Plot synopsis: From KQED in San Francisco and the Virus Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, comes a distinguished series of eight half-hour programs on the nature of the virus. Prepared using a National Science Foundation grant, the series is designed to explain to the viewer some of the basic facts about viruses, those structures so essential to life and health, facts which for the most part have only been discovered in the past twenty-five years. Drawing on advanced scientific techniques such as microcinematography, electron microscopy and freeze drying, as well as on animation, large-scale models and drawings, the programs combine lectures with demonstrations to give the viewer an extremely vivid picture of this complicated topic. Particularly emphasized are facts about the virus' relation to bacterial disease, to polio, and to cancer, and new information about viruses which may not yet be generally known to students of biology or to the non-scientific public.