This is a special series on PBS (which you can also watch online on the PBS website until the end of the week I think). They’ve been heavily advertising it (or at least, heavily for PBS) and after watching the first episode, it was definitely worth it. Seeing magnificent waterfalls and glaciers and animals in HD was why you wanted HD in the first place, right? And boy do they look spectacular! Unfortunately, the actual content of the show isn’t all that enthralling. The first episode come off as “isn’t America grand” “aren’t we better than everyone else for having public owned land” “I <3 John Muir” (seriously, they go on for a really long time about how great they think this man was) with only a few minutes of “oh yeah, we killed native americans” and “oh yeah, so native americans already knew about these places”. They did have an interview with one Native American guy who says just that, but it was only one guy. I would have appreciated a bit more than that.
But anyway, I learned a lot about the first National Parks and oh man do they look gorgeous. I really want to go to CA and see those giant sequoias now. Oh and I want to go see Yellowstone again (been there 2x!). Oh and I need to visit Alaska someday. Sigh.