Last night I recorded the start of the new series "Wonders of the Universe", presented by Brian Cox, on my Humax HDR from BBCHD.

I noticed on the program info, highlighted in red:

"Contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting, some strong language, and some violent scenes". It also had the G flag set in the EPG.

I thought this seemed a bit strange, and my mind ran riot. Was he going to say "the universe is a f*****g big place"; or beat another cosmologist who had a different view of the big bang to a pulp on-camera? Or perhaps the news that the sun is going to eventually blow up into a supernova, or the heat-death of the universe in X trillion trillion etc. years would come as a disturbing fact to people who would otherwise jam the BBC switchboard in protest?

Anyway I watched the programme and I either missed something offensive or the message was there in error. Unless the "violent scenes" were those of dying stars destroying themselves? Weird! Did anyone else see this?

I will watch it this evening.
Maybe the 'upsetting' bit was aimed at those nitwits who objected to him saying, in the last series, that astrology is a load of crap!

I haven't watched it yet but I have noticed these warnings on some very unexpected programmes.

And some times I've been at a loss to see what the warning was actually about.

It seems that some of the people classifying these programmes have a very low threshold for what could be considered upsetting.

You could be right! The message only appears if you press "i" on the recorded item in the media list, it doesn't appear if you press "i" while watching.

It happens a lot, sometimes you get it for sports events. Maybe its because Claire Balding appears?

Love the subject but it grates on me when he keeps saying kilom-eter It's a kilo-meter, after all no one says kilog-ram, or do they?
Nit picking maybe but he is an educated bloke.
Good programme though.

Suns too light to go supernova and no companion to rob of mass, so relax on that point!

Having watched the programme I now know exactly why the warning was given although it was petty stupid because the way in which it had the potential to be upsetting is quite different to those to which the warning would normally apply.

Actually, there should have been a warning about excessive sub-woofer output. It was far, far too powerful and completely overwhelmed the programme. I had to turn down the volume to protect my home from damage!

Why. It is a perfectly acceptable pronounciation. It is kilo-meter which sounds the odder of the two to me.

Surely most people pronounce it kilometer with no discernible pause between the phonemes?

I think they are saying o as in box is bad, oa as in coat is good.

Was looking forward to this. But found it a bit dry.

I always laugh as well as to why it is necessary when presenting a programme about space, the presenter has to visit countless different locations where we can see him gazing at the sky.

In the first 10 minutes he had visited about 6 different countries - to look into deep space

It's all part of the general dumbing down at the BBC.

As you say, completely pointless visits all over the world (but at least they avoided those cretinous repeated images of speeded up cityscapes so beloved of Horizon ), but not a single informative equation, graph or even number appeared on the screen.

I can remember back in the 70's and early 80's when you could watch a BBC science programme and actually learn something non trivial.

If you have been watching popular science programmes for so long is it any wonder that you no longer see anything new which you do not already know? Especially if you also follow the progress of science in the media in general.

Well, that's part of it, of course.

But it isn't the whole story.

If you could watch a 1970's Horizon you'd see what I mean. It was, compared with what we see today, packed with information.

But without pointless footage of presenters travelling around all over the place they had time for actual, real, science.

Perhaps they should have a small insert, continuously updated, which shows 'Total air miles earned so far'.
This is the same BBC that never wastes an opportunity to tack on to the end of a programme a little extra bit saying how we're all doomed and how global climate change is all our fault, and then sends a crew all the way to Namibia to show us a sand castle and a shipwreck.
Cornwall, I guess, is too close to home.

The dumbing down point is right. We are fed up with watching so called science programmes where we see all manner of shots of the presenter from all angles and in all the places they visit. This is true of Cox's programme but also the Kate Humble Spice programme.

We end up screaming at the TV, no more bloody pictures of them, just show us something actually interesting!

The Cox programme also had nauseating music playing at most times and in 5.1 sound it was drowning out the speech narrative on the central front speaker. Yuk!

It seems as much about creating Cox as a 'celeb' as anything else. Broadcasters like their programmes to have a recognised presenter so that people will watch anything else they appear in. Hence they want you remembering Cox as much as anything you learned about space.

"Cox"! this man is my hero, he is even better than Patrick Moore as he is a real scientist and a professor to boot.

But who is the best musician?

I like Cox as well. I even have the D:Ream CD.

Women seem to like him too.

I cant stand that never ending smile he has on his face, hes a 40 something with a teenage emo haircut,

Has to be one of those people I'd most love to have a meal with, such an indepth bloke, though I did come out of watching his programme feeling incredibly dumb, when I'm most certainly not (imho ). Women do love him though, even my other half has a soft spot for the cox

Agree with all the "dumbing down" comments, agree fully with gomezz, I also think you might have to watch progs like this just to pick up a few percent of new knowledge that might be contained within. No prog of this sort is suddenly going to reveal anything that isn't already known, nobody says "I've just found the Higgs Boson, I'd better organise a quick TV series".

Anyway, I like Brian Cox, but I did notice an annoying habit during the series he did with Dara O'Briain. He is allowed to describe things in an abstract manner, use general terms, metaphors or aprroximations. But when somebody else does it, he corrects them to a precise description or value. It became quite amusing after a bit.

I am a bit worried about his hair style too. I hope he doesn't become like a lot of sad famous people who cling on to the image they had at the height of their popularity. E.g. the late Brian Conolly of Sweet (may seem a strange example, but it sticks in my mind).

What was the context of the warning then?