As with most brilliant ideas, the ones that formed the backbone of Jared Diamond’s 1998 best seller “Guns, Germs, and Steel” were remarkably simple, the kind that causes most of us to slap our foreheads in amazement. In his effort to explain the differences between developing societies and more primitive ones, Mr. Diamond – a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles – used his passion for birds and nature to look for the most basic answers to his simple questions. His solution – that the physical advantages provided by land and nature gave areas like Europe and the Middle East a permanent advantage over the rest of the world – explained enough to earn him a Pulitzer Prize, and the chance to re-tell his tale in a three-part TV series that debuts next Monday night at 10 p.m. on Channel 13.

In this provocative and mostly compelling video version, Mr. Diamond serves as the central character of his own drama – a bearded, curious gentleman in a straw hat who looks and listens as New Guinea natives and others take him deep into the world he wants so desperately to comprehend. In the first episode, Mr. Diamond does little more than ask questions, the most fundamental of which is this: Why does so much of the Western world possess what the hapless residents of New Guinea refer to as “cargo,” a euphemism for tangible benefits like food, clothes, and housing, while others have so little? Moment by moment, Mr. Diamond’s journey explains the elements of nature’s development that brought about the difference. He shows us how few animals in the world could serve the purposes of those who wanted to till the land for food; of 148 animals, he reports, only 14 could be used effectively as farm animals. That meant that farms – the backbone of Western society for hundreds of years – were limited to those areas where animals like cows and horses could graze in comfort.

In particular, issues of climate and temperature came to shape what food could be grown and harvested – food with protein that could give strength and power to whatever culture could harness its potential. That culture turned out to be centered in the Middle East, in what’s known as the Fertile Crescent; that area of the world developed faster than any other, and evolved quickly into the dominant force in a world largely still mired in the hunter-gatherer cultures of the Pacific Rim.

That eventually spread to Europe, and evolved into a culture refined enough to need weapons to protect its advantage – hence the power of the gun, a focus of Episode 2, in which Zulus tried in vain to share in the advantage of European settlers, but were defeated by their evolving weaponry. Then came railroads and new forms of transportation that gave Europeans yet more advantage – the Industrial Revolution that allowed European culture (and, later, the United States) to even further dominate the rest of the world.

Mr. Diamond explains his conclusions through the voice of Peter Coyote, an actor whose intelligence matches perfectly the balance of sophistication and simplicity that sets “Gun, Germs, and Steel” apart from most documentaries. It is impossible not to admire the sweeping ambition of this enterprise, as it does nothing less than explain the narrative arc of human existence – using Mr. Diamond’s elegant thesis (and his frequent on-camera appearances) as its guide.

Remarkably, this documentary manages to make use of visual re-creations and a serious, almost lecturing tone to explain its theories and conclusions, and yet it’s far more riveting than the flashy personal stories that have dominated the form. This effort harks back to the principles behind shows like “Sunrise Semester” from the 1960s, when television unabashedly offered itself as a tool for education and enlightenment. By the end of Episode 3 of “Gun, Germs, and Steel” – the show airs on successive Monday nights in July – you’ll understand the way the world breaks down into two basic groups: those who have and those who don’t. But more important, you’ll have seen it through the sympathetic eyes of Mr. Diamond, who views the legacies of different cultures as equally valuable pieces of the world’s vast and compelling puzzle. He makes no judgments, and in doing so allows us to appreciate and understand our own advantages in a whole new light. Indeed, without them we would lack the means to educate Americans with Mr. Diamond’s deceptively simple ideas.

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The ratings triumph of the final episode of “Dancing With the Stars” this past Wednesday night demonstrated yet again the justifiable dominance ABC holds over its competitors these days. Casting of these shows has always been the foremost secret to success, and the use of John O’Hurley (Mr. Peterman on “Seinfeld”) and Kelly Monaco (a daytime soap actress and Playboy playmate) as central dancers showed a canny sense of character. Ms. Monaco’s fresh-scrubbed athleticism would seem to make her a natural for television; I would be stunned if she didn’t surface on a prime-time network soap within the next six months. The show worked as a PG-rated evocation of a smoky nightclub, with just the right balance of titillation and amusement. I think even Mr. Diamond would approve.