The Violence Paradox, review: why can't BBC Four make documentaries like this?

Appearances can be deceptive. The Violence Paradox was a lengthy documentary on BBC Four, testing the hypothesis that we are living through the least violent period in history. It was packed with academics presenting their research, interspersed with nothing fancier than some stylised animation (not those terrible historical reconstructions). In short: what the BBC should be making as part of it’s remit to educate.

But the American voice-over gave it away. This was a two-year-old film first aired on PBS, the US Public broadcaster. There it was part of the Nova science strand, which was created in 1974 by Michael Ambrosino who was inspired – here’s the kicker – by BBC Two’s Horizon. BBC Four, launched as the home of serious documentaries, now makes almost nothing of its own and instead shows American documentaries inspired by what the BBC used to stand for. Things have come to a pretty pass.

The two-parter covered a fascinating subject. It was based on Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker, a Pollyanna-ish Harvard psychologist, appeared with academics (pleasingly, some British) from US universities.

Various theories were put forward as to why violence has decreased: a fall in testosterone levels; the establishment of governments to keep populations in line; and the development of the novel, encouraging empathy with others. These were used to explain why we no longer think that burning people at the stake is acceptable.

The first episode provided food for thought. We learned that even babies have empathy, rejecting a toy that they had seen behaving meanly in a puppet show. The second episode was much weaker, featuring an experiment in which Christians and Muslims found common ground by playing in the same football team. I doubt that’s going to solve many crises in the Middle East.

Experts warned that humanity “can go backwards easily” and complicity in something like the Holocaust “is not a question of personality, but a question of situation”. They were a useful counterweight to the optimistic stuff, which felt a little too American.