Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Having already proved himself a competent musician, academic, presenter and author, it would seem that quiz show host was a career move too far for Prof Cox, host of science-based Six Degrees of Separation.
The premise was a novel one. A panel of scientific experts (mathematician Dr Hannah Fry, geneticist Prof Steve Jones, anatomist Prof Alice Roberts and theoretical physicist Prof Jim Al-Khalili), led by two celebrity captains (Ben Miller and Hugh Dennis), had to find the scientific connections between six unlikely objects. Last night, the teams were tasked with tracking the journey from analogue to digital via a record player, Galileo, a dung beetle, whipped cream and the inner Earth.
With forced jokes, a string of sickening introductions (every guest was prefixed by "the brilliant/fantastic/fabulous"), punchlines including "has this got something to do with viscosity, Brian?" and a scoring system harder to fathom than the imaginary Bamboozled game show in Friends, the BBC set about desperately trying to make science "cool".
If only the schedulers had talked to one another they might have realised they had just done that with Countdown to Life an hour earlier, and Six Degrees of Separation could have been left where it belongs – somewhere near the cutting-room floor.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments