Sounds of Cinema: the Music That Made the Movies, BBC Four, review Sounds of Cinema: the Music That Made the Movies, a three-part series on film soundtracks, began on BBC Four. The calculation British television has definitely got better at making in recent years is what you might describe as the Patrick Moore equation: the knack of finding a charismatically original character - Brian Cox, Howard Goodall, and Mary Beard spring to mind - and then letting them convey their enthusiasm in front of the camera. Faced with composer Neil Brand as presenter, I spent some time brooding whether a woman of equivalent appearance would be entrusted with a major three-part series (probably not) and a little more wondering which actor he reminded me of (Mike McShane). Once I climbed over such hurdles, and an irritating opening sequence with a coffee machine, I could settle back and listen to what Brand was actually telling me. Which was truly worth listening to. Brand is a fan of film music and, in particular, of the kind of cinema score that makes you "hear what you need to" - altering the effect a movie makes by the sounds that accompany it. Here, he took us with endearing enthusiasm through the era of the silent movie, accompanied by an orchestra or an organ, through the invention of the "click track" to the moment in 1933 that Max Steiner (once compared to Mahler) changed film history by underscoring King Kong - and the great era of the Hollywood orchestral score was born. In doing so, he drew attention to the small things it is easy to miss: the simple sequences of notes that puts the viewer on the side of a character (or an ape); the way in which Erich Wolfgang Korngold can use three different themes in one short scene to set the shifting mood of a conversation; the method by which Bernard Hermann can make the score of Vertigo react with the same shock as the audience. It was riveting stuff, beautifully illustrated and explained. And when Brand showed us the score of Psycho, with the violin line for the shower scene scattering down the page as sharp as the cuts from the knife, he brought an amazing moment of cinema history to new and exciting life.