11:06am Tuesday 16th March 2010
Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds (BBC1, 9pm); Sport Relief Does Dragons’ Den (BBC2, 8pm); Battle for North America (BBC2, 9pm).
TOP Gear presenter Richard Hammond parks his car to use technology to examine some of the unseen wonders that lie beyond the limits of the naked eye in his new series.
In Richard Hammmond’s Invisible Worlds, he explores the world of detail hidden within the time it takes the human eye to blink, and uses high-speed cameras to glimpse some of nature’s most fleeting spectacles.
The show promises a wealth of incredible sights, from spectacular natural phenomena such as vast, superfast lightning clusters, to one of the wonders of the living world – the hidden aerodynamics of bats – and our own technological achievements, such as the awe-inspiring work conducted on high-voltage power lines.
Normally, such wonders would be filed under “blink and you’ll miss them”, but this stimulating show should ensure you’ll look at the world in a new way.
It’s all very different from Hammond’s other shows such as Total Wipeout, in which he sits around while others make fools of themselves by falling into the water while attempting an obstacle course. Then there’s Braniac: Science Abuse, and more recently, Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connections.
When he’s not making a certain motoring show, he’s often writing about it for books such as Or Is That Just Me? “It’s a collection of stories about what really happens when I go off making telly programmes all over the world,” he explains.
“It tells the truth about what it’s like as just a bloke from Birmingham to be doing all these things. And it deals quite a lot with the business of turning 40.”
Along with an alleged case of teeth whitening, Hammond’s often extraordinary hair has attracted a lot of attention over the past year. “Yes, my hair is a bit of a mid-life crisis thing, I don’t mind admitting,”
he explains.
“Why should I be banned from doing the sorts of things nearly all blokes do as they pass 40? I might even get a tattoo.
And start wearing my trousers hitched up to my armpits.”
A few years ago, Hammond was lucky enough to meet childhood hero Evel Knievel before he died.
Are there any other celebrities he would like to make documentaries about?
“I would, yes. There are loads of interesting people out there, people who did huge things, who maybe started with nothing and made themselves into something massive,” he says. “But it’s time to get to all these projects – that’s the tricky bit and, right now, my TV plate is kind of full to overflowing. One day I’ll get round to those documentaries.”
SPORT Relief Does Dragons’ Den has those awesome dragons doing their bit for Sport Relief fundraising by listening and passing their verdict on some celebrity inventions.
Can Patrick Kielty persuade them that his sideways bicycle is a good idea?
Will Ruby Wax’s unusual body-sculpting device leave them desperate to invest?
Or will a couple of Irish entrepreneurs, with the aid of tennis star Greg Rusedski, convince them that their portable sports stadium for children is worth a chunk of their change?
Plus, we get to see the Dragons in Kenya, where they reveal how proceeds from Sport Relief are helping the residents of the Kiberia Slum.
IN Battle For North America, historian Dan Snow goes to Canada to find out about its history as part of the British Empire in the 18th Century.
With that in mind, he explores the events of the Battle of Quebec in 1759, a conflict that saw Britain employ its growing industrial strength to wage an unprecedented campaign against the French for control of what would eventually become Canada.
Snow journeys up the St Lawrence River as an 18th Century infantryman to learn what the conflict would have been like for those involved.
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