Dropping Daddy right in the dirt.
Three Cumbrian shepherds taking shelter under an upturned tree in the middle of the 1500s found a lump of strange black stuff which left marks on their hands after touching it.
Showing an ingenuity associated with Blue Peter presenters and empty washing-up liquid bottles, they wrapped a piece of sheepskin around the bottom of it to stop it blackening their hands and used it to mark their sheep.
They had made the world's first pencil. I really don't know how Adam Hart-Davis knows what shepherds did in the privacy of their own trees all those years ago, but it makes fascinating viewing.
I could do without him dressing up in full Tudor regalia, which smacks of a fancy dress party more than a history programme, but that's a small price to pay to learn why the speed of ships is recorded in knots and how the Tudors discovered America while Columbus was still going round in circles in the Caribbean.
We can look forward to plenty more information about Tudor inventions in future episodes. Happily Daddy's Girl is over and done with in one two-hour go.
After Ross Kemp's SAS outing in Ultimate Force, this stars the other Kemp refugee from EastEnders and Martin Kemp is obviously just as desperate to shake off the image of Walford's slimiest crook Steve Owen.
The daddy's girl of the title is 17-year-old Emma (Stephanie Leonidas), whose mother has been missing for ten years. The consistent nightmares from which she suffers indicate that father Chris (Kemp) may know more about the disappearance that he's letting on.
The troubled teen harbours suspicions that he murdered her mum/his wife and that her night-time flashes of things from the past are horrendous memories her mind is trying to block out.
There's no body, no motive and no evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever, something that doesn't prevent a pair of local PC plods re-opening the case. Clearly the area of London where they live has a low crime rate as they have no more pressing work than looking for needles in haystacks.
This causes Kemp to wear a perpetually perplexed look, as well he might considering he's playing a landscape gardener who's clearly worried that Alan Titchmarsh is getting all the best jobs.
All the same, he gets considerably less worked up than the over-dramatic soundtrack, which features an intensely annoying score that signals and underlines everything you're watching on screen.
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