On a Sunday evening you can’t help sometimes thinking about Monday morning and the desk, the inbox, the paperwork that’s waiting when you get to the office. The last couple of weeks I’ve found the perfect antidote to all of that: BBC1′s Wonders of the Solar System.

Like anyone who has sat down in front of one of the BBC’s nature documentary series over the years I’ve been awed by the process of learning my place. I’ve never been a great traveller but National Geographic and the BBC have allowed me to see corners of the world I would never have made the effort to journey to, and discover places, cultures and species I would otherwise have remained ignorant of. Having your view widened like that does wonders for your perspective; if you see people making supreme efforts for water your Monday meetings begin to feel less daunting. There is something humbling about observing the practices of other cultures, which lifts the weight of your own pressures a little. And those practices don’t even have to belong to your own species. Watching a luminous frog, or a sloth or a bacterium go about its business always makes me re-consider my own.

Wonders of the Solar System expands the view out further again. Some of the power in the program comes from revealing to us the narrowness of our entire experience. As Prof Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) talks about the frozen landscapes of Mars or the surface of the Sun we see the true extremities of the temperature spectrum. Similarly with size: we’re shown images of trenches on Mars that would span continents on Earth, or Jupiter’s perpetual storm, large enough to contain our planet more than twice over. I find it impossible to take in that information and remain concerned about unanswered correspondence, deadlines, voice-mail.

The show is beautifully shot, and presented with an infectious, genuine enthusiasm by Cox, who the BBC would do well to keep on retainer for anything in this field in the future. The numbers that get thrown around can be simultaneously awe-inspiring and impossible to comprehend, but Cox does a good job of grounding the science as much as he can. Grand in scope, flawless in execution and full of inspiring material – tune in and forget your inbox.