Samantha Colley is wonderful as Mileva Maric. A very sympathetic character. Hard not to feel for her plight. Great show! Watch it!!

I was shocked to read some of the reviews giving this series such a low score. I'll be honest when I started watching it I didn't know what to expect and I thought I would would watch the first episode and if it was too complex and scientific I would leave it but I was very pleasantly surprised as I was hooked even before the end of the first episode. There is a scientific element to it which with a program about Einstein you expect but the science is explained really well even for me who is the most unscientific person going that even I could understand it lol. The main part of the series is telling you about his life, his schooling and relationships with parents, family, friends,wives, partners and children. I was really surprised at his colourful life as I thought he would be very intellectual which obviously he was he was a genius but he certainly wasn't boring which is what I expected he was a big a character as he was a genius. I would recommend anyone to watch this series and you don't even have to be patient with it like some series that only start showing potential after a couple of episodes this one is excellent right from the start. Ignore the first lot of reviews if you read further down the reviews you'll see a lot more enjoyed it than disliked it and if it wasn't for the bad reviews at the beginning this program would be scoring nearer 10 than 8.4. It's an excellent,very interesting and factual program and you definitely won't regret watching it you won't be able to stop and want to watch each episode one after another.

Decent show, You have to delve deeper into the series to see the trials of Einstein than the first episode. It's set as a light drama-- not a documentary. It hits different life points and takes you thru Germany, wartime, and shows the interactions and relationships that saw this man go from awkward, different--to focused and brilliant. It's entertainment covering a gifted mans rise to immortality among the scientific community. Curiosity x persistence X out of the box thinking 2 (squared)...

I am not really good on reviews so just going to write how i feel about the show. Last week i was bored so i figured i would watch a show, i found genius and i was like OK let us try it. Instantly i was pulled by it. But it only got better by the episode 2, 3 and 4. I feel like the relationship between Mileva Marich and Einstein is what is carrying the show right now. I recommend it to everyone, even if you do not like science the show is more of a life and love lesson.

"Where is the science???"

go read a book about Einstein and his work, and stop watching this show if u couldn't find what you're looking for.

this a drama, people..

just watch it, it's a biography, not a documentary about the mysteries of the world.

it's a great series, stop whining.

I think that that movie it the best movie ever what i ever seen it is about genius scientist albert einstein

Very annoyed that the DVD cover features Rush. He only plays the part of Einstein two-thirds the way through. And the transition to a much older looking actor in the time space of 4 years is disappointing. In fact Rush is miscast. Should have just made Flynn look older. His acting is just as good. Very underrated - I want more of him. As for the story, it's highly entertaining and depicts the struggles those with superior and enquiring minds have proving their updated or new theories when it comes to science or physics, while trying not to appear to embrace the world of politics.

I don't usually write bad reviews at all, but this is the first series I've come across that truly deserves it.

To say this series is at all factual is absurd. Dramatic license is used at every opportunity to replace history with rumor, and it does so so brazenly, and during the most important moments that it's little more than your run of the mill soap opera, set a hundred years ago with familiar names.

If you watch this and find yourself saying "no, did it really happen that way?!?" The answer is no, it did not. What you saw is garbage. A young protagonist driven by a quest for self-aggrandizement bares no resemblance to the hero of scientific thinking we admire today, and a few technical words thrown around here and there do not give license to so egregiously rewrite history.

It makes me sad to think people will watch this and come away feeling like they've learned something...