Oppenheimer premiered in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 29 October 1980, and concluded on 10 December 1980, consisting of seven episodes.

The series depicts Oppenheimer's wartime role as head of the weapons laboratory of the Manhattan Project, during which he was under constant surveillance by the US federal government because of his association with communists.

Oppenheimer is a co-production between the BBC and Boston's WGBH, which contributed 15 percent of the project's $1.5 million costs.

[4][5] More than 40 years after its release, the series became available on BBC iPlayer following the success of Christopher Nolan's 2023 film of the same name, which also chronicles the career of Oppenheimer.

[6][7][8] John J. O'Connor of The New York Times wrote that J. Robert Oppenheimer was "persuasively" played by Sam Waterston and the series "is primarily interested in telling, quite absorbingly, one of the more puzzling and indeed astonishing stories of contemporary American history".