TV REVIEW : PBS’ ‘Planet’ Doesn’t Make Waves

“Race to Save the Planet,” a 10-part series that PBS hopes will propel a collective rush of citizen action on behalf of the environment, suffers from a curious lack of urgency, despite its title.

The ambitious series, which runs for 10 consecutive Thursdays and also in a concentrated five-night package Sunday through next Thursday, is being promoted as unprecedented in its scope and as “doing what no other media coverage has attempted.” (It kicks off tonight at 7 on Channel 24, at 8 on Channels 28 and 15 and at 9 on Channel 50.)

Its stated aims are threefold: To assess the deteriorating state of our environment on a global scale; to explain interconnections among such crises as population growth, disappearing farmland and greenhouse warming; and to present some of the new solutions being tried today.

The series, produced by the science unit of Boston’s WGBH-TV, meets all of these goals, at least to some degree. Producers John Angier and Linda Harrar, filming in 31 countries on all seven continents, and interviewing more than 75 experts, have laced together a hefty tapestry of visual and statistical documentation that we are destroying the planet by our rapacious, polluting habits and that unless we reverse our ways very quickly (10 years seems to be the accepted window), we are not going to make it as a species.

What they haven’t done is make it compelling to watch. From its opening segment--tracing the history of human relationship to the environment--the series, narrated blandly by Roy Scheider, lacks bite.

“How did we get into this mess?” inquires narrator Meryl Streep, sitting serenely by the family pond in Connecticut. “It’s the unwitting result of going to Mother Nature’s larder and taking more than could be replaced.”

Streep’s calm manner sets the tone for the series, which seems determined not to get upset about anything. Even its wave of apocalyptic scenes, of bulldozers and dams and chain saws and strip miners “going to Mother Nature’s larder” to feed the industrial appetite (the third program includes an interesting history of smoggy Los Angeles and its ongoing battle to clean up the air), are filtered through the objective of the scientists.

And the organization of the material into program themes (“Climate,” “Overdevelopment,” “Energy”) has resulted in the most energetic segments--interviews with people who are personally involved in creative environmental reform--being concentrated near the end of the series. These include impressive experiments being done with chemical-free, organic farming in several countries, an imaginative sex education program that popularizes condoms in Thailand and a dramatic citizen fight to close a toxic dump in Casmalia, Calif.

As an educational resource, “Race to Save the Planet” is impressive. As a major television program, it suffers from poor timing on several counts. Environmentally, it seems to have been filmed both too late and too early. Last April’s Earth Day and its media binge, spotlighting the imperiled planet, got there first as a consciousness-raiser. And current events in the Persian Gulf have undercut a number of “Race to Save the Planet” sequences that bewail the “misleadingly low” prices of coal, oil and gas.

But perhaps the most indicting comparison is that this series follows closely the stirring PBS documentary “The Civil War.” With only the materials of archives--photographs, newspaper clippings, sheet music and diaries--that series breathed life and passion into a piece of history, thanks to the poetic vision of its director and co-producer, Ken Burns. In contrast, “Race to Save the Planet,” taking on the Titanic theme of the very future of life, has utilized too much brainpower and not enough heart.