Horizon, BBC2, 9pm
Medicine Men Go Wild, Channel 4, 9pm

It took some getting used to, but eventually I ceased objecting to being loosely, vaguely informed on matters of quantum mechanics by Noel Gallagher. Sorted, Horizon!

Of course, it wasn't actually Oasis's mono-browed monosyllabilist who presented the venerable science show's modern re-examination of gravity. Instead, it was smiley-faced Dr Brian Cox, a groovy young particle physicist who looks and sounds most Gallagher-esque. Respec', Coxy!

Coxy has the qualifications for being a pop-tastic boffin, bruv. Prior to acquiring a doctorate, he played keyboards in chart-topping techno-pop ravers D:Ream. Plus, he has a lank Britpop haircut, complete with long, grown- over sideburns.

More importantly, he speaks fluent Gallagherese: flat-vowelled, off-hand Mancunian, glottal stops a-flippin'-go-go, man. This reached a head early on - doubtless to the horror of hard-line pedants - in the garden of a very old house in rural Lincolnshire.

The T-shirted, be-jeaned Coxy was in the very orchard where - to adopt his own style of speech - Sir Isaac Newton 'ad bin sat years ago, under a fruit tree when one of its little round red wotsits fell on 'is 'ead. Soon afterwards, Coxy was producing a scrap of paper from a back pocket and inquiring if any of his mates in Horizon's film crew 'ad a pen.

Luckily, one of 'em did, so Coxy jotted down Newton's gravitational theory for us, an equation involving an F, a G, two Ms and an R squared. Less luckily for me, I didn't pick up what this meant.

Nor did Coxy ever substantiate an early statement about gravity bein' what made the sun ignite five billion years ago, leading to the formation of the stars, the earth, the galaxies and all that malarkey. Or maybe he did and I missed it.

I sure didn't miss the frankly unnecessary sight of Coxy monkeyin' around in his 4x4 with his mobey, though, takin' photos of his film-crew buddies pullin' wacky faces when setting off from El Paso, Texas, on a road trip round America's mountain-top observatories. A right rock 'n' roll jaunt it was, too. In other words, jolly, but a bit of a blur.

So what did I learn about gravity from Horizon and Coxy? Well, I learned that Newton erred by 10 metres over the moon's exact position (or, as Coxy put it, " 'E got da mewn in the wrong place!") And that was about it, really.

I suppose I also learned that Coxy's a nice bloke. And that science is sorta, you know, like, 'ard to understand, man.

In Medicine Men Go Wild, the plucky van Tulleken twins, Dr Chris and Dr Xand, were in Malaysia and Tibet having boys' own adventures in pain. Like Dr Cox, they humbly admitted they didn't fully understand the topic at hand (how folk in far-off countries accept physical pain far more readily than we western softies do).

Then they set about having skewers driven through their tongues and cheeks prior to taking part in the Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Kuala Lumpur. Afterwards, minus skewers, the brothers admitted that the bally things had been very sore.

Later, the daring duo ran through 108 ice-cold jets of water. "Ice-cream headache!" gasped Xand. Far worse was happening to the locals (rotten teeth being treated with hot pokers; more skewers through flesh).

The brothers' eventual conclusion about the endurance of pain was mystical, pragmatic and oddly reassuring all at once: life hurts, but you just don't have to mind.