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I've downloaded a few dozen of these and been going through them. It's the UK's version of NOVA. Much better than what Nova has become (more like what Nova used to be). Good production values, great topics, and a lot of hard science - especial physics and cosmology.

Nova has gone to hell the last 10 years. I can usually only stand to watch one out of every 10. Seems like every episode is either an hour long commercial for a manufacturing company, or a lame attempt to ride the coat tails of interest in some recent news event.

One of the worst examples was the 6 episodes Nova did on materials science - I think it was last year or 2013. Each episode was basically a collection of 6 or so advertisements for materials science companies, and the host - who was trying to be funny - was awful. I couldn't watch past the first two, the host annoyed me so much.

So if you're into science, check torrents for "BBC Horizon". Lots of good stuff.

thanks!

Agreed, I have lost all interest in Nova which used to be my go to program in the 90's. I'll check this out.

So Nova & Horizon often both do the same topic. I think they have an arrangement where they share the costs on sending out a film crew, but then they each use the footage different, and sometimes they are almost completely different.

Case in point was the episodes on sink holes recently. Nova's was more of a general documentary, and covered a few places outside of Florida. There was no host in the Nova version, just a narrator.

The Horizon version focused exclusively on Florida (sink hole capital of the world) in great detail and had a Geologist as the host who was really good, and he actually drove all over Florida like a journalist.

I liked the Horizon version much better, although there was a good segment in the Nova episode that recreated one type of sink hole collapse (the same one that swallowed the guy here a year ago) in the laboratory, using a giant "ant-farm", that really clearly shows how these things happen, and why they can be so deep and impossible to recover anything from. I wish they had included this part in the Horizon version, although they explained it effectively with a different model.