In his science and nature programmes Brian Cox explores big things – not woolly mammoths or the Great Barrier Reef, though they might feature – but the meaning of life, why we are here and what is the universe. He described his last major series for the BBC, Human Universe, as a love letter to the human race, so there's poetry in his approach too. And maths, a lot of maths, which as a professor of particle physics is his way of breaking down problems to solve them.
Happily, he’s used to communicating difficult concepts to wide-eyed first years cowering down the back of the lecture hall so he has that rare gift of being able to explain without dumbing down or patronising. He also smiles while he talks; he still looks so young his next series should be about human ageing, and he used to be a pop star so his TV presenter capital is stratospherically higher than your average professor of particle physics.
His big, beautiful series have been shown on BBC2, where a niche audience might be expected, and now, with Forces of Nature with Brian Cox (BBC One, Monday) he's moved to BBC1 so a more prime-time, broader approach is required.
The hook here is location, location, location. The idea for this series is to explain how our planet’s beauty is created by just a handful of forces. Symmetry, for example. All animals with brains are bi-lateral, he explains, which makes moving and hunting easier and so to show this he heads to the south Korean island of Jeju where women in their 70s maintain the tradition of free diving to harvest conch and octopus. “We should be in a care home watching TV,” says one and they laugh as they tip themselves out of the boat and dive into the deep. I was so enthralled by them I quite forgot the whole symmetry lesson I was supposed to be learning.
We’re taken to Nepal to see honey being harvested – the hexagon-shaped hives are another example of maths in action – and then Florida and Newfoundland. He goes to Spain to explain gravity through the Catalan tradition of building human pyramids, which is quite an extraordinary sight. Snowflakes he says, are “history made solid” and he goes on to explain they are all different because each follows their own slightly different path from the sky which effects how they are built. “The whole of physics is contained in a snowflake,” says Cox looking in wonder at a flake (his wide-eyed awe is infectious), “there’s gravity, electromagnetism to stick the water molecules together, nuclear forces and symmetry”. Each has the same building blocks, but are because of their history. “So it is with people, we are all made out of the same building blocks but we are all different,” he says his tone wistful and sweet, which is a good lesson in these troubled time. It’s all quite lovely and poetic.
"If I had a torch I would hand it to Brian Cox," David Attenborough said some years ago and with these BBC at-its-public-service-best documentaries you can see why. I'm sure in the hour-long Forces of Nature some of the science got through, but most of the details washed over me. It's mostly the stunning wish list of locations that stuck.
