Enough has been said on ‘The Theory of Everything’ but it worth mentioning that it is symptomatic of how awful science TV has got. TToE sits in a slot once occupied by the excellent Equinox series of one hour documentaries, and one can’t help thinking that Equinox would have dealt with string theory better in one hour than Brian Greene has so far done in two. The key difference appears to be the amount of white space (or rather CGI filled space) around the actual info. Science broadcasting used to make assumptions about people’s knowledge, not many but they would at least assume that people who were watching were at least interested and would be watching Monarch of the Glen or Top Gear instead. People need things explained clearly concisely and without patronising. People can handle more than a couple of facts between adverts. There are a lot of scientists who are very good at communicating their passions to the uninitiated. I just wish they got more access to mainstream TV.
And I wish one of them could explain String Theory to me.