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The world is full of wonders. But they become more wonderful, not less, when science observes them.

Amidst all the talk of dumbing down one unforeseen boon has been the rise of science on TV. Thanks to the likes of Brian Cox, Robert Winston and the evergreen David Attenborough hardly a week passes by without at least an hours worth of engaging intelligent yet populist science on one of the major channels.

Channel 4 have got the big hitters in for their Genius Of Britain series. Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, the aforementioned Attenborough & Winston and Jim Al-Khalili.

It’s a potted history of, scientifically, what made Britain great. Starting in 1664 with Attenborough uncovering another side to Christopher Wren. As if designing St Pauls Cathedral and the Sheldonian wasn’t enough for one lifetime – Wren also pioneered the very concept of experimentation, disproved the then popular theory that the spleen was as vital to life as the brain and, after dissecting a horse’s eye, invented a telescope powerful enough to observe the surface of the moon.

We’ve hardly had time to take in the enormity of all this before the baton switches to Dawkins promoting the case for Robert Hooke, a chippy prickly hunchback who once lived in the basement of London’s monument, whose peerless work with microscopes and intricate drawings of fleas led to a whole new field of science – microbiology.

Away from Oxford academia, Robert Boyle had decamped to the countryside to escape plague ridden London. Everyones favourite hand drier genius James Dyson takes up the story of Boyle and Hooke together inventing the air pump. The death of one small bird later taught us that air was essential to life and though invisible did exist. A realization that took us on to the scientific journey we are still travelling on today.

Across the marshes in Cambridge Isaac Newton spent sleepless nights absorbed in mathematics and alchemy. Jim Al-Khalili winningly narrates this section as the sour and aloof Newton, who preferred to experiment on himself rather than animals, on one occasion inserting a bodkin into his eye, calculates formulae relevant to gravity and optics.

After travelling to London and having a massive fall out with Hooke, Newton found himself back in his Cambridge cloisters forging a partnership with comet namer Edmund Halley. Physicist Kathy Sykes tells how the boozy, smoking, swearing, womanzing pirate fighter Halley, while still in his early twenties, mapped the southern skies from his base in St.Helena thus impoving naval navigation.

Fast forward to the 18th century and Attenborough is blowing the trumpet for unsung hero Sir Joseph Banks – the maverick botanist who ventured to Tahiti with Captain Cook on The Endeavour to observe Venus in front of the sun to calculate longitude.

While Cook and Banks sailed the seas James Watt was struggling with prototype steam engines in his Glasgow workshop. It was worth it though as eventually his invention paved the way for a little thing called electricity and kickstarted the Industrial Revolution making Britain the most powerful nation on Earth.

Not that it must’ve seemed that way to John Hunter who scoured London’s backstreets trading in corpses. The avuncular moustachioed Robert Winston explains how Hunter strived to drag surgery into the future by advancing dissection techniques and making accurate anatomical maps earning himself a reputation as the surgeon least likely to kill you!

Hunter also taught Gloucestershire doctor Edward Jenner whose smallpox vaccine, it has been argued, possibly saved more lives than any other medical advance in the history of the world.

The eccentric and shy Henry Cavendish identified and isolated hydrogen allowing people, for the very first time, to see the world from above in hot air balloons.

Cavendish’s friend the revolutionary theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, after accidentally inventing soda water, discovered (with the aid of some mice and spinach) oxygen:the secret of life itself and laid down the foundations of chemistry.

All great men – and worthy of a great series – which, luckily, this is. Packed full of astonishing facts and entertaining yet educational too. The stories threaded together lovingly and coherently. The presenters are all well informed, enthusiastic and have a great passion for science. These are people you’d love to have teaching your kids. Why, it’s almost enough to make you feel patriotic.

Dave Evans