What do you watch on TV with your kids? X Factor, Dr Who, David Attenborough doing nature? That’s pretty much it; in our household at least. Madam is 12 and Sir is 10, and they are allowed a limited amount of TV (my rule), mainly for entertainment and relaxation (their choice).
So I was curious to see their reactions when we settled down together to watch Brave New World.The first episode featured a driverless car, a cute robot called iCub that learns like a child, and a wheelchair that moves by the power of thought. After some grumbling about not being able to understand Stephen Hawking’s voice over the background music, Madam and Sir were hooked.
They chatted through the ad breaks about their feelings and worries about the inventions.  They were most moved by the iCub robot as it learned how to play with toys, and visibly expanded its ‘understanding’ of the world in a recognisably human way.  Madam questioned, in a way that the programme itself did not, how melding human with computer could lead to ethical problems: “It’s cruel to let it learn so much, but only to serve humans – what if it wants to live its own life?â€
Sir felt empathy for the pain suffered by paraplegic people after watching a paralysed woman literally stride about independently and without pain, using a robotic ‘exoskeleton’. “I feel uncomfortable sitting still for 45 minutes – imagine never being able to get up … and now she can.â€
Both kids were worried that some technological advances could lead to couch-potato laziness in the able-bodied, like the wheelchair operated by the thoughts of the user via a brain-computer interface.  Fortunately Professor Millà n, the inventor, was on hand to describe its more useful application to astronauts augmenting their own efforts in low gravity circumstances.
I was impressed by how simple and jargon-free the technical explanations were for every invention. I enjoyed hearing the scientists tell their own stories behind their projects: the death of friends in a car crash acting as a prompt to designing safer, driverless cars, and the compassion of wanting to empower people with paraplegia ‘to stand up(right) to hug’ their loved ones.
The implicit learning from the programme was powerful too: the increasingly frail Stephen Hawking was symbolic for this episode in particular, and I thought the contribution from Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a black astrophysicist provided a great role model for the kids.
I could have done without the frantic, repetitive graphics between the inventions, and I thought  the constant cramming in of celebrity presenters was unnecessary; but these are marginal gripes.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, or in this case, on the Sky Planner series link button; and Sir and Madam fought over hitting it as soon as the programme was over; so I’d call this particular family experiment a success.
Click here to see the programme
More details about the machines featured in episode one