The hunt for ‘DNA’

The mission was the boldest imaginable: Unlock the secrets of human existence. The odds against success were astronomical. One participant likened it to trying to piece together 10 copies of “War and Peace” that have been shredded and left to decay in a compost heap.

And the ego level of the contestants? Enormous, matched only by their outsized intellects.

Wrap it up and the story spells “DNA,” a superbly done five-part series that begins Sunday night on PBS. It’s the story of the discovery of that double-helix structure, the birth of genetic engineering, the race to map the human genome (“the instruction manual” on how humans are made) and the desperate attempt to cure cancer.

“DNA” has it all: the science, the public policy debates, the legal and ethical entanglements, the personality clashes, all done with terrific camerawork, jazzy music and narration by actor Jeff Goldblum.

The science is made accessible -- consider it science for nonmajors. The scientists are given their due, but “DNA” avoids the downfall of much science journalism: the tendency to treat the laboratory practitioners as gods.

It all starts at Cambridge University in the early 1950s with two junior researchers, James Watson and Francis Crick.

“If the place had the hallmark of greatness, Watson and Crick did not,” Goldblum says. What they had was the audacity of youth and an unusual style that required frequent trips to the local pub to chat over their latest theory.

“People thought we were slightly crazy, but we didn’t think we were,” Watson says. “We just thought the other people were quite dull.”

Crick, now at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, no longer gives interviews. But Watson, who at 74 is rich and famous, is chatty and doesn’t care whom he infuriates with his views, such as his disdain for those who fear that genetically engineered food is the devil’s work.

Episode 1 is the competition between Watson and Crick at Cambridge and a mismatched pair of researchers at King’s College: the shy and collegial Maurice Wilkins and the hard-charging, get-out-of-my-way Rosalind Franklin.

Watson, whose craggy, mile-wide smile is all jowls and cheekbones, might be considered the hero of “DNA,” appearing in all five episodes.

But he does not escape unscathed. Judge for yourself whether he benefited by some slick maneuvering in obtaining the results of Franklin’s early research without her knowledge. Watson, Crick and Wilkins got fame and the Nobel Prize, Franklin got zip.

The mini-profile of Wilkins, still brooding over his role in developing the atomic bomb during World War II, is one of the jewels of “DNA.”

“DNA” is clear: Nobody feuds with the ferocity of the PhD set. When an entrepreneurial scientist named Craig Venter in the 1980s launches a privately funded human genome project to rival the slow-moving, government-funded project, Watson and others go ballistic.

Watson calls a summit meeting at his Long Island lab of 400 of the world’s top scientists. The collision between academia and venture capitalism was not pretty.

Venter says his project “was met with the most intense antagonism I could imagine.” Watson is unapologetic: “I thought he was ... selfish .... “

Finally, a truce is brokered by then-President Clinton for the sides to share data. The government-funded scientists get the openness they wanted, Venter and others are assured their investors will be rewarded with profitable patents for new drugs.

And the race to know more of DNA’s secrets, “DNA” suggests, has only begun. As Venter says, “Speed matters, discovery can’t wait.”

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“DNA”

Where: PBS

When: Sundays, 10-11 p.m., through Feb. 1; premieres Sunday.

Narrator...Jeff Goldblum

Series producer David Dugan. Tonight’s episode (“The Secret of Life”): producer and director David Glover.