The Return of Tomorrow's World

As I kid I used to watch Tomorrow's World all the time, many of my friends still remember it (ask anyone in the tech world of a certain age if they remember when the Sony minidisc debuted and the person demonstrating it opened the player, removed the disc and put it back in without the music stopping to show off the buffer to make it anti-shock and they'll know what you mean). When I first started watching it the show focused on devices that were still a way from being available, real cutting edge science, I remember an engine that ran on gas produced from algae in pipes inside the engine which were fed with CO2 taken from the burning the gas. It was filmed in a practically bare studio, the only furniture was whatever the device they were showing you was sat on.

Unfortunately the BBC 're-invented' the show (I'm not sure if it was audience reasons) and it began to cover contemporary gadgets rather than cutting edge stuff and they tried too hard to be cool and, unsurprisingly, failed. The show failed and disappeared.

The good news is, Tomorrow's World is coming back. Well, the name will return as part of other shows, rather than as a show on it's own. It will be headed by former TW presenter Maggie Philbin though.

As a sidenote, while searching for more info for this post, I discovered a section of the BBC site, under the Cult section, with Classic TV Title Sequences, two of which are from Tomorrow's World, but there's everything from Hi-De-Hi to Lovejoy to Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.

Update: Get on over to the BBC Technology blog (re-branded as Tomorrow's World) to leave a comment about whether the program should be brought back.