For many years a small band of physicists worked very hard to raise the public profile of physics in the UK, mostly by giving popular lectures and talks, answering questions from journalists, popping up on the radio from time to time, and writing books and newspaper articles. However, these physicists — with eminent researchers John Barrow, Frank Close and Paul Davies foremost among them — appeared only occasionally on television, and to the best of my knowledge none of them was ever given their own programme, although Close did present the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on BBC Two in 1993. Other notable exceptions include two series by Stephen Hawking (both called Stephen Hawking's Universe) and a series called Space presented by the actor Sam Neill. In general, however, there was only a handful of television programmes on physics every year, mostly about astronomy or particle physics, mostly on the BBC, and mostly — it should be said — both watchable and informative.
These programmes tended to follow a simple formula: an unseen narrator started by explaining how scientists were closing in on a deeper understanding of the universe/world/nature/time/reality/whatever itself, and this was followed by a succession of talking heads, computer graphics and shots of large pieces of scientific equipment. Of course, the intended audience for these programmes was the general public, not the editor of a science journal, but I usually felt reassured that anyone who watched one of them would know more about physics at the end than they did at the start, and there was even a small chance that some younger viewers would be inspired to study physics at school or university.
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