From the Archive: Television masterpieces - Connections (1978)

I'm probably not a TV critic, but I do know quite a lot about it, so here's a review of one of the best and most important television documentary series the BBC has ever made.

British television channels have always carried a certain way of teaching us things in the past, but these have changed over the course of time. In the 1970s, the presenter talked directly to you, sometimes almost feeling as though the knowledge they were seeking to impart was barging its way into your brain. It could be heavy. It could be oblique, and sometimes even border upon psychedelic in its presentation, such were the times.

These were the days of Civilisation, The Ascent of Man, and The World At War. Presentation styles, however, come and go. After all, Doctor Bronowski doubtlessly looked like a rakish gadabout to those brought up in a world of starched collars and repressed feelings. And by 1978, it was resplendent in a comfortable suit – quite likely made of polyester – a twinkle in its eye, a passion to teach you, and to make you think.

James Burke wasn’t a novice by the time of Connections, of course. Having joined the BBC’s Science and Features Department in 1966, he’d already been the BBC’s main presenter for the 1969 Apollo XI Moon landing, been a reporter on flagship science show Tomorrow’s World, and hosted an occasional series called The Burke Specials, a series of lectures in front of a studio audience which appeared sporadically on BBC1 between 1972 and 1976. All of this, though, was building up to Connections, a series which remains his magnum opus and arguably the greatest science series ever produced in this country.