Richard Hammond Builds a Planet

If Richard Hammond really did build a planet, would you want to live there? What’s next? ‘James May: Prime Minister’? ‘Clarkson’s New Reich’? The mind fair boggles. But to be fair, we’re only indulging in this spot of idle ‘Top Gear’ baiting in order to get the snarky barbs out of the way early doors, because this whizz-bang Hamster-fronted science doc is actually rather good.

Delving into his cosmic toolbox(!), Hammond utilises some impressive CGI, his winning self-deprecation and a fair few air miles to paint a creditable picture of how the Earth was formed. Zipping off to Cape Canaveral he takes a trip in the zero-G ‘vomit comet’ to witness the electrostatic clumping of small dust that formed the pit of our planet before plunging a mile down into a South Dakota gold mine for a rendezvous with a garden gnome (don’t ask) that holds the key to gravitational attraction.

And Hammond’s core ‘Top Gear’ audience has not been entirely forgotten with the cosmological wonder interspersed with plenty of jet planes, big rigs and – naturally – automatic weapons.