The premiere episode was on tonight. It... was... beautiful. Looking forward to the rest.

Did anyone else see it? There was a wonderful tribute to Carl Sagan in the last couple of minutes.

Doesn't seem to be airing here in Sweden.

I'm not even certain if the original ever reached up here.

3048794 Could I get some Information here. Maybe what it is, where I could find it, and what it is about. that would be great.

3050946
Given that the original is 30+ years old, I imagine that you could get your hands on it without too much difficulty. For instance, I just found the first episode on YouTube, although I don't know if it's blocked for viewing outside the US or anything like that. If you do some searching, I'm sure you'll find options. (If nothing else, I know the DVDs are available.)

As for the new series, there are probably ways to get that outside of the USA as well.
I wouldn't want you to do anything that's technically illegal, though.

3051984
What's it about? It's about everything.

The original Cosmos was hosted and co-written by the late, great Carl Sagan, an astronomer who worked on the Voyager programs (among others) and one of the greatest popularizers of science of all time. It covers a wide variety of topics over a span of 13 episodes -- Venus and Mars, the atomic elements, the history of science, relativity, and more.

The new Cosmos is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson -- a pretty great science communicator in his own right -- and is written by Ann Druyan, a co-writer for the original series and Dr. Sagan's widow. Last night, it premiered on the Fox Network and the National Geographic Channel, and I believe it was also shown on some other Fox-owned networks as a promotion.

As to how it ended up on Fox, I'm sure that's largely due to Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and other shows. He happens to be a huge fan of the original series and of Carl Sagan, and he provided a good chunk of financial backing for the series. (He also paid out of his own pocket to get a huge collection of Carl Sagan material into the Library of Congress.)

3048794
Sure did. Went over to my friend's place to watch it on his nice TV; turned out he made hats for for us to wear that said "SPACE" in felt. I'm hoping we're gonna do it again for the next 12 weeks.

Especially loved how a lot of the graphics were translations of real Hubble photos or scientific simulations, like the Millennium Simulation for showing the whole visible universe.

I'm mad I have to wait a whole week for the next episode. I was worried they weren't going to do it right, but the word that kept popping into my head was "worthy." They really nailed the spirit of the enterprise, and it has all of its maturity and class, too.

3055776
Yeah, I think Carl would be proud. And while I felt the animated sequences -- the life of Giordano Bruno and the like -- were only so-so, the rest of the visuals were absolutely stunning, especially the stuff from Hubble.

3055802
I liked the animated bits, but yeah, their production values didn't quite seem to match the other segments. They kind of reminded me of shadow puppets, which I liked, but I think it would have been a better use of them if Tyson kept narrating over muffled foreign words, like in the original, instead of having them be literal scenes with dialog. Maybe they're saving their best animated segments for later in the series, though.

I was commenting to my friend at the time that animation was a good choice, since unless they were gorgeous and already heavily-stylized period productions, reenactments like the original's would have seemed dated and hokey to a modern audience.

3055869
I'll give you that; animation of any sort is probably a better choice than live actors. Probably helps them focus the budget on cool stuff like the Cosmic Calendar imagery, too, rather than spending money on actors, sets, additional location shots, and costumes.

3055901
I did think the animated segment recreating that famous print, where Bruno peeks through the curtain, was awesome, though.

But yeah, the more realistic visualizations of the various astronomical phenomena were incredible. And creating them from actual photos kept them tasteful and understated—and accurate!—while still showing the actual scale and sublimity of everything.
And that was the best rendering of the Great Red Spot I've ever seen. It made me want to write a story where it fills the role of Mt. Doom.