The Bomb

Overstuffed yet altogether gripping work.

PBS goes deeper than Smithsonian [The Day the Bomb Dropped], partly because it’s a two-hour show, but also because it raises the thorny isue of whether that first bomb needed to be dropped at all.

The closer The Bomb gets to the present, the more frenetic and less effective it becomes. You can't expect a two-hour study to be in any way comprehensive, but some surprisingly big swaths of the historical territory get little or no mention.

The Bomb is a headlong-rush past the milestones and guideposts of this history, rarely pausing to explore their deeper consequences or meaning, while offering just a nod now and then to enduring controversies, or acknowledging--though barely exploring--the huge personalities that shaped this history, such as Robert Oppenheimer. The actual science is almost completely ignored.

The program, though, has too few Mr. Behls [Hal Behl, an aeronautical engineer] and too many talking heads, most of them stating the obvious. It also leans too heavily on those funny vintage clips that make everyone back in the early days of the Cold War look like idiots.