The Wonder of Brian Cox

by Ben Falk

  Nevertheless, as she waited for Cox to return home (‘one of the big things on my mind is s-e-x,’ she said), George was an endless joy. ‘I want to enjoy this little guy as much as possible,’ she said, ‘’cos I suspect he may be the last baby I have.’ When Cox was back in London, he certainly did his fair share of parenting – and was sometimes in for a bit of a surprise. ‘[George] did spend a few minutes with his dad in bed the other morning whilst I made breakfast,’ Gia wrote, ‘and covered our bed in poo, but that was a lesson for my husband to learn.’

  As George grew and began to sleep through the night, the couple suffered as any new parents do. Gia was blunt about the lack of sex as their son reached eight months, positing she didn’t want them to create another little brother or sister. Pleasingly for his dad, the science gene appeared to have been passed on. ‘He plays with plugs and wire a lot so he’s definitely heading down the engineering track,’ Cox told The Big Issue. ‘He doesn’t want his toys, he wants switches and remote controls.’

  There was a very good reason why Cox was away so much during his wife’s pregnancy and the early life of his first son. It was called Wonders of the Solar System. But this epic BBC science show almost didn’t happen – at least not with Brian Cox. ‘He almost didn’t do [it],’ revealed commissioning producer Cassian Harrison at the Sheffield Documentary Festival. ‘Even at the BBC, we had our doubts.’ At the same event, Channel 4’s head of science, David Glover, admitted he had been approached about using Cox as a presenter, but had said no. ‘I’m reminded about it at least five times a day,’ he laughed. It’s not surprising he is remorseful but Cox himself explained how difficult it was to get the concept off the ground. ‘Solar System, if you go back a couple of years, was a difficult thing to get commissioned,’ he said, ‘because people, even at the BBC thought, are people really interested in space? Are they really interested? And now after the success of the programme, you think it was obvious, but at the time it wasn’t. It was a risk and it paid off, I think.’

  Indeed, Wonders of the Solar System became one of BBC2’s most-watched (and talked about) factual programmes in recent times with an average of 4.8 million people watching each week, including 5.3 million for the first episode. It also went on to become a worldwide hit, broadcasting on the Science Channel in America (where Cox appeared on culturally-significant chat shows such as The Colbert Report), as well as Australia and Austria, where it was retitled Geheimnisse des Lebens or Secrets of Life. Its success culminated with a win at the 2011 Peabody Awards, one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for documentary filmmaking. So, what was the secret of its success? ‘It was below the radar,’ explained Cox, as he recalled the beginnings of the programme. ‘It wasn’t formulaic – it was a new way of making a science documentary.’

  In fact, it wasn’t all that new. For starters, Carl Sagan had done a similar thing 30 years previously on Cosmos. He had been very aware of trying to make something that would have a legacy since radio waves beaming television programmes across the globe that bounced off satellites would be the most likely thing any alien neighbours might see. Cox had had such a large-scale series in mind for some time but the timing had never been right. ‘The kinds of things we started out writing were big, huge, landmark, massive science programmes,’ said Gia, re-iterating their Apollo’s Children idea. ‘Travelling all over the world – one minute, you’re on the Amazon and one minute, you’re in the desert. We took these around [to commissioning editors] for years and years and years. If you think about what science on TV was like 10 years ago, everyone’s like, “this is too big, we don’t do things like this. Think really, really small.” And we kept saying no, we’re thinking really, really big. And of course no one’s going to do something like that with two unknown people.’

  But by 2009, Cox was a minor TV celebrity and the BBC sensed a surge of interest in science. They decided to go all out, spending millions on a five-part series, which would be spectacular and universal yet the concept was remarkably simple: send a qualified presenter around the world to show how the laws of physics exerted on our planet are the same as those in the depths of space and how we can understand the universe by examining the natural wonders in front of us. With his easy-going manner, ability to explain complex scientific data in plain language and just as importantly, his ready-for-primetime look, Cox seemed like a straightforward fit.

  As a new raft of younger factual hosts such as Alice Roberts, Marcus du Sautoy and Dan Snow took over from the old guard, Cox slotted in nicely. He still saw himself as a research scientist rather than a television presenter. In an interview not long before the show was broadcast, he told me that he was working on an academic paper. ‘I’m writing a paper at the moment about measuring Higgs couplings at the LHC,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve got to keep your hand in.’ As had been the case with Sunshine, getting the chance to make Wonders gave Cox an opportunity to reflect on what science really meant to him. ‘Over a period of time, you’re kind of forced to think about what it basically is you find interesting,’ he told me. ‘Everybody began being a scientist with some kind of connection to the subject. They found it fascinating, in a simple way. With practice, you remember what it was. I hope in the series, we’ve tried to do that – to go back to the most wonderful bits that you could connect to most.’

  The show was divided into five topics: Empire of the Sun charted the history of the sun and its influence over every aspect of our Solar System. Order Out of Chaos examined orbits and how the randomness of space is actually very organised. The Thin Blue Line explored the atmosphere and climate, while Dead or Alive looked at how the laws of nature can mean death for one planet and keep another alive. The final episode was one close to Cox’s heart and was dubbed Aliens, following life to the extremes of temperature and environment on earth and explaining how survival within those extremes might mean life out there in the depths of space. There was an over-arching mantra for the series – ‘We live in a world of wonders, a place of astonishing beauty and complexity. We have vast oceans and incredible weather; giant mountains and breath-taking landscapes,’ he said. ‘If you think that this is all there is, that our planet exists in magnificent isolation, then you’re wrong. We’re part of a much wider ecosystem that extends way beyond the top of our atmosphere.

  ‘As a physicist, I’m fascinated by how the laws of nature that shaped all this also shaped the worlds beyond our home planet. I think we’re living through the greatest age of discovery our civilisation has known. We’ve voyaged to the farthest reaches of the Solar System. We’ve photographed strange new worlds, stood in unfamiliar landscapes, tasted alien air.’ He was pleased to have finally got the chance to really attack the audience with his take on science. Horizon was all well and good, but occasional one-off documentaries were nothing compared to a primetime BBC2 series and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. ‘There’s always an agenda with my stuff,’ he said, ‘I have an agenda. It’s to really celebrate exploration – I really believe that just sitting with our eyes focused on the ground is detrimental and dangerous to our civilisation. I think we have to lift our eyes up to understand this wider environment. I keep saying it throughout the series: our environment doesn’t stop at the top of our atmosphere, it genuinely extends obviously to the sun. You need a Solar System at least to allow life on earth to evolve and flourish. It easy to connect with environmentalism, shall we say, celebrating nature when it’s on the surface of the earth, but it’s equally as important to explore that wider universe.’

  And explore he did. Filming the shows required an epic journey around the world and back. For Empire of the Sun alone, he travelled to India to watch a total solar eclipse, visited the Chilean Desert, strolled through Death Valley carrying an umbrella, watched the Aurora Borealis in deepest Norway and sped down the river in a boat beneath Argentina’s Iguazu Falls. The money – and there was certainly a lot of it – was right up there on-screen. Epically directed almost like a feature film and with a soundtrack to m
atch, nary a scene of the programmes was complete without some special effects or a helicopter shot. Or several helicopter shots. His trademark delivery was in evidence as he talked of the solar eclipse as if it was a moment from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the Solar System coming down to grab you by the throat, proving we’re all just balls of rock rotating around each other.

  What was particularly noticeable about the series was how obvious it was that he hadn’t visited most of these places before. Describing scenes and areas of pivotal importance in the world of physics, he was as childlike in his witnessing of them as any of his audience might have been, only serving to show how lab-based he had been up until that point. For cynics who argued about the price of the Large Hadron Collider, Wonders of the Solar System might have been a more relevant bugbear. While undoubtedly spectacular and beautifully photographed, some of the locations could be perceived as slightly spurious, whether heading to Tunisia to demonstrate how the earth turns on its axis, or spending more time in Hawaii than the cast of Five-O. That said his passion was unflinching and infectious, as are many of the facts he relayed with laid-back precision. It’s not hard to understand why an audience would relate to him. Teamed with some of the directors he had worked with on his earlier programmes, Cox had carved a niche for himself as a presenter. Much of this was to do with how he spoke his pieces to camera, which always seemed personable and direct, even when he was standing somewhere incongruous.

  ‘I tend to adlib a lot,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, with the group of people I’ve got at the BBC, it’s pretty flexible so we’ve got this very loose way of doing it. Which is unusual for big budget – there’s always an element of control that people want. I don’t really believe in scripts, to be honest! It’s a different way of working and it’s quite high-risk for the BBC, but they fortunately trust me and the directors now. I hope that comes across, it’s a looser feel. You can’t sit in White City in London on a drizzly day and write those things. If you’re in Death Valley, with the sun beating down, it just crossed my mind that this guy did it with a tin can, worked out how much energy the sun gives out. You need the freedom to do those things sometimes because how are you going to get the feel of the place or the emotion that place generates when you’re sat in an office in London? You can’t do it.’

  Fortunately, his directors and crew shared the same vision for balancing a well-crafted image with delivering information. ‘The director thought it would look great if I had a black umbrella in Death Valley,’ he remembered, from a moment during filming on Empire of the Sun. ‘It was like, surely you can say something with an umbrella?’ For Cox, it was key to be involved in as many aspects of the series as possible, starting with structure. ‘The discussion is what should be the structure of the programme and what story should we try and tell?’ he said. ‘In Empire of the Sun, for example, we had two stories. One was the geographic empire, so the edge of the Solar System, and the other one was the life cycle of the sun. We’ve had loads of meetings and talked about what I think should be in the programmes. Obviously it’s such a long process, I can’t be on top of everything so what tends to happen is the directors come and say “Well, I’ve got an idea, I think this would look great on telly,” and the things you do are usually suggestions from the director.’

  And they made him do some amazing things. Swimming in the sea, off the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, to collect the substance gypsum also found on Mars. Standing beside geysers in Iceland as they shot their plumes of boiling water into the air. Storm-chasing in Oklahoma… But it wasn’t all fun. When asked by Metro the most difficult location he’d ever shot in, he replied: ‘Filming at a volcano in Ethiopia [for Dead Or Alive]. It’s one of the hottest places on earth. It’s spectacular, but you can’t work in the daytime because it’s too hot. We were in a lava field, miles from anywhere, with no shelter and no water.’

  The Erte Ale volcano was certainly tough. They flew in by military helicopter, with Cox complaining it was a dirty plot by the director to make him as uncomfortable as possible. Roped to the edge of the most active lava lake in the world, holding a gas mask and madly coughing, thanks to the sulphur-filled air, Cox still managed to joke about cooking some chips in it. Using the venue as an excuse to talk about Io, Jupiter’s closest moon, the crew spent three days in rough tents, battling 50°C temperatures during the day. He bonded with the crew, who spent their downtime reading his first book, Why Does E=mc2?, and teasing each other. He even suggested Erte Ale could be the next holiday hotspot, so long as they built an Irish pub and poolside and bought some sun loungers. For all the accompanying hardships, the series was still an excuse for Cox to experience things he had never done before and he loved it. ‘In the third programme, The Thin Blue Line, I went up in a jet fighter, up to 60,000 feet in South Africa, which is an old Cold War fighter,’ he recalled. ‘There were only four in the world flying and now there are three because one of them crashed! I shouldn’t laugh, it’s the one I flew in – it crashed a month later. They’re not the safest of planes, they can take off and fly upwards vertically; they’re completely overpowered. It’s essentially two Concorde engines with a cockpit on the front. It was just me and the pilot, vertically upwards to 60,000 feet and it emerges upside down because of the way it has to fly up and you see the curvature of the earth and the atmosphere, just the thin, tenuous line of atmosphere that protects us from space. It was absolutely brilliant! You just don’t get to do that sort of stuff.’

  When the first show was broadcast in March 2010, it was virtually devoured audiences and critics alike. They admired the stunning images and took enough information away from the programmes to impress their friends at the pub; they were also impressed that Cox didn’t shy away from the tougher, slightly more apocalyptic elements of the subject, whether the eventual death of the sun or the possibility of asteroids hitting the earth. It was an occasional funereal tone he would return to more frequently in Wonders of the Universe. Ultimately, though, it was the presenter himself who garnered the most praise. While some reviewers chafed slightly at sections of the series such as the elongated introductions designed to keep the viewer watching, almost like an advert, none of them could fault the man presenting it.

  ‘Quite a lot of viewers love Brian Cox too, I guess, because he bridges the gap between our childish sense of wonder and a rather more professional grasp of the scale of things,’ wrote Tom Sutcliffe in the Independent. ‘And even if you can’t entirely 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 Brian Cox to do next, as a primer in cosmic dazzlement it works very well indeed.’ Sam Wollaston in the Guardian wrote with almost crush-worthy awe of the opening episode. ‘It must have been a Eureka moment for whoever discovered him, as he’s very good,’ he said. ‘And not just because he’s totty, with a nice, soft Lancashire accent (steady!). But because he clearly feels a huge amount of love and wonder for what he does and he talks about it all in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily expect a physicist to talk. Cox’s romantic, lyrical approach to astrophysics 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. Who knew that the sun had seasons, or that when clumps of hydrogen collapse under their own gravity, a star is born? Is that how Cox came about, I wonder. Oh God, this is pathetic, I’m clearly smitten.’

  Cox himself had a slightly less self-absorbed reason as to why the shows struck a chord. ‘What made Solar System so attractive were the astonishing new images coming from Casini, the probe orbiting Saturn and all the discoveries from the surface of Mars,’ he told C21 Media. ‘Since the BBC had last made a documentary about the Solar System, we’ve had rovers all over Mars, discovered ice there and water on Europa. These are all new discoveries. The past decade has been a golden age for discoveries about the Solar System that hadn’t been put on TV in that way.’

  Cox and the programme-makers were p
leased at the success of the series, though none of them could quite believe the scale of it. ‘On the one hand, it’s pleasantly surprising,’ said his friend and colleague Professor Jeff Forshaw, who consulted on the series. ‘But on the other hand, Brian’s brilliant at what he does and I always felt the appetite’s there, that people want to understand science. It captures people’s imagination – Brian’s exploiting that. In a sense, I’m not that surprised and it’s really encouraging. I think very often there’s a danger of dumbing down the way that science is presented to the general public out of fear it’s too difficult and that people won’t understand it. I think that’s not as true as people might think. The basic ideas, I think people are really receptive to it and I think that’s what Brian’s demonstrated with these wonderful programmes he’s made.’

  In the aftermath of Wonders of the Solar System being broadcast, there was one moment that made him realise he had stepped up to the next level in terms of visibility and therefore critical debate by viewers and other interested parties. It was thanks to an offhand but what he described as a ‘factually correct comment’ about astrology, which triggered a bit of spat between himself and some of the more mystical viewers and the BBC. In the show, he said that astrology was gobbledygook, but some of the audience didn’t like it, triggering outbursts across the Web and spawning several complaints to the BBC. So, how did he respond? ‘The BBC asked me for a statement and I apologised to the astrology community for not making myself clear,’ he said. ‘I should have said that this new age drivel is undermining the very fabric of our civilisation. That wasn’t issued by the BBC complaints department.’