I SAT down to watch Brave New World With Stephen Hawking feeling a bit apprehensive.

Not, let’s be clear, that the astoundingly clever Cambridge fellow, famed for his contributions to cosmology and quantum gravity theories, would disappoint.

Rather, I was a bit scared that I wouldn’t quite get it.

But I needn’t have worried. Brave New World (Channel 4, Monday, 8pm) is essentially Tomorrow’s World without Peter Snow.

Hawking and a crew of scientists have decided to show us the big scientific crises and inventions that will shape the future of mankind.

First up: machines, and scientist Kathy Sykes getting very excited about a driverless car designed by Google boffs.

Using rooftop lasers, it monitors what’s going on around it, and according to its creators, is a lot safer and more considerate than the average human road user.

Not a hard task, you might say.

Anyway, the chaps in Nevada have already clocked up 175,000 miles testing it out on the highways, and laws are already being drawn up in Nebraska to make its kind legal on the open road.

Taken for a spin, the presenter exclaimed: “I understand all the science you’ve used.

“But this feels like magic!”

Has she never seen the children’s classic Brum? Did the poor girl make it through childhood without Herbie, from The Love Bug?

The upshot of all this was that we'll be able to fit more cars on the road, as the machines can be trusted to be closer to each other.

But the car’s makers expect people who simply love driving to dissent.

Somewhere, Jeremy Clarkson was breaking out in a cold sweat.

Other groundbreakers saw Doctor Mark Evans, a vet I remember from Pet Rescue, in Switzerland steering a wheelchair using signals from his brain, a ‘light bucket’ in the Canary Islands enabling us to see stars in other galaxies, and a child-like robot.

The most impressive was an exoskeleton from Philadelphia enabling the paralysed to walk. But even this had sinister overtones: used out in the field, it could give a soldier the strength of three men.

Brave New World was all very interesting, but one had hoped for a bit more Hawking.

All we got was a short piece to camera at the beginning, in which he said we were standing on the edge of a ‘new era’, and a few segments around the ad breaks.

The presenters were all very passionate, but it was your genius – delivered in that unmistakable voice – that we tuned in for.

On the same channel, but light years away from Hawking, sits Fresh Meat (Wednesday, 10pm).

The comedy about a group of university student housemates goes from strength to strength.

This week, the gang ventured out of the house/pub/campus zone for the student protests in London, with dramatic results.

As the unlikely rioters got caught up in ‘a kettle’, daubed pig blood on cafes and contemplated staging a sit-in on the London Eye, their various love life issues also came to a head.

It's hard to pick a weak point in the cast, which includes The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas as the well-meaning Kingsley.

Stand-up comic Jack Whitehall impressed this week too, as his posh creation JP – who wouldn’t be out of place in a Gap Yah video - finally forgets about his rugby match ‘lash’ and gets into the protest spirit.

If the commissioners at Channel 4 have any sense, we’ll be tuning in to catch the group’s second year antics next autumn.