![]() ![]() Genius (2017). An anthology series about famous geniuses with the first season charting how Einstein – an imaginative, rebellious patent clerk, who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate – unlocked the mysteries of the atom and the universe. The Storm (2017 BET Hip-Hop Awards Cypher Verse) Lyrics: It's the calm before the storm right here / Wait, how was I gonna start this off? / I forgot oh yeah. Geoffrey Rush as the older Albert Einstein in “Genius,” a series beginning on National Geographic. Credit Dusan Martincek/National Geographic National Geographic, a network hoping to fashion itself a, has invested quite a lot in its first scripted series, which begins on Tuesday night. The commitment has paid off admirably. Judging from the first two episodes, this is a skillfully acted, richly detailed historical show that would not be out of place on PBS or a high-end pay-cable outlet. It’s a dramatization of the, who was not the wild-haired caricature that you may have thought, at least not when he was young. “Genius” intends to be an anthology series about the lives of historical figures who fit the title, and Einstein is a natural choice to kick it off. (A second season was announced last week but not which “genius” will be the subject; the network says that will be revealed during the Season 1 finale.) Not only did he revolutionize physics, but he also lived during calamitous times, including two world wars, and had an eventful personal life. The 10-episode first season, based on Walter Isaacson’s book “Einstein: His Life and Universe” (2007), weaves those threads together to create a portrait of the very human fellow behind the immortal equation. The premiere opens in Berlin in 1922, when Einstein (1879-1955) was in his 40s and a renowned figure in physics, but it soon flashes back to the 1890s, when Einstein was a student with a restless mind and a knack for irritating his instructors. Both actors are quite watchable, and presumably as the series goes along it will close the gap between Mr. Flynn’s cocksure, somewhat impudent Einstein and Mr. ![]() ![]() Rush’s scholarly one. Flynn gets the most work in the first two episodes as the young Einstein looks for a place where his intellectual curiosity will be encouraged, eventually finding his way to the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. Along the way he demonstrates a recklessness in romance that will still be with him decades later (something we know because the opening scene showed us Mr. Rush’s Einstein having enthusiastic sex with a woman not his wife). At Zurich, Einstein becomes smitten with a bright, determined fellow student, even though he is already in a relationship with someone else. Samantha Colley, a relative newcomer, is simply great as this new love interest, Mileva Maric, who would become Einstein’s first wife; some have argued she also may have contributed to his breakthroughs. ![]() Colley perfectly captures the strength and frustration of a brilliant woman who was well ahead of her time.
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