James May’s Things You Need to Know @ 10pm Mondays- BBC2- 4 out of 10

In life, there a lot of things you need to know to get by. Some things you learn naturally like how to walk, how to talk and that some things (fire, sharp objects, corners on cabinets and so on) hurt when you come into contact with them etc. Other important things are taught to you; how to shave, how to operate a knife and fork and how to cook meat without spending the next two days losing an awful lot of weight one way or another.

This Monday night show isn’t designed to teach you these latter essentials but things in the world that you need to know. However, a show where James May teaches you how to shave (for both men and women) or showing the effects of food poisoning would be pretty awesome in my book; the natural next step on the road to TV replacing real world parents. Perhaps another presenter would be needed for a segment on haircuts and drinks that aren’t ale.

Anywho, what this show teaches you what you need to know is stuff about how the world operates, in particular, things that are very stereotypically British to have an interest in. For example, the first episode covered the effects of alcohol on the human body and the last episode in the series covers that most British of subjects; the weather.

The format of the half-hour information overload is simplistic; lots of diagrams and pictures on a green screen, some sound effects thrown in with May providing some voiceover work and occasionally appearing in front of the green screen looking ironically like a weather man or the people that do the hand signals for the blind on late night TV.

The plus side of this style of television show making is that the production values cost less than a Tesco sandwich but the downside is that it looks like it was designed on Adobe Flash by a 15 year old.

The show may well have been informative and might have had some interesting facts but I can’t really remember any right now which probably highlights the main problem with ‘Things You Need to Know’. For simple folk like me, the amount of information crammed in means it’s hard to keep up. Although after studying the water cycle about 76 times at various times in school, I might have just zoned out through the whole thing.

Summing it all up? It filled half an hour on BBC2’s schedule, it cost about £1.26 to put together and might have taught some people some things. For fans of getting value for money for their TV licence or lovers of James May, it’s a win. For fans of high quality television, it’s less of a win.