- The Guardian,
Thursday 13 January 2011
- Article history
Human Planet
8pm, BBC1
This prestigious new series looks at how people have adapted to every habitat on the planet, from the poles to the deserts, the oceans to the jungles. There's no way it can fail to be impressive, with its epic HD photography and diverse locations, but it's laden with a sense of self-importance, as the pompous narration from John Hurt and over-cooked Nitin Sawhney soundtrack milk every dramatic moment for all it's worth. The opener examines how mankind has, if not exactly colonised the oceans to live in, developed an intimate relationship with them. MS
Men Of Rock
9pm, BBC2
According to Iain Stewart, "the story of the entire planet" is written into Scotland's landscape. Perhaps because of this, Scots have played a key role in the development of geology. Profiling key figures in the science, Stewart begins with its roguish Georgian founding father, James Hutton. On top of his conclusion that the Earth was much, much older than most people at the time believed, Hutton's key insight was to see our world as a dynamic system, a finding he arrived at via what to a lesser mind would have been unpromising observations about topsoil and cooling glass. JW
The Great Outdoors
10pm, BBC2
Doing for rambling what Rev did for inner-city religion, The Great Outdoors debuted on BBC4 last autumn and now BBC2 is repeating the three episodes. Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil's charming sitcom meets a group of walkers led by Mark Heap just as they're joined by pushy new member Ruth Jones, who tries to make the gang go her way. Often literally. Also rambling are Katherine Parkinson, Steve Edge and Stephen "Skoose from Whites" Wight.
WD
The Brain – A Secret History
9pm, BBC4
In Michael Powell's classic psychological thriller Peeping Tom, a psychologist turns his son into a voyeuristic serial killer though his experiments in fear. These kinds of mind control tests weren't just the product of screenwriter Leo Marks's imagination; in the second part of this excellent little series chronicling the (often) traumatic history of experimental psychology, Dr Michael Mosley studies footage of a baby boy who has been taught to fear objects, and meets surviving participants of other scientific trials designed to explore human emotions. AJC
The Good Wife
9pm, More4
As substantial as froth is ever likely to get, US show The Good Wife entered its second season last week with some interesting problems to resolve. First, though, a brief catch-up. Much inspired by the figures of noble wives in American political life standing by their sexually errant husbands, The Good Wife explores exactly this terrain: when her husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) is caught in a scandal that leads to his imprisonment, his wife Alicia stands by him – and goes back to work as a lawyer. Now out of prison, Peter is due to stand for office again, and this week it's he who is the victim of some dirty tricks. JR
Restrepo: Outpost Afghanistan
12 midnight, National Geographic
Another chance to see the richly deserving winner of the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. Vanity Fair journalist Sebastian Junger and Brit photographer Tim Hetherington spent a year embedded with a platoon from the 173rd Airborne in the deadly Korengal Valley, Afghanistan; this is the shocking and extremely moving result. Yes, we get to see firefights with the Taliban, but more powerful are the interviews with survivors, whose eyes betray something terrible and sad.
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