Telly Talk: ‘X’ hits the spot

One thing that can captivate most, like moths drawn to lanterns and wasps to Orangina, is the chance to prove that we are actually quite clever. It’s the reason so many have examined matchsticks and beer mats carefully arranged at great length, by those determined to solve the problem, set by that one person in the group with an almost punchable smugness to their smile. It’s also why Dara O’Briain has a second series of his School Of Hard Sums.

“Now it’s a positive algebra orgy…”

With only a few tweaks to the original format – two comic guests instead of one and practically a class full of maths students instead of just two – it’s the familiar format, getting us to use complex maths theorems without ever realising that we could.
The two comics for the first episode are the lovely Mark Watson and Andrew Maxwell. Combining Mark’s nervous intelligence and Andrew’s boisterous enthusiasm makes them an unlikely pair, but shares the duty of adding humorous frills to this clever programme relatively evenly, thus allowing Dara the chance to simply revel in the maths. Before – that’s in the first series – he seemed to want to do this, but know that it wasn’t really fair to leave his guest hanging with the responsibility of carrying the funny for the majority of the show whilst he got to frolic with his fractions. Now it’s a positive algebra orgy as Dara and Professor Marcus du Sautoy positively itch to get to the nitty gritty of solving the scenarios using simply the purity of abstract maths, leaving Mark and Andrew to play the fools and try and work out the answers using bits of string and disco lights.

To be honest, I’m also itching to get a few props out to try and wrestle with these problems. The first episode is themed around crime, but really that’s just a shell to drop over the maths to make it more relatable. I mean – who hasn’t considered the best way to solve a murder in the park using curves and mazes? Clearly it’s something Columbo should have paid more attention to – although that could end up with more than one thing he couldn’t understand.

This does feel like mental heavy lifting to my poor under-exercised brain in the sphere of mathematics. Like trying to retain all of the strands of plots from the last book when you pick up the latest tome in the Game Of Thrones series, I can positively feel my brow furrow and my self-esteem raise as I feel it fall into place in a most gratifying manner. There’s nothing more likely to put me into a bad mood than to make that effort and not get the payoff, to try and then lose the thread at the last hurdle, and Dara makes real efforts to ensure this doesn’t happen. Solutions are explained repeatedly, and without labouring the point, but with enough detail so that the details I didn’t catch the first time around are explained fully by the time we move on to the next problem.

Dave isn’t a channel that does much commissioning, but when it does it tends to give a series a real chance at prospering. It’s not like there are many maths programmes out there to compete with School Of Hard Sums, and even in its second series it feels fresh and full of enthusiasm. And it makes me feel clever. I don’t think I necessarily am, but if a programme can make you feel clever, and even teach a few things, it’s really got to be the poster child for positive television.
Dara O Briain: School of Hard Sums (series 2, episode 1), Dave, Wednesday 1 May 2013