It’s a physical attraction

IT’S possible I’m misjudging the audience but I’d imagine that a sizeable proportion of the viewers who tune in to tonight’s Love Island will be thinking, “Hmm, if only I could switch over to a documentary about quantum entanglement, examining the concept which suggests that particles that have previously interacted will continue to react in a correlated manner, regardless of the distance that may have subsequently come to separate them.”

If my instincts are correct and this is indeed the case, then I have marvellous news for these people.

At 9pm tonight on BBC4, at the very moment Love Island is getting underway, there’s a programme that couldn’t be further up their street. It’s called EINSTEIN’S QUANTUM RIDDLE, and specifically what it does is…well, you know, all that stuff I just said.

“Is entanglement real?” veteran actor Steven Berkoff is anxious to discover (or at least he’s obliged to sound as though he is, since he’s the chap they’ve hired to narrate this thing).

“Do we live in Einstein’s universe of common-sense laws, or in a bizarre quantum reality that allows strange connections across space and time?

“Also, when are those numpties on Love Island planning to put some clothes on?”

(OK, I made that last bit up). In all seriousness, this is a documentary that both fascinates and flummoxes.

Taking us back nearly 100 years, to when a sceptical Albert Einstein and his intellectual contemporaries began debating such issues at length, its fascination stems from the fact that, for most of us at least, this is subject matter we simply won’t have encountered before, asking questions we didn’t even realise were there to be asked.

I enjoy TV programmes which do that.They feel like an hour of our lives well spent.

And the flummoxing? That mainly stems from the fact I’m just as clueless by the end of it.

Meanwhile, in BRITAIN’S BEST HOME COOK (BBC1, 8pm)

– yes, phew, we’re back in my comfort zone – Mary wants the contestants to whip up the ultimate

Sunday brunch. It has to contain eggs, she insists – and, even more dauntingly, it has to be “just perfect”.

If Mary has ever looked up the word “perfect” in a dictionary she might realise she’s being a teensy bit unreasonable here, and yet none of the cooks take issue with her.

Not that I entirely blame them, mind you. Between you and me, I’ve always found Mary Berry slightly scary.

After that, in DEATH IN PARADISE (BBC1, 9pm), it looks as though sipping on a poisoned energy drink has cost a respected local artist her life.