This year the BBC turns 100. Fundamental to Britain and funded by licence fee payers, the BBC has garnered a worldwide reputation for quality. For this special post highlighting the highlights of the corporation's massive contribution to television, I've decided to...
Contributed by Pam Tonothy I have a rule: If it’s got Brian Cox in it I have to watch it. There’s just something about his gentle delivery and apparent lack of ego that makes him eminently watchable. Plus, like most of his fans, I rather like science....
I’ve always been a fan of TV programmes that make me think or teach me something new. While science at school left me cold (apart from the one time I managed to electrocute myself in a chemistry lesson - don’t ask), as I get older, the complex and frankly difficult...
On Saturday just before the finale of Doctor Who, the BBC premiered the trailer for the upcoming nature series Frozen Planet. If the trailer is anything to go by its not to be missed. Frozen Planet starts in late October on BBC1.
A few numbers short of an equation? Apple fan Marcus du Sautoy has a theory. There is an underlying code that controls everything in this world, from the behaviour of crowds to who can win at rock, paper, scissors. "We try to make sense of our world", he says;...
If enthusiasm is infectious, let's hope we all get whale blubber in our mouths. It's two a.m. in Kent's Pegwell Bay; "this woman never sleeps" says Mark Evans - a small wonder when Professor Joy Reidenberg spends her evenings hacking up putrifying road- (or water-)...
What makes Wonders of the Universe so marvellous is that not only are the metaphors to explain the abstract concepts of otherwise baffling physics so perfectly orchestrated but also that the metaphors themselves are fascinating in their own right. Take the first...
Trust BBC4. So lax are the reins on the esoteric areas the channel is able to explore, it frequently surprises and delights by delving into a subject you had little or no interest in and making you both intrigued by that same subject and thirsty for more knowledge....
Infinity is eternal and bigger than anything you can imagine. And it was this difficulty to quantify something so massive – although nothing comes close to being as massive – and so long – ditto – that made this exploration of infinity disorientating and alienating....
After ‘Life on Earth’, ‘The Life of Birds’, ‘The Life of Mammals’ and ‘Life in Cold Blood’, the appellative appendages have been pruned away as TV programmes are titled with ever-shrinking brevity to match the receding ice caps to become just ‘Life’ Of course, with...
A thriving nirvana to be explored with veneration and awe by a team of intuitive experts, as they probe the flora and fauna of the environs of New Guinea surrounding the dormant volcano Mount Bosavi. That was the plan. Instead we got a bunch of excitable botanists who...
Looking absurd bedecked in an vivid orange boiler suit amid a half-autopsied giraffe, Richard Dawkins heralded that because the animal’s laryngeal nerve wandered from its throat area, performed a loop-the-loop in the torso and then returned to sit just inches away...
Did we like it? It might well be that Ida is the link that bonds mankind and lemurs 47 million years ago, but this programme cut all links between our eyes and cerebral activity, and often felt as if it had been on our screens for 47 million years through its focus on...
Did we like it? An entertaining and enlightening odyssey into the very origins of our species, guided by the charming, erudite and passionate Dr Alice Roberts, but which is however tainted by that recurring blight of BBC natural history of the presenter being clumsily...
Did we like it? To counter piracy, record companies have smothered record shops in Remastered & Deluxe versions of existing releases, to coerce the people who still shell out for CDs and listen to them as ‘background music’ to pay even more for the same product...
Did we like it? Amid the wondrous vistas of aquatic beauty, as sperm whales affectionately jostled one another, as Humboldt squids darted about the inky depths like organic missiles, as sea lions brazenly warned off the divers encroaching on their nursery, that...
Did we like it? Moments of astounding natural beauty punctuated by moments of outstanding manufactured vexation. What was good about it? • The rain forests of Guyana are such a naturally beautiful landscape that you could simply have propped a camera almost anywhere...
Did we like it? What a wasted opportunity! Instead of a peaceful appreciation of the UK (the Beeb's latest Britain Is Brill Sunday night series), we got The Andrew Marr Show, with his ugly mug cropping up far too much and far too little aerial photography. What was...
Did we like it? A simple and simply wonderful television show that packs in charming stories of new life, harrowing and unexpected tragedies, a refreshing tranquillity and sedateness and provocative bestial sexual innuendo from Bill Oddie. What was good about it? • A...
Did we like it? This must have soaked up a huge amount of the ITV drama budget but it was a damp squib throughout, never credible, hardly ever dramatic, ultra gimmicky and very stupid. This was a disaster movie – but only for the wrong reasons. What was good about it?...
Did we like it? The fingernail-gnawing most frustrating foible about reviewing a Sir David Attenborough series is that they are so damn near perfect any jagged criticism quickly melts into a cascading torrent of unqualified praise. And Life In Cold Blood, despite our...
Did we like it? An interesting, if somewhat dry look at the increasingly all-pervading influence that satellites have had on our lives since Sputnik(or the Red Moon as the tabloids initially christened it) was launched 50 years ago. The Good (early warning of severe...
Did we like it? A mostly fascinating exhumation of the potent forces that shape the planet, and how they are symbiotically spun together. It was only marred by some astonishingly out of place rudimentary geological sermonising. What was good about it? • Geology is, on...
Did we like it? A wonderful mix of history and exploration hosted by a wonderfully passionate Nicholas Crane but our appetites for shows about how beautiful Britain are almost sated. We know how beautiful Britain is; we’ve been out there and also watched Coast. What...