Our Secret Engineer harks back to an era of engineering and science television that didn’t talk down to its viewers
I was recently sat watching a programme about Crossrail on the BBC’s second channel. I suspect my initial mistake was that, inspired by memories of the past, I was expecting a high quality and in depth documentary.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t very bad, but if you have memories of Tomorrow’s World then you may have ended up a little disappointed. Two aspects of a sequence about putting in a new over bridge station probably sum up the particular issues I have with it.
Firstly there was the build up to unloading large sections of the pre-fabricated structure into the car park of an adjacent school. The voice over dramatically declaiming “..luckily its a Sunday and no-one is using it…” (or some similar idiocy) saw me turn to Mrs Secret-Engineer and say “There’s some poor sod who’s spent a lot of time and effort organising things so that would be the case.”
I mean really, are we to believe that such an important aspect was not mapped and planned, that it wasn’t seamlessly woven into the intricate scheduling that lies behind Crossrail? Did they turn up Sunday morning with the lorry and think “Oh, that’s fortunate, just imagine if we’d been here tomorrow?” A minor point perhaps but to be so dismissive of such an important element of our profession is not only a disservice but to actively sell us short in the eyes of the public. It can only reinforce the seemingly established opinion that some stuff “just sort of happens.” If you were involved in the planning, negotiations and logistics of that construction, and are reading this – you have my most sincere commiserations.
Secondly, much was made of the small amount of clearance for craning one of the major assemblies into place. This required more than the usual delicacy as the access was tight and they had to avoid clobberising a tubular steel handrail. Cue breathless narration followed by shots of the piece being hoisted into the air. Add in dramatic music, close in on the edge of a girder being inched perilously close to the hand rail, more excited narration, the music gets more strident…. wide shot! Close up! Ever closer!!
More drama to the music….UNTIL!!!!……they hacksawed a small section of handrail out so they could get past it. Now, call me old fashioned but I’d much rather have had a little something about the problems of thermal expansion or the maths behind hoisting such a large and heavy structure.
To return to the start of this, I cannot believe that the public are inherently more idiotic than they were during the 70’s and 80’s. Times when you had Tomorrows World, The Great Egg Race and a nascent Scrapheap Challenge. Times when you may be lucky enough to catch a Horizon special about how a Formula 1 Team (Williams) coped with the rule change that banned sliding skirts or a stand alone documentary about the development of the Spitfire as told by an experienced pilot (Raymond Baxter). Times when artificial melodrama wasn’t required because the programme makers had the confidence to know that such cheap tricks weren’t needed to keep the viewer enthralled by a technically complex story so long as it was told well.
I can only hope that the penny will drop, or fashions will change and we can use the much more sophisticated techniques of today to build on what has gone before rather than detracting from it. The recent “slow television” programmes, including those showing Mr James May rebuilding various devices, at least give hope.
Totally agree with you in every respect. The music is more than thoroughly irritating, let alone the dumbing down!!
Couldn’t agree more. Are producers of some (not all) documentary’s so worried about ratings, they feel the need to sexy up the coverage with unnecessarily tense music an over active, non-informative commentery.
It seems to be a style also used in some natural history and environmental doc’s. Didn’t see the documentary but disappointed to see it was a BBC production.
I’m with you 100% here. I watched with great disappointment the mini-series Engineering Giants on BBC four and again, given the title and probable audience for the programme, it really was basic, even to the extent where they had to have little Blue Peterish demonstrations to explain to viewers very basic principles. Similarly on the same channel, the Great Village Green Crusade following Robert Llewlwyn’s attempt to implement renewable electricity for his village was so basic as to be laughable, particularly when to explain the concept of a battery (how uneducated are his neighbours one wonders?) he had a ring of people holding potatoes impaled with zinc and copper nails connected by wires! Come on BBC, pull your socks and your standards up!
They did show the Halfway House, a Donnington pub at Kineton though. If you get the chance, try some of their BB.
Hear! Hear!
Unfortunately all the “science” programmes have been dumbed down to such a degree that they are no longer worth watching. New Scientist and Scientific American, once stimulating and challenging publications, are now little better than journalistic hyperbole. “Could The World end tomorrow” and suchlike nonsense.
The problem is in the main, you can’t talk down to people about science and technology, because the level of knowledge is so low. The collective population is (or is that “are”?) vastly more ignorant and uncaring of matters STEM than in the 70s and 80s and it shows.
Must disagree
“They” were always ignorant & uneducated about it – a condemnation of our education system.
But, the difference today, with all-pervasive instant electronic “comms” is that it shows & people notice the yawning gaps of ignorance, stupidity & prejudice
I agree. I don’t recall adding to my science and engineering knowledge by watching any TV since the Horizon and other programs from 1970s!
Since there is no shortage of TV channels now available, perhaps consideration could be given to using at least one of them for people who would prefer to be treated as educated adults (for a change). I can appreciate that in some programmes this will require the use of specialist terminology; but that’s not a reason to exclude it, rather it’s an opportunity to explain it
Crossrail, for example, has been a great technological success and we should be taking the opportunity to credit those involved and make the case for UK engineering expertise.
(OK the trains might be a bit late on delivery, but the rest has been brilliant.)
Couldn’t agree with you more !
I have been convinced for years that both ‘aunty beeb’ and the other channels have been given direction by the various governments to ‘Dumb Down the Nation’. You only have to look at the dross on tv most nights.
Let’s get back to the old days of Tomorrows World, Horizon, Micheal Bentine’s Mad Mad World, Noggin the Nog and Space Patrol, now they were programmes worth watching!
I agree. The constant re-capping and sneak previews of the revelations to come (which often don’t really come) drive me mad. One documentary on locks on the Panama canal sums it up for me. The commentator said something like “Witness the awesome power of the lock mechanism, which effortlessly raises a huge ship.”
Perhaps there could be two kinds of programs – one dumbed down for prime time and one scientific for the rest of us.
In Hong Kong there were every Sunday morning some hours from the Open University of Britain. Sadly no such program in Britain.
Would be nice to have the university programs running on Saturday morning and Sunday morning for the kids who are wide awake waiting for breakfast while their parents are sleeping off their hangover.
Maybe the producers don’t realise they are dumbing it down, maybe for them this is really high level science. I doubt many of them (if any) have technical qualifications, more like degrees in Media, Drama or Football Studies. Or possibly they think they are saving the world from the boring engineers.
Had to be dumbed-down so that even their own people had a reasonable chance of understanding the technology involved . . . .
The problen is: These programs are produced by Journalists.
There will be little or no scientific knowledge on the production team (except maybe a Engineering graduate who is kereping his head down), and only the “look” of the prigram in the first 5 minutes is what maters. That way, the TV company’s executives can give the program the green light within their 3 minute attention span.
It’s worth remembering that jourmnalists are (almoat by definition) people who couldn’t get a better job. They will know, in infinate detail, where the nearest Pub is.
However even they wouldn’t consider Engineering, way too much hard work for so little reward, status or financial..
Mention of Tomorrow’s World and Raymond Baxter brings back memories of James Burke and the BBC’s coverage of the US space program in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. That was quality television.
I agree completely with all of the above comment.
I recorded the series when it was first on thinking I might miss some important point and would need to go back and watch again to fully understand its significance; there was no need! What a waste of a golden opportunity to really show what engineering is all about, although mainly civil there will have been many other disciplines involved as well. The programme would have been so much more interesting if ALL aspects of the engineering involved had been covered. Come on BBC, get some real Engineers involved in making this type of programme!
I was tempted to have a bleat myself, but why not have some crowd funding to put an engineering program on Freeview to have engineering producers who could script it for the like minded like us bloggers, but personally I wouldn’t know how to go about it. Anyone up for kicking it off? or would it have minority interest and not have legs?
Thank goodness – I was beginning to think I had lost it and was the only one appalled by the level things had sunk to. We don’t need to see pictures of scientists or engineers ice skating or surfboarding (presumably attempts to prove these professions are “cool”). And even if nostalgia and my memory are not what they used to be, documentaries used to be much better. The average now is 50 minutes long with maybe (if you are lucky) 20 mins content and the same snippets of irrelevant film shown over and over again. If something is interesting it doesn’t require choreography and music to prove it. Does anyone remember a Horizon from the 1980s(?) about the C60 molecule? Fascinating story, interesting science, and intellectually challenging. Horizon now – not a patch on it. Much is not explained because we’d ‘never understand it’ and even programmes under the auspices of the OU are hardly what I’d think of as university standard!
PS – could someone explain Maxwell’s equations!?
PPS – I’m not a “cool” engineer – I’m incandescent!
Unfortunately that appears to be the case; because the Internet has dumbed down the public’s appreciation of engineering through 2 minute videos, that is the level expected on TV. Particularly annoying is the continual repetition of scenes due to lack of 30 minutes worth of content. One such example was in Prof. Alice Roberts’ dinosaur extinction programme where the meteor was simulated crashing at least 6 times.
Programme-makers please grant us the respect of having more than a 45 second memory span!
p.s. Can someone please explain ‘entanglement’
No mention of the water, then??!!
Who are you???? Where are you???? COME OUT! You must be hiding in my living room else how do you know what I was shouting at the ‘telly! The examples of television science that has not been reduced to facile are few and far between. Producers and programme commissioners need to be braver in they output. If you don’t understand what you see or hear you can do one of two things – turn over to “Strictly come big brother’s sex island” or be curious and find out more. The current output in general does not seek to challenge the viewer. We also need to be supportive and complimentary where there is good output, perhaps doing a little more than just shouting at the TV – like me!…..
I was highly amused than an artist had been employed to decorate the glass roof of one of the stations. At some expense I should imagine, He had decided to print on the glass the images of clouds thus obscuring any view of the ever changing actual sky above the station. I can only assume the artist was “being ironic”!
While knowledge of pubs is certainly desirable, the ability to spell is a prerequisite.
That’s it, degree in media studies and you know it all. At least most medical soaps have a suitable advisor, perhaps all programs require an expert with suitable experience. Leave out all the music, it adds nothing and detracts from what little is there.
Absolutely. And another equally irritating habit nowadays in almost any documentary, most of the shots are of the presenter, looking glamorous or prancing along somewhere or another. All the while talking about something we aren’t actually looking at! And then pointless useless repetition of the previous few minutes film segment. Something that could be shown in a few minutes dragged out by these annoying film-making whizzes to fill an hour slot!
I could have gone on but in the interests of brevity and conciseness didn’t.
I am disappointed with the comments made about the Cross Rail program. It was made to show the general public what can be achieved by engineers and not for knowalls that are experts. Let us bring engineering excellence to the public and not belittle it.
Sorry if it came across that way. I certainly wasn’t criticising Crossrail, I think it’s a fantastic achievement, and (as others have pointed out) deserved to be applauded. I just feel that the old Reithian element of ‘to educate’ is sadly missing on today’s TV. What I find ironic is that engineers keep producing better, clearer, sharper television pictures; whilst the programmes decline in content!
People often ask me ‘where did you learn that?’ I reply that I (like many engineers, I’m sure) go through life with an inquisitivity that causes me to absorb interesting facts. I’m sure that many of those facts have come from watching informative TV programmes; so my point is that it’s quite possible to educate whilst you are entertaining. You don’t necessarily have to go into great details, but at least provide sufficient and correct information for anyone who’s interested to follow up themselves. (Sloppy narration just shows the ignorance of those making the programme.)
‘The Archers’ radio series has an ‘agricultural advisor’ even though these days it’s more a ‘soap opera’; surely if you’re making a ‘technical’ programme it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to provide appropriate technical advice? (Or are they just trying to save money?)
I was fortunate to have a design on “Tomorrows World”. The producer, “a journalist” was more interested in the parts of the machine that looked “sexy ” rather than the engineering design. Luckily Howard, the presenter, (an ex engineer and very bright) went through the design with me, tore the script apart and re -wrote it just before broadcasting.
Dave Weeton has a good point. For some length of time now readers here have been banging on about the lack of status of engineers in the UK. Why do no journalists have engineering experience? Largely because no engineers want to be journalists. If we want better coverage of engineering we need some engineers to become journalists and also may I add, politicians.
But beware of that involvement if you are concerned about your credibility, I was amazed recently by the invective on comment sites (Guardian & Telegraph) used against Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking, both shall we say, competant scientists? How do you present the mathematics of say Super String theory to a nation for the majority of whom even simple calculus is mind boggling, for those who do understand it, nothing less than whole blackboards full of complex equations will satisfy them but for the other 99.9% of the population all that will achieve is them reaching for the remote to get something a bit more accessible.
As I remember the Crossrail programme at least attempted to convey the huge scale of this project and if memory serves me correctly some of the senior engineers were women, no comment here about that either.
People like Cox and Hawking have come down out of their ivory towers to try and engage the public and are roundly condemned by all and sundry for dumbing down their subject. However Engineers, certainly some of the ones on these pages seem overly concerned about their status seem to want to pull up the drawbridge to their ivory tower, and damn with faint praise anything less than a full and detailed analysis of the engineering behind these huge projects
Is that Howard Stapleford the Geography graduate, or another Howard? It amused me that Stapleford, decent chap, was referred to as one of the BBC’s boffins.
Andrew Wade, I wondered how long it would be before someone picked me up on my spelling…
Problem is, spelling and grammar are low-level mechanical processes and should be left to software written by Engineers.
Unfortunately, as I found oiut too late, “The Engineer” comments facility doesn’t have a spell checker, so my dyslectic rantings remained uncorrected.
Indeed. But surely an engineer would be able to find a solution to that problem? : )
How about this. Donate the TV, buy a book.
I have got to the stage in life, when it is easier to say it was created by the Wizard of Oz, rather than explain the it was due to many years of detailed design and review by highly trained experienced professional engineers, but for whom we would be living in caves………….. seems to satisfy most people whilst they get back to their electronic toys…………also created by another Wizard !
Dear Engineers, I too was vastly underwhelmed by the Crossrail programme, but please don’t feel picked on as it is not just STEM subjects that are being sold short in the media. As someone who did sciences at school and has spent a lifetime applying those subjects to a career in the arts – and would advocate for STEM being changed to STEAM – I have concluded the media is terrified of anything that may put off the public that the advertisers want to reach. The majority of non-performance arts programming is just as trite and repetetive as any other non-fiction output. I fear that with their programmes made as much for their future life on commercial platforms as for original licence fee supported broadcast, the BBC no longer strives for the quality of content that we all miss from the sixties and seventies. As for the oxymoronically named independent broadcasting I gave up with them when the ITV News went tabloid and reality television began to rule the schedules.
I would like to be stretched by non-fiction output just the same as I want more than just entertainment from arts output. With all the facilities at the BBC’s disposal and the ability nowadays to stop and start programmes at will, I am sure there is a way, particularly but not exclusively with television, that if you are having trouble with understanding a concept or the terms used to express it, you could check for background alongside. Say a scrolling footer that defines terms in the same way we get news headlines or, well, I shouldn’t do the broadcasters job for them. In spite of the ‘media’ degree jibe earlier in this comment string, there are many highly capable and creative people working in the media who did not choose that career path just to sell detergent. Keep complaining to Aunty directly though, as I suspect few at Broadcasting House subscribe to The Engineer.
These television programmes need to be basic to appeal to the masses. If the level of scientific education in the UK goes no further than a combined science GCSE at best, then it seems to be pitched just right.
Don’t get me wrong, like most TV these days, it irritates me but until the education system catches up, it is not a bad way to promote science. If people start to watch a programme and then cannot keep up with the science, then they are more inclined to turn off the TV and turn away from science too.
Perhaps we can dumb it down further and have an Engineer superhero in a TV series!!
I think the content you are looking for is being made and consumed on YouTube. There are plenty of STEM channels – Numberphile, Computerphile, Sixty Symbols, Periodic Videos, Practical Engineering, Smarter Every Day and many more. Maybe big engineering projects should be looking to partner with these kind of channels and give them access to produce interesting and detailed content.
The side benefit of using YouTube is that is where the young people are mainly watching things!
I value Robert Longthorne’s suggestion of a rolling/scroll down which ‘we’ would ‘click-upon’ when we want more. Many years ago, watching my own children watching ‘Blue-Peter’ et al (and noting the then deficiencies in STEM and particularly mathematics knowledge)…I did suggest to Auntie that she should indeed add equations and explanation(s) of the simpler mathematical concepts of the content of programmes: perhaps in the credits. Had I suggested that they add soft-porn I do not believe I could have been treated with any less distain, by her -presumably and hopefully progressive- arty staff! A re-think? Why not!
Absolutely – the convergence of TV programming to ever greater mediocrity and banality to satisfy the middle ground should be a wake up call for the producers of such programmes. I have a playlist of Youtubers who make programmes with knowledge, passion and to varying degrees passable production quality. Am watching an excellent series where 2 blokes (bad obsession motorsport) are recording the build of a mini with a Celica GT4 turbo engine and running gear. They inform and explain – have obvious knowledge and talent and are entertaining, albeit in a slightly sweary and very niche kind of way. If you can tolerate some of the comments then there are often diversions to other interesting things suggested by the viewers. If you are young and curious then simplistic information can often be seen as demeaning – I suspect such mainstream ‘STEM’ programmes can turn off young viewers instead increasing their interest. I have pretty much given up watching terrestrial TV.
The stultification process (could we not use a more elegant word like that instead of “dumbing down”?) started in the 1980s and accelerated in the 90s with the National Curriculum, end to O Levels vs CSEs, watering down of A Levels and utter disembowelment of programmes like Horizon. What unwatchable trivia that became. Then Open University was removed from early morning broadcasts – what a treasure trove that was and the reason to remove it can only have been to further the stultification agenda.
I wrote to Channel 4 in the late 90s to complain about the lack of science programmes on television. A young lady with no technical knowledge wrote back to say that “Time Team” was an excellent example of their scientific programming.
QED.