Not even Brian Cox’s stunning whisper could bring life to this sad mission to Mars

Examples of fulfilled childhood dreams are always emotionally satisfying. Both David Tennant in Peter Capaldi wanted to be a doctor when they grow up. Decades later, they really piloted the Tardis. It was a similarly sweet story Brian Cox: Seven days on Mars (BBC two).

We heard a Cox schoolboy write to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1980 and politely ask for photos from some of their planetary missions. The pictures and notes sent to him were a source of inspiration that set him on his way to becoming a particle physicist. Now, 42 years later, Cox has been given rare access to a California institution that went behind the scenes to oversee the Mars 2020 mission – a daring project that could finally determine if life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Professor Cox, as always, spent a week impatiently with the team that led the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter as they searched for life 200 miles away. There was a lot to admire, but it was a stunning work by JPL and not BBC reporting.

Yes, state-of-the-art spacecraft send back views of Mars that no human eye has ever seen. Yes, if the mission finds evidence of life, no matter how long it has become extinct, it could change everything we know about our own place in space. However, repeatedly asking such questions in 90 minutes would be almost no exciting television.

The main action was a rover that drove across the surface of the planet to the spectacular Lake Crater. After a long walk around to avoid the rocks and dunes, it took us 10 hours to overcome one mile. In television terms, it was like watching a nervous learned driver park a limousine in reverse.