TV review: Fry's Planet Word; Spooks; Downton Abbey

Linguistics isn't natural television material; it needs a wit and a wag and a wordsmith such as Stephen Fry to bring it to life
Stephen Fry in Fry's Planet Word
Stephen Fry in Fry's Planet Word, his examination of language and its evolution. Photograph: BBC/Martin and Jessica Reftel Evans

How do you say Obama in sign language? It's like an O followed by a little flutter of the hand. To me it looks like a fish, a fish beginning with O. Brilliant address to Congress today, by an oarfish. Oh I see, the flutter is a flag, the stars and stripes.

Madonna? Easy: pointy tits. Hitler? Moustache, with or without mini sieg heil salute, the signer chooses (maybe it depends on where you are and who you're with). Oh go on Stephen – this is Fry's Planet Word (BBC2, Sunday) – ask these deaf people how you sign "Stephen Fry". Perhaps it's modesty, or the fear that there is no way and you have to spell it out, but he doesn't. I'd say you'd hold your nose to one side, push your belly out, and mime a hearty chortle; but then that might take too long in conversation and I'm probably confusing sign language with charades. I've asked a couple of people I know who do sign; they haven't got back to me. I've asked @stephenfry on Twitter, he hasn't got back to me. So rude.

It's interesting, in the programme, that when Stephen is talking to the deaf German woman, he slows down slightly, spells it out, adopts the tiniest hint of an accent in that way we do with people who have a different first language, meeting them halfway. But he's talking to her though an interpreter, who's American! Ha!

It's all fantastically interesting, Fry's exploration into language, and in this first episode, its origins. It seems that language started off as a hunting tool – communication made it easier to catch crocodiles. This – improved hunting techniques – in turn led to more free time sitting round the fire, and language helped to fill these moments. We learned to chat – about what we'd got up to that day, about our plans for the following one, about how we felt, right then and there. Twitter basically, an early version. Language set us apart from the rest of the things running about the place. It came to define who we were.

And that's especially true for Fry, for whom it's very important. You need someone like him for a show like this. Linguistics isn't natural television material, it needs a wit and a wag and a wordsmith to bring it to life. We go with him to Africa to play with some African children. He meets linguistics professors, evolutionary anthropologists, monkeys, parrots, those deaf people, speakers of Klingon, more children. We go into his brain with the help of an MRI scanner ("Oh yes, I've seen them on House," he says), and down into his larynx ... Eurrgh. But then linguistics is a difficult subject to do visually. You have to grab anything going, even if it's Stephen Fry's epiglottis.

A good story, then, well told, even if sometimes it feels a bit like having a children's book read to you. Once upon a time there was a bunch of apes who grunted at each other ... I know you're cleverer than everyone else, Stephen, but I'm not a child, Stephen. Nor am I German (actually I am, a bit, but that's not the point). Oh, and reply to my message, it's not as if you can get many.

John le Carré doesn't like Spooks (BBC1, Sunday). He said it was crap the other day. I think by crap he means that MI5 isn't really like that, it's not a true representation, and that in real life agents don't go running around breaking into houses and shooting each other.

Lighten up J le C, no one thinks it is actually like that, it's just a bit of fun. And it is fun, exciting too. Plus it deals with important social issues. Look at new section chief Erin Watts, unattached, with a young child. You can be a great spy and a great mum. Spooks sends out positive messages about work and single-parenting; you don't get that in Tinker Tailor ... OK, it is crap, but good crap.

As is Downton Abbey (ITV1, Sunday) – Howards' Way masquerading as Howards End. But irresistible. I love the marriage proposal in this one, on the station platform. First Sir Richard Carlisle tells Mary she can call him just Richard. Well, if that's not romantic, I don't know what is. She must know what's coming.

"You see, I want you to marry me," he says.


"Because I think very highly of you."

And, can you believe it, she doesn't accept him then and there but says she wants to think about it. Women are such a mystery.