From beginning to end, The Real Eve is more concerned with style than substance. Director Andrew Piddington appears to subscribe to the minimum-attention-span theory of documentaries: flash hundreds of images across the screen, too rapidly to focus on any one of them, and the result will be that the viewer will think that he or she has absorbed something really fascinating. But what, exactly, are we supposed to learn from this program? Piddington may think it's passé to do a documentary that actually explains its material, but I don't think so, and in fact The Real Eve is inadvertently evidence against its own style of documentary filmmaking. Apart from the camera tricks, which I was heartily sick of after only five minutes, and plenty of "action-packed" but uninformative reenactment segments, what do we get? Almost nothing, I'm afraid.

Archaeology, prehistory, and human evolution are topics that I'm fairly well-informed on, as they've interested me for years, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the content in The Real Eve makes little, if any, actual sense. Again and again, whenever any actual science is presented, it's explained extremely badly, usually confusing the issue and sometimes downright garbling it.

Starting right at the beginning, the concept of "mitochondrial DNA" is not explained at all. That's right: it's the fundamental concept necessary to understand what the "real Eve" is and how scientists have been able to use modern genetics to trace ancient human migrations, and it is not explained. (For the curious: a small part of our genetic code is contained in the "mitochondria," tiny cellular bodies. These mitochondria are present in the mother's egg cell, but unlike "nuclear" DNA, they stay whole: they don't divide and recombine with the father's half of the DNA. Therefore, while "regular" human DNA has been broken up and reshuffled millions of times over human evolution, mitochondrial DNA offers an unbroken trail from daughter to mother back to our earliest ancestors.) Later, it's briefly mentioned that the general public is often confused about the figure of the "mitochondrial Eve," believing that the theory supports the idea of the mythological Eve of the Bible; but after mentioning this confusion, the program fails to clarify the issue at all. Any viewer who doesn't already understand what "the mitochondrial Eve" is will continue to be left in the dark.

The failure to explain the concept behind the "mitochondrial Eve" is certainly the major stumbling block of the program, but unfortunately The Real Eve is littered with other incoherencies and downright mis-statements. For instance, at one point it's claimed that a group of 250 individuals is the minimum necessary for a population's reproductive survival, which is patently untrue; a smaller group is more vulnerable to epidemics and accidents, but "more vulnerable" does not mean "cannot survive." I have little confidence in the quality of a program on evolution that cannot manage to use the term "genetic drift" correctly.

The Real Eve isn't just badly explained; it's slightly misleading as well. The "single exodus from Africa" theory that the documentary supports is only one of several possibilities as to how humankind spread from its undisputed African origins to the entire globe. For instance, some fascinating evidence in China (not mentioned in the documentary) suggests that an early migration of Homo erectus led to the modern Homo sapiens evolving almost completely independently in Asia, Europe, and Africa. There is also other evidence to suggest that Homo sapiens may have moved out in several waves from Africa to the rest of the world. The theory presented in The Real Eve certainly does have worthwhile evidence to support it; however, by not even touching on the alternatives, its argument is weakened. To be sure, at one point it's mentioned that there are other theories... but those theories are then immediately dismissed without even being explained. The study of human evolution and prehistory is not one in which all the answers are known, although recent years have certainly brought to light fascinating new evidence; The Real Eve does a disservice to the subject by focusing so narrowly on only one possibility.

The Real Eve is also oozing with political correctness. The roaming hunter-gatherer bands of Africa are painted as pioneers expanding into a new world, driven by curiosity and the desire for a better life. We are offered an image of an idyllic society in which the "endangered" humans work together to survive the harshness of the natural world; in short, we get the "human march of progress" myth projected backwards to our ancestors. Later in the program the "mitochondrial Eve" theory, reduced to the tagline "under the skin, we are all the same," is presented as science teaming up with humanitarianism to offer a new vision for peace and cooperation. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it: a scientific basis for world peace? But science isn't about what we'd like to be true, it's about what's really true; the "mitochondrial Eve" theory may make for nice headlines in the popular news, but other, equally valid theories about the origins of human diversity highlight different evolutionary paths for the different human populations. Peace and cooperation in society are ethical goals that ought to be striven for independently of whether or not the human genetic code is extremely similar or very different in different areas of the globe. The Real Eve's attempt to co-opt one out of several equally valid theories of human origins for a political agenda is the kind of thing that actually makes it difficult for science to uncover the real truths of our origin.

What, if anything, is worthwhile in The Real Eve? At its most basic level, the program does present the concept of humankind spreading out from its African origins. The one area of content that appears strongest is the connection that's postulated between climate and human migration: a convincing argument is made that the location and extent of deserts during certain periods of time essentially forced human migration to take certain paths out of Africa and into the rest of the globe. Unfortunately, this material is not presented as well as it could have been; for instance, there's almost no use of maps in the program (apart from the occasional zoomed-in 3D map used for dramatic effect), even though the fundamental concept of human migration practically screams out for well-done maps. Here I can see the potential for the documentary that The Real Eve could have been, but isn't.

Video

The Real Eve is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. However, it is not anamorphically enhanced, even though the packaging claims that it is "16:9 widescreen." Apart from not being anamorphic, the image is reasonably good-looking. There's some edge enhancement visible, but not to excess. For the most part, the transfer is clean and noise-free, though some clips show more grain than others. Colors and contrast are both generally pleasing to the eye.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 track of The Real Eve is satisfactory for the purposes of the documentary. Though I found Danny Glover to be an adequate but not exceptional narrator, his voice is presented clearly and distinctly on the soundtrack. Other elements of the track, such as the effects, music, and interview footage, are also presented clearly.

Extras

The Discovery Channel DVDs are plagued by a particularly long and annoying unskippable introduction; if you're not careful, it will even start up at the end of the feature as well. Once you get past the introduction, the menus are easy to navigate.

For special features, the DVD of The Real Eve contains seven minutes of "behind the scenes" footage, split into two tiny mini-featurettes and puffed up by promotional material for the documentary. About all we learn is that the director wanted to make The Real Eve seem more like a feature film than a documentary (unfortunately for those viewers who would have liked some actual content) and that the special effects were done by a Montreal effects studio (not surprisingly, there's no mention of scientific supervision over the accuracy of those effects).

Final thoughts

The Real Eve is a poor introduction to the subject of human prehistory and evolution, with its badly-explained and slightly misleading informative content; it is also a poor choice for someone who's already interested in the subject, because it offers too little actual substance to merit watching it. If you're interested in human prehistory, you'll have a more satisfying experience spending those 100 minutes reading a good book or magazine article on the subject than watching the flashy, nearly content-free The Real Eve.