INTERVIEW: ‘Breakthrough’ looks at the ideas that changed the world
Image: Courtesy of PBS / Provided with permission.
Breakthrough: The Ideas That Changed the World, a new series on PBS, focuses on game-changing technologies that forever revolutionized society. From the telescope to the smartphone, the objects on display are every bit cataclysmic in their impact.
“I think Breakthrough is the amazing stories of the evolution and revolution that have created these objects that are part of our lives and have changed the world, and the thing that really is cool about the stories is that it’s not about just improving on what the previous person did,” said Bill Margol, senior director of programming and development for PBS. “It’s not just about standing on the shoulders of whatever inventor came before. It’s really about those revolutions, about those left turns of unexpected discovery that come out of the blue and lead to such a revolution that there’s no turning back from it.”
Breakthrough continues with new episodes Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on the network. For the inaugural season of the series, the team has decided to focus on the telescope, smartphone, airplane, robot, car and rocket — a motley variety of technologies.
“We have six episodes, and gosh I think we must have started with a list of 20 or more ideas,” Margol said. “And some of that are ones that sort of jump out at you that feel exciting. Some fall away because they are more evolutionary than revolutionary in terms of products, things that took a fairly straightforward path to becoming part of our lives, and we really wanted this to feel again like more of those breakthrough moments and stuff like that. And that’s not to belittle any discovery or something that took a straighter path. We just wanted to tell a specific kind of story.”
The team left several good ideas on the editing room floor, so they are prepared for a second season, if the first set of episodes captures the audience’s attention.
For these first few episodes, Margol and the production company wanted a mixture of household objects (smartphones) and larger technologies (rockets). This way viewers have a chance to learn about the device in their own hands one week, and then they can learn about the faraway objects that are relegated to news stories and textbooks.
To put together the first six episodes of Breakthrough, Margol and the team spent approximately one year on production. TV, after all, is a long process.
“I think we’ve been working on this probably for a year, maybe even a little longer from inception to air,” he said. “The stories come together at different paces. It depends on the research that goes into them. … What you’ll see is a blend of really fascinating interviews but with a really unique animation style that we use to tell the historical story, plus visits to places that are integral to the story.”
With any series on PBS, there’s the engagement factor, the entertainment factor and the education factor. For Margol, all of these elements need to be present and accounted for, otherwise viewers will lose interest.
“I think we’d be foolish to think that we can educate anybody without entertaining anyone,” he said. “Ultimately nobody wants medicine, and so our job is to create programming that has integrity, that has all of those things that PBS is known for — quality, integrity and educational and engagement — but you have to wrap it in an entertaining wrapper because nobody wants to sit and watch it if it’s not going to be entertaining. Entertaining doesn’t mean reality television. It doesn’t mean light and fluffy, but it can still mean fun. It can still mean engaging, all those things. It’s our mandate to be all those things.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Breakthrough: The Ideas That Changed the World continues with new episodes Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on PBS. Click here for more information.
