Any boring college class would benefit greatly if Alan Alda were plopped in the front row. Of course, recruiting the six-time Emmy winner to enroll in Biology 101 might prove difficult, so just appreciate "The Human Spark," a new three-part documentary premiering Wednesday that explores how people have developed their brainpower while Neanderthals and chimpanzees have never shifted out of first gear.
The series could easily have been as lifeless as a stuffed mammoth behind a glass wall, but Alda makes it an easy, breezy science lesson, animating the most eggheaded of scientists with a persistent line of questioning and the eagerness of a child who just learned the word "why."
"It was sort of like having a very difficult student who is of rather above-average intelligence," said John Shea, an associate professor of anthropology at New York's Stony Brook University who is grilled by Alda about Stone Age technology. "It's usually a one-way street: You lecture, they take notes and you give them an exam. This was instant feedback. One of the real nice benefits of this process is it makes you work harder to make your points clearer and more easily understood."
Alda has been down this road before. While the post-"M*A*S*H" years have included some of the juiciest roles of his career, including two seasons on "The West Wing," which added to his 33 Emmy nominations, and an Oscar-nominated turn in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," he devoted more than a decade to "Scientific American Frontiers," a series in which he first played the role of the nagging student.
Alda, 73, said he initially turned down "Frontiers" because they simply wanted him to provide narration.
"I said I'd only be interested in doing it if I could talk to the scientists and learn about what they're doing, spend the day with them. That sounded like fun to me," said Alda, who visited the Science Museum of Minnesota last month to help promote the series. "It was really selfish. They took a big chance because they didn't know how it would turn out, but they said OK.
"We started to discover a whole new way to do a science show, which was to make it a personal experience and not just present the science. Those moments on camera where we're just mixing together and I'm trying to get it and they're trying to make me understand are really nice moments."
That approach works equally well in "Spark," as Alda crisscrosses the globe, experimenting with gorillas, hurling primitive tools and, most important, cajoling brainiacs to lighten up.
