Review – A Matter of Life and Death

This German series about the history of medicine is, well, very German. For example, the tales of medical breakthroughs are bracketed by scenes from a family picnic, vignettes with a sense of humor that’s subtly different than what one would expect from an American production. Oddness (and occasional bad sound mixing on the overdubbed translation) aside, much of the information presented is fascinating stuff. To be sure, the set seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on prenatal and early childhood problems, which one would expect from the first episode but should probably not have been as big a deal in the second. But overall this is a solid treatment of the topic at hand. Mildly amusing