What’s most amazing about this reboot of the classic Carl Sagan PBS series? That it got made at all. But through the persistence of key Hollywood power brokers like Seth MacFarlane, the powers that be at Fox and Nat Geo turned the Cosmos reboot into a global event. Add in a scientific assist by host Neil deGrasse Tyson, who actually credits a boyhood encounter with Sagan as inspiring him to pursue science, and this intriguing series honors the original by packing a massive amount of information about the estimated 100 billion galaxies that comprise the known universe. Mixing old conventions such as the “ship of imagination” with new additions like animated sequences (thank MacFarlane for that) turns this into a worthy educational series for the whole family.

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Thursday–December 3

Talking ‘Trafficked’ with Nat Geo’s Monroe

Nat Geo’s eight-part docuseries “Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller” made its debut Wednesday night, offering up extensive reporting on the underground world of black markets. National Geographic Content

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