That's if the worst-case scenario suggested in Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment comes to pass.

Scientists from around the world have been building up to this moment . . . this experiment of the title and possibly the end of existence as the puny human mind understands it . . . for the last 20 years. This has meant constructing 27 miles of tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border and waiting around while the necessary bits of equipment are invented. The documentary brought us down into this exciting underworld as the finishing touches were being applied. It was like something from a James Bond film, full of people in white hard hats and orange boiler suits and scientists who say 'pheezeceest' instead of 'physicist'.

Helpfully, there were lots of boffins on hand to explain in the simplest terms what exactly it is they want to achieve. "This is the biggest jump into the unknown ever attempted, " said one chap near the start of the show, thus assuring an instantly captive audience. There was another guy with the thickest Manchester accent, and even if he'd insisted on speaking in the most inscrutable jargon . . . which he didn't . . . it would have had the effect of demystifying the subject. "Look, " he said, "why is the stuff that makes up you and me . . . why is it stuff?"

They talked the experiment up by describing it as a recreation of the Big Bang but there was nothing here to convince you that it wasn't simply a case of scientists getting off on playing with very expensive toys . . . and certainly nothing for ordinary folk like you and me and everyone else who's made of 'stuff ' and doesn't care why it's 'stuff ' to be bothered with. Except for the small fact that, during the course of the experiment, there's a chance a black hole might be formed which could get wider and wider and suck anything that's made of atoms . . .

Switzerland, France, you, me, your dog, this newspaper, the air;

everything, basically . . . into it.

Yes, this very uncomfortable fact was dealt with by the programme in so perfunctory a manner it might as well have been a piece of incidental music.

But of course they're not going to make much of it . . . these scientists have just spent 20 years and $6bn on 27 miles of tunnel. And if they did make much of it, there'd be worldwide social disorder.

Just don't say you were never warned. Not that you'll be complaining when you don't even exist.

But until the 26 November, and in the event that the worst doesn't come to pass, there are other terrible problems in the world to be dealing with. The first episode of a new series of Fa r Away Up Close brought us to Sierra Leone, once one of the most advanced nations in west Africa and now lying in shreds after a civil war largely fought over control of the country's diamond mines. A special court is currently trying some of those involved in the war, which is helping to consolidate the peace.

Millions of dollars in foreign money, of which Irish taxpayers have contributed $11m under the auspices of Irish Aid, are also helping get Sierra Leone back on its feet. But, as excellent, unsentimental presenter Aoife Kavanagh put it, the fate of Sierra Leone ultimately lies in the hands of its people. People were what this programme was best on, indeed bringing the 'far away' up close, shaking you to understanding by showing a country rich with life and full of beautiful, sophisticated citizens, which seems ridiculous to admit, but then it's easy in the west to imagine that life outside of it only exists on some sort of different, unfeeling level.

If Far Away Up Close was eyeopening, compelling television and a credit to those who made it so, last week also saw the start of what must be the most boring series ever seen on Irish television.

The Estuary is a four-part look at the people, places and wildlife along the Shannon estuary. This is a subject that need not be boring at all; I can picture Dick Warner, punting around in a little wicker coracle, making a lovely series out of this material. The first thing he would have done, you'd think, would be to discard the awful script vetted to death by a couple of regional development boards and a bunch of other local interest groups.

Here, it's given to Brenda Fricker, who narrates it like she's seen it for the first time and is falling asleep as she's doing it. The best you can say about The Estuary is that, as a video playing on a loop in a side-room of a small local museum, it would have been fine.

Reviewed

Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment Tuesday, BBC Two
Far Away Up Close Thursday, RTE
One The Estuary Friday, RTE One