Going back to the future
WE live these days in a supercharged, high-tech, fastpaced, permanently switched-on, frankly quite exhausting world. Yet to those of us who grew up watching BBC1’s popular science show Tomorrow’s World, this has come as no surprise.
Admittedly, a lot of us only watched this show at first because we’d tuned in early for Top Of The Pops, for fear of missing Duran Duran. However before very long it became must-watch TV in its own right, even in an age when nobody actually used expressions such as must-watch TV.
Many, many years before such things would become commonplace, Tomorrow’s World was telling us about the compact disc, the digital watch, the mobile phone, the chip-and-pin credit card and, with the most extraordinary foresight of all, the fact that one day people would insist on starting their answer to absolutely anything you asked them with the word “so”, to the point where you’d be left with no option but to punch them jolly hard on the nose.
All right, I made that last one up. However I feel so much better for having got it off my chest. Anyway, the reason for me mentioning all this is TOMORROW’S WORLD LIVE: FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY (BBC4, 9pm), a fabulous addition to this evening’s schedules not only because of what it augurs, content-wise, but because it very thoughtfully manages our expectations before we’ve even finished reading its title, the bit after the colon effectively saying: “Yes, but don’t go thinking you’ll be having this much fun on a regular basis, viewers…”
Maggie Philbin and Howard Stableford, presenters on the original show, are joined by Dr Hannah Fry to look back on some of the finest moments of its 38 years on air (it finished in 2003) and – let’s be honest, not nearly so much fun, this – telling us what they think the future holds, technology-wise. Elsewhere tonight, ESTHER RANTZEN’S HOUSE TRAP (Channel 5, 7pm) is a new rogue-trader-type show, using hidden cameras to ensnare dodgy workmen who try to rip off elderly customers.
It’s not a remotely original idea of course but watching such types get their comeuppance never ceases to be a source of immense satisfaction.
The same might be said for watching Boris Johnson (right) giving a speech in French. That’s what we see him do, to an audience in Paris, in episode two of INSIDE THE FOREIGN OFFICE (BBC2, 9pm), filmed during his time as Foreign Secretary. The joy isn’t so much in hearing the speech itself, Boris’s grasp of the language being pretty sound, but in seeing the anxious look on the face of Europe Director Caroline Wilson, the high-ranking Foreign Office official who’s accompanied him on the trip. She’s clearly a little nervous about what he might say. During the flight they’ve gone through the speech’s initial draft (“They love it when I speak French”, Boris has insisted) but its content has not entirely pleased the Foreign Secretary. “It needs more gags,” he tells her.