Horizon
BBC2, 9pm
It's me or the dog: Crufts 2007
Channel 4, 8pm
STARTING a new season of the venerable science show with gushy musings about dinosaurs - "What if they hadn't died out 65 million years ago and were still around today!" - Horizon was revealed as a lumbering old tyrannosaurus trying to pass for a fleet-footed young theropod.
If you already knew a bit about dinosaurs, Horizon told you nothing much. If you knew nothing about dinosaurs, Horizon sought to dazzle you with populist references to Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park, along with showing computer-generated imagery of cute little critters monkeying around after dark atop parked cars in city streets. According to Horizon's line of speculative reasoning, 21st-century dinosaurs would merely have evolved into scalier versions of the urban fox.
Naturally, the show called upon genuine palaeonotologists, most of them American. At one extreme, there was Kristi Curry-Rogers, curator at the Science Museum of Minnesota. A perky-sounding boffinette who looked about 19, Kristi's sensible pronouncements came with a welcome zip to them - even grave statements such as: "Extinction is as much a hallmark of life as evolution. At some point everyone's gonna go extinct - it's just a question of when."
At the other extreme was the palaeonotologist who'd been Jurassic Park's dino-consultant. Call him Hollywoodosaurus Rex. His suspiciously full dark hair was a teenager's. His wizened face was cretaceous. Call me shallow, but I found it impossible to accord his words credence.
Horizon's other dino-experts either looked like wispy hippies or horny-handed cowboys. Horizon didn't waste much time inquiring after their educated views. It was keener to ask them what dinosaur they'd like to be, and which dinosaur they'd prefer as a pet.
None of these academics offered evidence to support the notion of a humanoid dinosaur ever evolving, but Horizon went ahead and stuck two actors inside lizard-suits and had them walk around New York City anyway. Worst of all, Horizon chose to hit us with a last-minute shock revelation which will be no shock and no revelation to amateur dinosaurologists (a fast-increasing breed who show no sign of extinction). Horizon's trump card was its loud exclamation that there are dinosaurs living all around us today.
Yes! It's true! You may have eaten one for Christmas dinner! Or you may have one fluttering inside a cage!
Because turkeys and budgerigars are birds. And just as humans share many DNA characteristics with chimpanzees, so birds are closely related to theropods, having the same three-toed foot, plus a furcula (or wishbone), air-filled bones and feathers. Horizon could surely trace its own lineage back to the birds, too: it was a dead duck.
If I were a sexist, I could say that It's me or the dog: Crufts 2007 featured an arresting bird, too, in the curvy shape of its dog dominatrix, canine trainer Victoria Stilwell. Thankfully, I am not a sexist, and so I will merely allude to Victoria's carmine lips, her slinky black leather catsuit and the fact that she speaks in a purr. I will then say: "Phwooarrrgh!" - but in a pro-feminist, empowering and non-chauvinistic way, of course.
There was another arresting vision in It's Me Or the Dog: Richard Curtis, Britain's premier dog dancer - or, as Richard prefers to bill himself, "The World Renowned Richard Curtis and his K9 Freestyle Dancing Dog Display Team".
Richard dresses up like a member of the Village People and practises what is known as "heelwork to music" in quick-stepping choreographical interludes with his dog. A Horizon profile may ensue soon.
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