Early in his career at the BBC, Peter Goodchild, who has died aged 85 after suffering from dementia, was asked by Aubrey Singer, head of science and features, whether he wanted to be an educationist or an entertainer. Despite saying he longed for the latter, he successfully combined both qualities as a producer of programmes such as Horizon, then biographical dramas, before becoming the corporation’s head of television plays.
He joined Horizon in 1965, a year after it began on BBC Two with a mission to “provide a platform from which some of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe”.
