What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

[Wyatt Earp]

That cannabis thing was the second good Horizon in recent memory, blotting an otherwise perfect record, over the last few years, of superficiality, crass sensationalism and pseudoscience. I've a good mind to write to the BBC.

The straight dope (see what I did there?) is that yes, THC seems to increase the risk of psychosis, but that this is only a really scary risk if you're under 15. CBD, the other active ingredient, may actually be antipsychotic. But some strains of skunk have no CBD at all.

[Guest]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Write to its venerable organ.

[Lucy Waterman]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

I believe "The Listener" is no longer available, lol, rofl, etc.

[Pinback]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

It's quite an odd experience watching an edition of the program in the full expectation of finding it annoying and trivial, only to have it revert to something like form.

From the relative paucity of flashy graphics and the (again relative) lack of mood music I suspect this must have been a low budget edition that somehow slipped under the radar of the usual editorial team.

[Hofzinser]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Shouldn't this be in the TV forum?

Anyway, I hardly ever watch Horizon, and from what I've heard of recent form I strongly doubt they'll come close to something as good as their Fermat's Last Theorem program any time soon.

As science programming goes, David Attenborough's program on Darwin on Sunday night was brilliant, I thought.

[Wyatt Earp]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Hofzinser wrote:

Shouldn't this be in the TV forum?

I was thinking of the main thread theme as being drugs and that, but that's not how it's shaping up, which is fine.

[anton pulisov]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Horizon takes about half an hour to explain something that could be explained in about two sentences.

[Ginger Yellow]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

You'll have noticed that this good Horizon, like all other good ones in recent memory, was presented by a scientist. This is not a coincidence.

[Wyatt Earp]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

It's slightly surprising they haven't yet got Lauren Laverne to do it.

[anton pulisov]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

I won't stand for any slagging off of Lauren Laverne on OTF.

[evilC]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Were there no CGI dinosaurs on the cannabis programme, then? Good job I didn't tune in - my attention deficit disorder would have bee... Oh look - there's a puppy!

[Wyatt Earp]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Bahiryan wrote:

I won't stand for any slagging off of Lauren Laverne on OTF.

Here, have a seat.

[anton pulisov]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

She could present a programme about intelligent design and I'd be sold.

[blameless]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Horizon has been dross for most of the 21st century. Bring back QED, say I.

[hobbes]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Or bring back QI says ED.

[anton pulisov]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Bring back Tomorrow's World.

[evilC]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Bahiryan wrote:

Bring back Tomorrow's World.

It must have these titles, though.

[San Bernardhinault]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Someday someone is going to ask me to finally produce the TV science programming that should exist. The equivalent of Civilisation or World At War. Which just, in 20 or 30 programmes per broad subject - a Physics series, chemistry series, biostuff series, geoscience series, perhaps - tells the basics of scientific theory. I guess the Attenborough Life On Earth with it's little countdown of evolutionary time is the closest we've ever had. But nobody's ever tried with physics or chemistry ideas.

Instead it's all about "Dr Boffin from the Institute of Tin Pot ideas came up with a radical new theory that goes against convention!" [camera follows Dr Boffin driving a 4wd car across the Falklands landscape. Here, in the South Atlantic, he wanted to test to see whether the prevailing winds actually blew east to west, and everyone else has been hallucinating all these years and Magellan was lucky to get round the Southern Ocean at all.[camera returns to Dr Boffin in his lab] "This astonishing new thinking could change the way we look at the world and could result in the complete and utter destruction of London" [cgi shots of London crushed under a giant space-rhinoceros]...

etc.etc.

[Lucy Waterman]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

She could present a programme about intelligent design and I'd be sold.

"So, some people think that God made us, some people think he didn't. Maybe we should make our own minds up!"

[Ginger Yellow]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

But nobody's ever tried with physics or chemistry ideas.

Well, Earth Story and whatever that Iain Stewart series was called did it for geology. And Atom did it for particle physics, albeit with far fewer episodes.

[diggedy derek]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Tonight's programme, entitled Why Do We Like Looking At People Getting Their Kit Off, is perhaps the worst science programme I've ever seen.

[Ginger Yellow]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

It's fantastic, in a horrifying, TV executives are evil, sense. Take two of the worst things on TV at the moment - Horizon and "documentaries" whose only raison d'etre is gratuitous nudity - and combine them! TV gold!

[Andy C]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

I saw the latter half of it and it was, not just literally, bollocks. There was a terrible misrepresentation of evolution as a goal-directed process, for one thing.

[Taylor]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

La Lanterne Rouge wrote:

Someday someone is going to ask me to finally produce the TV science programming that should exist. The equivalent of Civilisation or World At War. Which just, in 20 or 30 programmes per broad subject - a Physics series, chemistry series, biostuff series, geoscience series, perhaps - tells the basics of scientific theory. I guess the Attenborough Life On Earth with it's little countdown of evolutionary time is the closest we've ever had. But nobody's ever tried with physics or chemistry ideas.

I know this is an old post, but... Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" wasn't far off this. And it was glorious.

[Reed John]

What on Earth has happened to Horizon?

Why Do We Like Looking At People Getting Their Kit Off

Is that really what it's called?