This series is my fondest TV memory of my childhood, with the possible exception of another classic danish "popular science" series, Vitek. I was six years old and Mr. Nørretranders made it completely clear to my mind that the world was indeed as wonderful and mysterious as it seems to a child. Only this was presented by an adult that should be jaded and boring but had somehow made it through education and capitalism with all his enthusiasm intact.
Nørretranders deserves a lot more screen time than he gets these days. He has the rare gift of being able to spellbind through his charismatic nature and at the same time feeding you tonnes of highly compressed hard science, through channels in your brain normally reserved for entertainment.
Watching some old tapes of this show, I'm amazed at how far ahead some of the stuff he included in it was. Some of the topics are just now coming into popular consciousness, others yet are still, +18 years later, bleeding edge science.
He's probably the closest equivalent to Carl Sagan Denmark has ever had. Even though they have completely different personalities, they share the same gift of making (real) science more interesting than anything else.
Even though I love his books, I'd say that he's even better as a presenter/host than he is as an author.
Please Tor, come back and make a new series of Hvælv for the new millennium. You are sorely missed on TV.
