The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

last updated 8 January 2015

The War of the World

The 20th century’s many conflicts were in fact one continuous “War of the World,” contends author Niall Ferguson in this provocative three-part series. Its true cause, the Harvard professor maintains, was neither class nor ideology but race, and the ultimate outcome was not the triumph of the West but a resurgence of the East. Episode 1 traces its roots: economic instability, ethnic conflicts, and empires in crisis. Mondays, June 30–July 14, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

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Last July six rare mountain gorillas were shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, where Dian Fossey once had done her landmark studies. This documentary is a real-life murder mystery: It reveals that the apparently senseless slaughter was actually a coldblooded crime related to the high-level corruption in a region struggling with scarce resources, refugees, and a savage civil war. Tuesday, July 1, at 10 p.m., National Geographic Channel

Culled from more than 250 hours of footage, this visually impressive three-night series accompanies globetrotting Scottish geologist Iain Stewart as he explores the planet’s primal forces. Episode 1 follows him 100 feet down into Erta Ale, an active volcano in Ethiopia; subsequent installments examine Earth’s ice, atmosphere, oceans, and place within the solar system. In high-definition. Sunday–Monday, July 13–14, at 9 p.m. and Tuesday, July 15, at 10 p.m., National Geographic Channel

This seven-week series, based on a book by Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright, recounts his dangerous travels with an elite Marine reconnaissance battalion that spearheaded the 2003 Iraq invasion. The ambitious drama’s depictions of war’s brutal realities brings to mind such unvarnished views of World War II as Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Executive producers David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire) saturate the show with grit, and don’t flinch from portraying their young characters’ pettiness, racism, sexism, homophobia, and scabrous profanity along with their courageous tenacity. Alexander Skarsgard, James Ransone, and Lee Tergesen (Oz) lead the large ensemble cast. Sunday, July 13, at 9 p.m., HBO

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