I suppose I see good science programmes as several things.
Brainiac does fun, but is short on how things work,. it would be good if it were part of something bigger.
One thing that really bugs me about BBC science is that there is no sort of doubt, or different ways of looking at things.
The two glaring examples are climate change and the extinction of the dinosaurs.
As it happens, I'm with the majority view here on both subjects, ie that CO2 is bad shit and that a bloody great lump of rock is something you don't want to fall upon you.
But...
The Beeb never mentions methane in climate change, nor does it mention how the variation predicted is the sort of thing that has happened many times before.
It certainly never ever tells the public that numerical models are not the same as mechanical predictions. Even ones that are used every day to do real work occasionaly throw out crazy results, and you have to "edit" their output (occasionally of course the model is crazy but right).
We were simply told this is happening, and it's a fact long before there was a solid consensus.
There is a pathological aversion to numbers, and of course that lets them blame the Americans for everyting, whilst farmers who are at least as bad never get any criticism ever.
Same with the dinosaurs. Yes, a meteorite seems to fit the facts well, but...
From what we know, they were on the slide long before, and it seems that their diversity was dropping, leaving them vulnerable to relatively mild changes.
We never hear about this, just the bloody great rock theory.
Ironically it would make for better TV, argument and controversy is good mass market stuff, and I think the BBC would do it's public service duty by showing lots of different views.
Instead all we get is the off-beat dumb stuff.