It's not bad. He could have used better direction.
It does have one of my favorite technology hobby-horses - clean water. We don't think about how recent it is. We may or may not realize how dangerous not having it was.
I hate to say this, but Burke is simply a better performer and Connections was more of an outlier because of when it first showed.
I think it helps that Burke has the deadpan British delivery, and its not spruced up for the "reality tv" generation (cuts, animations, piles of piles of distracting eyecandy). Much of it is just Burke talking, walking, and providing the occasional simple demonstration.
Yeah - and that "deadpan" is laced with copious amounts of both earnestness and irony. I'd also guess it was done with a smaller 16MM camera, which looks "newsreelish" and somehow signals credibility to me.
To my eye, it's "this is less about what you see than what is said."
It does have one of my favorite technology hobby-horses - clean water. We don't think about how recent it is. We may or may not realize how dangerous not having it was.
I hate to say this, but Burke is simply a better performer and Connections was more of an outlier because of when it first showed.