Inside Einstein’s Mind: the Enigma of Space and Time, BBC4 - TV review: An engaging introduction to the physicist's lightbulb moments

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

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It's safe to say that I never really got physics at school. I relied on cleverer mates to copy from in class and just crammed for exams, forgetting everything the minute I put my pen down. So actually, I was the ideal viewer for Inside Einstein's Mind: the Enigma of Space and Time as it attempted to explain, in simple terms, the German genius's theory of general relativity. The peg was the centenary of his big idea, but, come off it, this is the sort of stuff BBC4 loves any day of the week – and does well.

There were some cute model train sets to explain his visual thought experiments, that even I could get my tiny brain around thanks to narration from David Tennant who took the tone of a dad explaining something complicated to his confused charge (the former Time Lord is a father of four, after all). There were some clever talking heads to deliver more of Einstein's biography that zipped it all along. I found the little insights into his character the most interesting.

We were told that Einstein once said that in his teens when he was developing his theories, thinking about light beams made his palms sweat. “You and I may remember what was causing our palms to sweat at aged 16, and it was not a light beam, but that's why he's Einstein,” said one of the physics bods. Quite.