OK – perhaps it’s still early days in the new series, but am I alone in being very slightly worried about Horizon? Last week it was The Survivors Guide to Plane Crashes, and this week it was Danny Wallace asking if Chimps are People Too. Now I like Danny Wallace, but this programme felt like a BBC1 prime time documentary and not something that belonged under the Horizon banner. An interesting programme, but not really “proper” science.
I have no problem with popular science, indeed it’s a shame that its been so long since Tomorrow’s World, and before that, QED both came off air. Perhaps it’d take a brave producer, but I reckon it’s about time that a Tomorrow’s World type show came back. Five has the OK-ish Gadget Show, which suffers from apparently being shot on lower quality camcorders than some of the ones they test, but combine that with a digest of scientific stories based on current affairs – from Bird Flu, through space, to Stem Cells – there’s always something to be looking at – and you might have something.
And why has the Horizon logo changed? It’s not that long since its last overhall, and at least that stuck with the classic “horizon”.