I was extremely trepidatious about this documentary - often the BBC have a habit of producing lifestyle/health documentaries with clickbait titles that are filler at best and actually extremely harmful at worst. However getting premier historian and excellent person David Olusoga involved piqued my interest and behind the title it turns out to be a surprisingly nuanced examination of the evolution and history of public health science (albeit overwhelmingly skewed to focus exclusively on the UK and US) within the context of the current crisis.
Aided by the endearingly gawky science author Steven Johnson, they weave four episodes out of different elements of public health (vaccines, medical drugs, data & behaviour) - managing to rope in some pretty impressive guests including Dr. Anthony Fauci, admirably going into some detail on hard subjects, displaying some of the nuances of medical history and displaying a nice bit of chemistry between the two of them despite being separated by circumstance.
Extra Life doesn't do a great deal of talking down and by placing itself in a specific historical context it ends up being quite an optimistic portrayal of the current situation - as in, public health science is a constantly evolving field, it could always do better and by constructively highlighting oversights or mistakes in the historical record with an awareness of the contemporary shortcomings - you can learn and improve. If you value this sort of interpretation of reality I'd say this is certainly worth a watch and may serve itself as timely document of what we're currently experiencing.
