Lost Horizons

The BBC is running a series of programmes in celebration of the fact that the Large Hadron Collider gets switched on next week. Last night was Lost Horizons, the punning and poignant title of a programme fronted by Professor Jim Al-Khalili that looked at the theories of the origins of the universe.

Punning, because the device used by Al-Khalili was to use extracts from the BBC’s science archives, in particular from the BBC series Horizon, to illustrate the theories. Poignant, because as I’ve remarked before, in recent years, the quality of most of the Horizon programmes has gone down the toilet, and to see these extracts from old Horizon programmes was to be sadly reminded of what has been lost.

Lost Horizons itself was good, partly because it eschewed the gimmicks of today’s Horizon programmes, and because Jim Al-Khalili knows what he’s talking about and presents it clearly and well.