Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams, BBC Four, review BBC Four's documentary Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams was, in itself, a marvel. Presented by the pugnacious historian Simon Schaffer, this was a beautifully made and consistently fascinating account of how clockwork machines changed our relationship with technology. Starting with a 500-year-old clock that brought a sense of order to the Swiss city of Bern, the programme traced an engineering feat that culminated in 18th-century automata: mechanical figurines that could write, draw or even play the flute. Some of these models survive in working order today, and the footage of them in action was spellbinding. A clockwork boy built 240 years ago from 6,000 moving parts addressed a letter in an elegant hand. There was something extraordinarily eerie about his glass eyes, painted cheeks and precise twitching movements, dictated to the exact millimetre by the tiny variations in a set of metal cams. These uncanny creations were very much of their time. French revolutionaries compared courtiers with automata - "bodies without souls, covered in lace" - before chopping off their heads. A mechanical chess player helped to inspire the looms of the industrial revolution. Automata were both serious and fanciful. A silver swan, built in London in the 1770s, sat atop moving glass rods that threw up ripples of light exactly as water would. Still in perfect condition, it raised and dipped its neck to catch a clockwork fish. The swan's creator was just as flamboyant - a Belgian émigré who once caused a stir by careering into a mirror at a Soho party while wearing his customary get-up of a barmaid's outfit and roller-skates. From such stories to the evocative soundtrack and pithy commentary, this documentary was a precisely calibrated treat.