Won’t Someone Put “Horizon” Out Of Its Misery?

I know I’ve complained about the dumbing-down of the BBC’s Horizon before, but I keep on trying to watch it in the hope that its decline might be reversed. However, last night’s edition on the body clock seems to have been the nadir of a once great television series that had a mission to “educate, inform and entertain”*. I say “seems to have been”, because I confess I only lasted about five minutes before I turned it off in utter disgust at its crassness (flashy graphics, stupid ideas, loud music and a bad script). Luckily, someone who was paid to watch the whole thing, reports today that I was not wrong to do so. As Lucy Mangan says:

…the time has come for the BBC’s once-flagship science documentary series to be officially demoted, possibly to "weekend sailboat", more probably to "patched and ailing dinghy".

Frankly, I think it would be kinder, and more useful, to take it outside, shoot it, and boil the body down for glue.

* Lord Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, famously summarised the purpose of the BBC in those words: “educate, inform and entertain”. It is perhaps telling that the BBC’s current mission statement reverses the order to be “entertain, inform and educate”. I can’t say I’m totally surprised as a result that Horizon is no longer worth watching.