review

Someone once described the Boeing 747 as "four million components flying in close formation", a turn of phrase that has occasionally returned to haunt me at high altitude - the thought of a sudden dispersal not being a particularly happy one. Please don't write to me if it is actually 3,998,608. The point, for us if not for the builders, is the magnitude of the number rather than its exact size - a register of the extraordinary complexity of a large jet airliner. In 21st Century Jet (C4), the first of a five- part series about the conception and construction of the Boeing 777, there were several other large numbers, too, all powerfully eloquent about the scale of the risk taken in building a new aircraft: $5bn investment, a lead time of 7 years, a team of 10,000 to design it - and then you need to find someone who can afford the $100m each plane will cost and, what's more, afford it several times over. It's as if Chartres and Notre- Dame had been run up as speculative developments, a huge gamble on long- term projections in the Awe and Reverence market. Naturally Boeing took precautions - scouting around for a "launch customer" who would guarantee at least some initial orders. They found it in United Airlines, but only after beating off two rival companies in a marathon 70-hour negotiating session. "That meeting has changed my life and it's probably going to change yours," said the project's chief engineer, addressing his designers with understandable born-again zeal. "Now it's time to make an airplane!" Easier said than done.

Karl Sabbagh's films are the television equivalent of those lavishly detailed cutaway books intended for children but enjoyed by boys of all ages (and genders). For his last project he followed the construction of a major New York skyscraper, from Mafia-controlled concrete pouring to the placing of the last elaborate finial. This is a logical follow up, but it is already clear that the intricacy of the task has been multiplied a hundredfold. Where the structure of a skyscraper is adjustable with a good whack from a 30lb sledgehammer, an aircraft is far less tolerant. In fact, its tolerances can be measured in thousandths of an inch. And with so many engineers crawling all over the same plans it is hardly surprising that they should occasionally get in each other's way. Computer-aided design now catches many of the "interferences" - points where two things have been designed to go where only one will fit - before the construction actually begins, but computers still can't negotiate the more human element of the design, the seductive appeal that will actually sell the thing. The 777, you learnt, will fly with the most advanced passenger toilet seats in existence - hydraulically dampened to prevent irritating washroom clatter. "This is a customer-end toilet seat," said its designer proudly. So they'd got that the right way up, at least.

Pride and Prejudice (BBC1) ended, as at least some of its viewers knew it would, in a great nuptial flurry, but not before delivering two of the best scenes so far. Nothing in its life became it like the leaving of it. The first was unfaithful - Mr Bennet's self-arraignment over the detachment and indolence of his own character, a sly, funny bit of self- knowledge which he's not permitted by the novel - while the second was fidelity itself - a fairly exact transcription of Lizzie's wonderful set- to with Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Andrew Davies also contrived to end with some admonitory thoughts about marriage, a counterpoint to the idealistic optimism of the wedding service. This was in the spirit of the book, too, which contrary to some accounts of Austen provides plenty of evidence that marriage is not necessarily a happy ending. We've had our differences, this adaptation and I, but I confess I was still a little sad to wave it off.