Science is rarely presented in an approachable, engaging or entertaining way. It is more often the subject of incredulous mockery than unabashed wonder, at least in the mainstream media. There are vastly more stories in our newspapers and on our television news about how science will waste our money on stupid studies and then end up killing us with an engineered super-virus anyway. That’s if you’re watching the news, switch over to the movie channel and you’ll probably find that film about the robots that rise up and kill us all or the space-mission that goes horribly wrong and ends up… yep, killing us all.

Even when mankind makes a stunning leap toward potentially massive discoveries, as we did with the large hadron collider, we’re told it might end the world. That’s the focus of mainstream coverage. Rather than pointing out that it might actually explain where the world, where the universe, came from we’re told it might be catastrophic. And then it broke and we got a whole new batch of “wacky scientists don’t know what they’re doing” stories in the press an on the television. It’s a shame but it’s also, essentially, because we tend to poke fun at the things we don’t understand. Otherwise they scare us.

Science gets a bad rap. Fortunately, there are pioneers of a new way of presenting science to people. Richard Dawkins has done a lot for explaining genetic theory and biological processes in a way which makes them approachable. I once read a book by Bill Bryson – definitely not a scientist – which was called A Short History of Nearly Everything and is the most interesting piece of work I’ve ever seen written down. It explains, in a light-hearted and amusing way, just about everything from the origins of the universe to the politics of the Royal Society in Victorian Britain. Now the barely understood field of astrophysics has its champion.

Professor Brian Cox presents a new show on Sunday evenings on BBC Two (catch episode one on the iPlayer if you’re in the UK) called Wonders of the Solar System. His enthusiasm and love for the subject, coupled with the simple and demonstrative ways he explains things is a credit to his profession. He’s like the grammar school physics teacher I wish I’d had. In the first episode he explains and calculates the energy output of the sun using an umbrella, a thermometer and a tin full of water. It’s like the guy who made up all those old Blue Peter craft projects is now designing science experiments.

The show itself is an explanation of the quirks, coincidences and sheer marvel that are to be found in our own solar system. The series of astronomical strokes-of-luck that all chip in to make our galactic back-yard the way it is. In the first episode Professor Cox got dewy-eyed at the sight of a solar eclipse from the banks of the Ganges. Surrounded by the superstition of religion he saw the beauty of chaos. He also found himself a little choked up by the sight of the Aurora Borealis, essentially a light show created as the debris of the solar winds burns up in earth’s atmosphere.

It is not only humbling to see a man who is so obviously enraptured by his subject but it’s catching. It is difficult to watch more than five minutes of Professor Cox without starting to get a little enthusiastic yourself. This is the best thing to happen to Sunday night television in the UK since the rumours they were cancelling Heartbeat. I urge you all to watch it.