The series addresses some interesting topics, providing statistics in a visually appealing way and providing chronological views. But occasionally strays towards giving opinions, which isn't really what 'history' is about. The episodes are a good length in providing quick overviews.
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Calicodreamin19 June 2020
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fatfackface22 May 2020If you aint American this is gonna make you laugh. I wached all episodes and cringed a lot in every one of them, but kept watching because it was just funny to see what will these muricans do next
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Listen... it's called "History 101." It's short; to-the-point; and things are "Crayola-ed out" for the viewer. Yes, it's written and portrayed very much in favor of America. But... have you met us? We're all about ourselves. We are selfish, narcissistic, Americans... In school, we never made it past the first World War because we always spent so much time on the damn Civil War. This has always frustrated me personally, so this was kind of nice to be able to see a 22-minute version of the Space Race; or a 22-minute version of Middle Eastern conflict and oil. Are you going to learn some stuff? Yes. Is it going to get you somewhere in life? Probably not. But if you've ever looked up the Statue of Liberty in Wikipedia and fallen down a rabbit hole and ended up reading about the PGA (it's possible!), then maybe this little docuseries is for you. And, if feminism pisses you off, watch something else. There's probably a procedural cop show out there waiting for you.
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jack_o_hasanov_imdb12 September 2022First of all, 20 minutes is very little time for a documentary.
When I was a student at university, I always watched at least one documentary or documentary series after I came home. I haven't watched in a long time. I missed this.
This documentary is my style. I was even intrigued when I saw his name on Netflix.
The topics are well chosen. Like I said, 20 minutes is too little. I would prefer 1 hour. A documentary between "6" and "7" point in my opinion. It's not very good, but I don't think it's bad either. Even in a subject that does not interest me, it is not boring. These are my thoughts. But that's my opinion based on the first season. That's for sure, I'll be watching this series until it's over. Interesting. There are a few things I don't like. In particular, most of the things are told in America's perspective or American standards. Metric system, temperature system used in Americ, but not in Europe or the other continents. This is a little frustrating. -
deepfrieddodo8 January 2022Nice bitesize history lessons providing an overview of a variety of topics, without fixating on smaller details. It's an easier way to educate yourself on famous topics, and the use of infographics provide clarity. Some of the clips from the reel are a little irrelevant at time, plus it is fairly US-centric and occasionally questionable on objectivity, but still useful for a little background information.
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As you can see, most of the reviews are one star spams just because the series mentions climate change. You will find all the reviewers mostly have only one review just to spam this show.
Watch it! It's easy and informative. If you want history with a biased political spin that you mindlessly agree with, watch Fox News. -
ktm-0681625 May 2020A rather toothless, gentle, editorial doco series. And ahhh...the metric system? Over 90% of the world use it. Why doesnt this series?
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kirbie218226 May 2020Everyone complaining it's American made is funny considering it's actually made in Britain, but has American narration. Also, of course all the negative reviews are complaining it's liberal, but I didn't find it to be biased. It's not the best, but I think it's aimed at younger viewers as most adults will watch similar shows on channels like History or Discovery.
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agnt11722 May 2020Interesting topics, but skips over Chinese atrocities like the Great Leap Forward and promotes Chinese style of government over Western ideas. If you watch, go in with your eyes open.
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What a horrible series. Extremely biased by the American perspective (watch the middle eastern oil episode to see for yourself).
Also the information given isn't always accurate to begin with. If each episode was a high school student's presentation then I'd be grading the episodes between C- to B+ (and that's being generous). Since this is not, however, a high school project but rather a documentary series meant to educate the public then i have to rate it as a 2/10. Nothing is worse then the spread of misinformation. -
ryukseloglu31 May 2020Lmao all negative comments are coming from Americans I believe. No surprise.
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ekin-yalvac23 May 2020I thought this series would be a holistic perspective towards history. You cannot just say "History 101" and talk about 20th and 21st century topics.
Also, I feel like they tried to simplify topics a lot more then they should. There are some information that are missing. Not mentioning about Yom Kippur War for First Oil Shock is a huge mistake. They say demand dropped in 1980s, but they don't mention why.
Chernobyl disaster was due to a faulty reactor design. Control rods just not merely stuck in the process. It looks like they are just trying to say that these disaster can happen any time, but they don't. The amount of security features in a nuclear reactor is immense. I know this because I worked in energy sector for some time.
One last thing, they talk a lot about costs. These dollar amounts are sometimes inflation adjusted and sometimes they are not. You cannot know this unless you don't do you research, because they don't mention in the series.
Overall, it does feel like this series is way too simplified and the facts are skewed to sensationalize the facts they prefer. If you're not interested in 20th century history or politics this is definitely not your show to watch. -
Pros : Good Info graphics, Narrator's voice
Cons: Perspective, and sermonizing info along with inducing agenda. In the Nuclear episode - it calls other nations pursuing nuclear power as rogue nations when you can clearly see these so called 5 nations have already done 100's of tests themselves endangering the mankind in the name of power and protection.
Hypocrisy at its best. -
Due to the series attitude USA bad all others better, my first attitude was also that it was American left wing propaganda. It is from the United Kingdom. We do not know yet who funded it but we do know the obamas have a huge contract with Netflix. The narrator does not use her British accent. Is that because most English as second language people find it easier to understand the way we speak "English" in USA for the most part? Also, I was raised in USA in the fifties. Most of us were not able to live high as TV portrayed us. We wore used clothing from community centers. We patched even our hand me down shoes and clothing. Our citizens were paying taxes to rebuild areas damaged in the world wars. We rarely could afford to eat meat. We had gardens. Our infrastructure now is inferior to most of the world. I have travelled to Russia, China, Europe. Yes I have not been to the slums there, but hey, we have high crime and horrible slums here in the USA. If we look at the series as entertaining, it is better than most other available to us. I am very grateful that Netflix provides a venue for me to see TV from other countries as well.
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Just noticed it was origin in UK. How quaint! I thought UK produced finest BBC docs with Sir David Attenborough's narration in it. Guess I was wrong. Drama sells. And, more so if it is not about your own country. This is reminiscent of Tge Technologies, World & Societies - SOC course at uOttawa. 😁 The presentation of statistics is nice. Other than that, I'm tuned in to fall asleep while it's on. Great lullaby. 😊
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grantss17 June 2020A series of examinations of unrelated topics through short episodes. Topics are diverse and include such things as the space race, fast food and genetics.
History in bite-sized chunks. It's a very enticing idea, as, unless you're keenly interested in a topic, you're not going to watch a 60+ minute documentary on it. But a series of short (22 minutes or so) episodes on a wide range of topics is much more alluring.
And it works. The topics are interesting, there's enough information to allow you to feel informed and its well put together and presented.
Not perfect though. I got a bit tired of the infographics comparing the size of just about everything to a football field. In addition, while largely educational there are moments of subjectivity and editorialising. It was always unfortunate when these arrive as the script was generally quite neutral until then, and then, usually towards the end of each episode, it's as if the producers felt they had to voice and opinion, rather than just give the facts.
In Season 2 the editorialising reduces, thankfully, but the comparisons become more inane and more frequent. Some pretty bizarre metrics used.
Still well worth watching though. -
gaurishkohli27 May 2020Even though it has cool info graphics like something which could be considered to the Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. It still lacks in providing a in depth knowledge and is providing a quick summary and timeline regarding the topic. I would say a better show at Netflix for such kind of informative series would be Explained from Vox.
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I really like this series! I've watched a few of these episodes, and enjoy the perfectly paced style of the information-packed programs. Trust me: THEY'RE NOT BORING!
The way this show is made, they do a really good job with the constant presentation of visuals and facts, and how what happened in the past is impacting our world now, that really held my interest. And trust me, that's saying a lot, since I tend to get bored easily with this sort of program.
The episodes are not trying so hard to be "cool" using "teens" to explain everything and glossing over important facts, like you might run into on other channels. They're also not dull and dry, like many history and information-type shows of the past.
I was especially impressed by the "plastics" episode. I learned quite a few eye-opening facts. You can pick and choose which topics interest you...or watch something you think you have absolutely NO interest, and be amazed that yes...they actually find a way to make it interesting!
I definitely would recommend this show...and I'm not a big fan of a lot of the stuff on Netflix, which I feel is quickly churned out to create "quantity" as opposed to "quality." But I don't put this program in that category, which is why I felt compelled to write this review! -
JSG2526 May 2020The episodes are liberal political propaganda. If the episode topics don't tell you that, then the non-historiography format will. They each start innocuous enough, but slowly devolve into thinly-veiled liberal talking points. The topics themselves are fine enough, but it's not ok to try and hide bias and sneak in political projects under the guise of "history". It cheapens actual historical works. This is beginning to be a trend with Netflix Originals.
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anthonydapiii8 June 2020All of the above.
I found the Space Race and Rise of China interesting.
The detail of statistics in these episodes were amazing too. -
racerwes24 May 2020I couldn't make it through the second episode (the space race) before hitting the menu button. Between the terrible misquoting of names, erroneous timelines, and sheer fallacies (like all fatalities in space travel came in testing...what?) it is painfully obvious that we have crested into Mike Judge's version of the future. Reasearch, validate, test, retest, validate some more, proofread, THEN produce your infotainment piece.
Don't watch this with your kids if you have any desire for them to actually know history. Better yet, don't watch this at all. -
I just found out about this show, and it's amazing! It's addicting to learn more about our history. The show consists of ten very different topics, and I've watched three of them so far. Evert topic gets you exited for it and makes you wanna watch the next. It's all very professionally done, and I love how this show is not portrayed in full screen, but in like a 'cut out' :)
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jondallaslawyer23 May 2020Bare-bone facts and slick images to describe the US efforts to explore space.
btw, ignore reviews that attack the film for describing the space race from a US perspective. To critique based on something a film is not itself presents a biased perspective. Anyone is free to make a film from any perspective. -
rjdejong-6079122 May 2020I don't think I've ever seen a history show that's so biased, Add to that with the random political statements and I think this might be the worst history show I've ever watched.
History should be as unbiased as possible, the creator of this show should be ashamed. -
b-9206725 May 2020Ignore the bad reviews. This show is extremely well done and entertaining. Normally I am bored by history but this kept me engaged and excited about the content. Definitely recommend. The aids episode is especially good.