Human Universe, BBC Two

Brian Cox has a very beguiling way of expressing quiet wonder. He’s taken on the very largest of subjects in Human Universe, extending traditions of science and natural history broadcasting towards a wider study of how the human race has come to be what it is, where it came from and where it may be going, and he doesn’t raise his voice on a single occasion. Other BBC presenters carried away by their subject matter could certainly take a hint.

This first episode of Cox’s five-parter was titled “Apeman-Spaceman”, and we first saw Britain’s favourite physicist at Star City outside Moscow, the home base of Russia’s space programme, doing what looked like very convincing improvisation moves for Gravity. I don’t think he was actually weightless, more in what seemed to be some sort of swimming pool rehearsal, but his message was clear: the human being is the only species on our planet that has managed to make it off its world. And at episode close there he was out on the Kazakh steppes waiting for the landing of the latest returnees from the International Space Station, who managed to descend immaculately within a few hundred metres of expected touchdown spot. Short of putting Cox himself up into space – an extravagance which even the Corporation would have found hard to get past its number-crunchers? – it was a fine ending.

He really does manage to elucidate complex questions without seeming to simplify them

But Cox is clearly going to be travelling widely in the course of Human Universe. His next stop was the highlands of Ethiopia, where he encountered mankind’s remotest ancestors the geladas, a kind of echt-primate that first developed the kind of complex social systems that still characterize the basis of our human life today. From there it was a stone’s throw to the Great Rift Valley, and the volcanic obsidian deposits that would be utilized for spear-points and hunting. Working together became possible through the development of language, and from that the passing on of knowledge became a reality.

Clearly Cox put it a great deal better than any such brief summary can convey, and he really does manage to elucidate complex questions without seeming to simplify them. At one stage he was doing some open-air explanation of how mankind’s progress from homo erectus onwards came with the gradual expansion of brain sizes to a local audience, who were clearly transfixed. (Group portrait after that lesson, pictured below right).

Compressing the development of human evolution and civilization into a limited quantity of screen minutes was always going to be an effort, and the transition from Africa, via the Gulf of Aden, to Petra in Jordan seemed a bit abrupt. The Nabataean kingdom for which that city was the capital was far from the most ancient of its kind, after all, barely predating the Roman Empire, let alone Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia or even classical Greece. The Nabataean USP was, in effect, how a nomadic people came to settle and, through mastery of irrigation, develop the otherwise arid land around their settlement.

You might have (uncharitably) wondered if it wasn’t the sheer empty desert beauty of Petra that drew Cox and his team there, and Human Universe was lavishly, and very skilfully shot indeed. The Petra scenes were the closest we came perhaps to visuals for their own sake; back on the snow wastes of the Kazakh steppe it was back to Cox and his engaged delivery to communicate a more direct and engrossing narrative. Full plaudits to composer Philip Sheppard, who delivered a remarkable score without which the experience of watching this programme would have been very different, bringing together varied ethnic elements with a sense of cosmic wonder that surely owed something to Philip Glass (just the slightest hint at Wagner occasionally, too?)

If this first episode covered the basic scientific chronology, those to follow look likely to develop on the more human aspects of the universe of the series' title: the second one heads to India, with subjects ranging from education of child priests through to the rules of cricket. Human Universe looks like it’s going to become more heterogenous as it goes along, and as a guide to life’s variety Brian Cox should be a very engaging companion.