At 50, “Nova” goes ancient and modern

At the age of 50, “Nova” seems to be doing fine.
It passed the half-century mark on March 26 and kept going. Coming up are two terrific hours and several fairly good ones, including a fresh view of Pompeii (shown here).
This is a PBS science – 9 p.m. Wednesdays –that ranges afar. Viewers are happy whenever it returns to UFO’s (as it did Jan. 22), dinosaurs, or ancient worlds; still, it also tackles fresh issues, as it did with the Flint water crisis.
Some of its most impressive projects involve following years-long renovation projects. That peaked with the massive effort to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.
Now come two similar projects: On Jan. 29, we see the now-completed work on LaGuardia Airport in New York; on Feb. 26 is the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
In both cases, we see the massive problem: LaGuardia is 85 years old and landlocked, yet handles 30 million passengers a year; the Key bridge collapsed when a giant boat – triple the size of ones that used to be there — crashed into it.
In both cases we see the planners and the designs, but we also get a hardy sampling of the blue-collar workers getting it done. How do you rebuild an airport while it’s still operating? How do you protect bridges in the future? The answers are intriguing.
The Feb. 5 hour looks at how birds survived, while others from the dinosaur age didn’t. The next two offer archaeology digs in Egypt (Feb. 12), viewing a an ancient time when some women had great power; and Pompeii (Feb. 19), viewing signs of cruelty and slavery.
The bird one sometimes gets tangled in thick science-speak; the other two face language gaps, particularly in Egypt. It’s not easy to follow a complex subject when it’s wrapped in long words or thick subjects.
Even then, however, “Nova” is worth catching. In the right hands, it seems, all sorts of science and engineering can be TV-worthy.