I’m not an engineering type of person. Nor am I someone who feels the need to open up gadgets to see how they work or even someone who you can rely on to fix something for you. I can rewire a plug and… that’s about it. However, I do like technology that looks cool and does weird and brilliant things, which is why I’m enjoying James May’s Big Ideas (BBC Two, Sunday, 5 October, 9pm) so much. Basically, James May’s new show is the Kraftwerk of telly, with a whole world of technological promise shown through the eyes of a romantic.

There’s this thing called retro-futurism. My feeble grasp on the subject is that it’s a way of thinking that pushes forward technology using the notions of yesterday. So, future-futurism thinks outside the ubiquitous box, takes a scalpel to it and makes something that we never saw coming, whereas retro-futurism wants to make cool jet-packs and robot-butlers, as seen in 40′s b-movies and various cartoons.

As May is not a professor in a lab jacket, it seems that he’s a retro-futurist as well. In last night’s show, sub-titled ‘Man-Machine’, May looks at robots and how they might help us. A truly modern thinker would promote a way of thinking that is truly digital… hell… even holographic or something, whereas May is often dragged back to the androids he drew in the back of his exercise books at school. This is something I can easily get my head around (if I just ignore the techno-babble).

So, with that, May went off to various bits of the world to meet various ‘bots of the mind. He met up with The World’s Most Famous Robot Right Now, Asimo, as seen in a telly ad’ for Honda and lampooned in South Park. May clearly liked this little chap, even if he kept referring to it/him/her as a “little brat”. Even though this seems like a flippant thing, it’s an important aspect of the show. Where a normal Open University show would be filled with knowing nods and high-end discussion, May allows us in and keeps us entertained by saying the things we’d like to say to the world’s foremost robo-developers.

It goes without saying that, to see the best in retro-futurism, we travelled, with May, to Japan, where he met a woman in a mechanical robot suit and, a bloke who has created a creepy likeness of himself in robot form. However, even though that was the most visually striking bit of the show, the bit that left me agog was a brain controlled wheel chair which saw May tootling around and steering with his thoughts. Get that! Mind control is here and now!

The show as a whole does lots to inform, but most importantly, it serves to entertain in an engaging way. May is always great fun to have on the box and is becoming the Top Gear presenter with the best career outside of the show, despite Hammond’s best attempt to become The Nation’s Fave. This show, as well as being great value, was also spookily well timed as, next Sunday, some computers will be undergoing The Turing Test, which will find out if computers can ‘think’… in which case, if they can, and it turns out that they’re sentient… is it morally okay to switch them off? May! Investigate!