Horizon - The Secret Life of the Dog, BBC Two

Scientists find that dogs are surprisingly intelligent and a vital evolutionary link

For Horizon's fascinating investigation into the ancestral relationship between man and dog, a record-breaking number of illustrious boffins had been compressed into 60 minutes of television. We met Dr Anna Kukekova from Cornell University, who has been conducting research into which gene makes silver foxes (dogs by any other name) either tame or wild.

Defying Gravity, BBC Two

Ron Livingston as Maddux Donner, a man on a very long mission

Astronauts suffer on six-year space mission, and now it's your turn

In space, no-one can hear you snore. The opening two-parter of Defying Gravity introduced us, in a sluggish and tortuous manner, to the six-year mission of the spacecraft Antares, which contains eight astronauts and will visit seven planets, starting with Venus. Everything was meant to be stirring and momentous as mankind took up the baton previously lifted by the likes of Vasco da Gama and Neil Armstrong, to pursue the quest for knowledge and new frontiers. More prosaically, the trade journals tell us that Antares may be brought down by networks pulling the financial plug before it can be guided to its destiny by the mysterious life form lurking in the ship's Pod 4.

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