Rocket men | 11 July 2019

As the title suggests, 8 Days: To the Moon and Back (BBC2, Wednesday) comprehensively disproved the always questionable idea put forward by Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’: that being an astronaut is ‘just [a] job five days a week’. More importantly perhaps, by concentrating purely on how Apollo 11’s lunar voyage unfolded over the eight days in question, without any pesky hindsight or analysis, it stirringly reminded us how uncomplicatedly thrilling the first moon landing was at the time. And also, you couldn’t help noticing, how madly risky. A key piece of equipment throughout the mission appears to have been the seat of the pants. The lunar module itself looked like an oversized version of something made on Blue Peter — presumably accompanied by a warning that children should check with their parents before raiding the family’s tinfoil.

In keeping with current documentary trends, 8 Days didn’t have a narrator. Instead, any background information we needed came from a few minimalist captions whose matter-of-fact tone served only to emphasise how astonishing the facts of the matter were. There were several clips from the American TV coverage of 50 years ago — as sponsored by Kellogg’s (‘Kellogg’s puts more in your morning!’) — where the initial sense of patriotism was touchingly superseded by an awed disbelief at what humanity was achieving. Naturally, too, we saw plenty of footage of shirtsleeved blokes in Houston smoking heavily in front of computer screens.

At the heart of the programme, though, were the audio tapes recorded on Apollo 11, which were then lip-synched by actors playing the astronauts in a rather convincing dramatisation of the entire voyage. The technical talk was, of course, impressively baffling. (Apparently the ‘Rocket Man’ line ‘And all this science, I don’t understand’ was wrong too.)