Dara Ó Briain Meets Stephen Hawking review – impossible not to feel a fanboy’s sheer joy

The comedian's encounter with the legendary physicist could have done with more actual science in it - but i Briain's enthusiasm just about saves the day

This week's Radio Times splashed the documentary Dara i Briain Meets Stephen Hawking (BBC1) on its cover, promising "The Real Stephen Hawking", and illustrating it with a picture of handsome young Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne playing the character of Stephen Hawking in a film. While I admit that my scientific knowledge is largely limited to a combination of the Radiolab podcast and the Facebook page I Fucking Love Science, that decision does not seem entirely logical. But it is a problem this profile also has to deal with. While it is supposed to be an intimate portrait of one of the world's finest minds, it appears predicated on a new surge of interest in the man after the recent biopic The Theory of Everything, and as such it occasionally comes across as an extended DVD extra, although there are plenty of moments when it hints at more.

i Briain immediately sets out his stall as a physics fanboy. The comedian and presenter, who studied mathematics and theoretical physics at University College Dublin, recalls asking his parents for a copy of A Brief History of Time for Christmas, and says throughout that he is fulfilling a boyhood dream by meeting his hero. He's an excellent choice of host, asking difficult questions despite his clear reverence for his subject, and it is impossible not to feel the contagion of his sheer pleasure in finding himself in such a situation. More intriguingly, i Briain is honest about the process of interviewing a man with motor neurone disease. He says he is not sure how easy it will be to talk to Hawking, who lost his speech in the 1980s and produces, via facial muscles which activate his voice machine, an average of one word per minute.