08 March '10

“The BBC’s last series on the solar system, back in 1999, was far nuttier than last night’s Wonders. Cox…is as capable of daftness as any leaflet. But he is a far better explainer than the flippant flibbertigibbet he was when he made his Horizon film on gravity a few years back.”
Andrew Billen, The  Times

“Cox’s romantic, lyrical approach to astro-physics all adds up to an experience that feels less like homework and more like having a story told to you. A really good story, too.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Brian Cox…bridges the gap between our childish sense of wonder and a rather more professional grasp of the scale of things. Even if you can’t suppress the suspicion that this series exists, not because the BBC urgently felt that cosmology needed addressing, but because they needed to find something for Cox to do next..it works very well indeed.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The BBC has decided that Brian Cox is the face of popular science…But I couldn’t shake off the sensation that I was watching Paul Whitehouse’s excitable young Mancunian character in The Fast Show…Not everything that’s complicated can be rendered into a bite-sized info-nugget.”
Adam Sweeting, The Daily Telegraph

“(Yentob’s) monstrous egomania aside, this was a terrific portrait of the place: part history, part art history, part psychoanalysis.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Alan Yentob posing in Vegas with an Elvis impersonator is amusing; but Alan Yentob spending 71 minutes on the history of Vegas from 1855 to the present is less so. A lot less so.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“You never quite got an uncluttered sight of its central theme, which was Las Vegas as ambiguous cultural artefact.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“A string of fascinating interviews brought its history to life.”
Adam Sweeting, The Daily Telegraph