Adam Curtis directed the 1992 BBC documentary series Pandora’s Box about the history of modern science.
Pandora’s Box is a six-part BBC documentary series written and directed by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. Rather than retelling the Greek myth, it uses the title as a metaphor for the unintended consequences of political and scientific attempts to control society.
The series examines subjects including cybernetics, economic management, nuclear strategy, and Soviet planning. Curtis combines archival footage, interviews, newsreels, and music to build arguments about how experts and institutions shaped modern political life. Its episodes connect apparently separate developments through the idea that systems designed to produce order can generate new risks.
The program is an early example of Curtis’s distinctive essay-documentary style, later seen in series such as The Century of the Self and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The title therefore points to a modern intellectual theme rather than to an adaptation of Hesiod’s narrative.