In Culture
Stephen Hawking's Grand Design (2012): the Discovery Series
A guide to Stephen Hawking's Grand Design, the 2012 Discovery series in which Hawking takes on the biggest questions: did God create the universe, why does it exist, what is the meaning of life. Where to watch.
Last reviewed 30 May 2026 · How we research
In 2012 the Discovery Channel released Stephen Hawking's Grand Design, a three-part documentary series in which Hawking tackled the largest questions there are: why the universe exists at all, what created its laws, and whether science can answer questions traditionally left to philosophy and religion. It was the screen companion to his 2010 book of the same name, written with Leonard Mlodinow.
What's in it
The series takes three of the questions that recur throughout Hawking's late-career work and treats each as a feature-length episode. The first, Did God Create the Universe?, walks through the conditions under which a universe might begin without external cause, drawing on the Big Bang and the no-boundary proposal he developed with James Hartle. The second, The Meaning of Life, asks whether physics can speak meaningfully about purpose at all; see Hawking on the meaning of life for his fuller position. The third, The Key to the Cosmos, examines the structure of physical law itself, why nature appears to be describable mathematically.
How it sits next to the book
Hawking's 2010 book The Grand Design contains its most famous and most contested sentence: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." The television series gives that argument visual form and a longer run-up, walking general viewers through the reasoning. The book is more compressed and more provocative; the series is gentler and more pedagogical. Both reach the same conclusion: that the existence of physical law is, for Hawking, sufficient to account for the universe without invoking a creator. See Hawking's views on God for the wider context.
What makes it distinctive
By 2012 Hawking was unable to record long stretches of narration in his synthesised voice, so the series uses an actor's voiceover for much of the running time, with Hawking himself appearing on screen and delivering the key lines. As with the earlier Discovery work, the production values are high, with extensive computer-generated visualisation of cosmological ideas that books can only describe in metaphor.
Where it sits in his work
Grand Design belongs to the productive late period in which Hawking was putting more energy into public communication than into new technical work. It sits alongside the earlier Discovery series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, and was followed by the Genius series in 2016. For the full screen record see the media library and the watcher's guide at where to watch Stephen Hawking on film.