I shall watch it and generally be annoyed. Series 3 just hasn't been as good this time round.

You probably have, but then there are no new ideas really are there? Reynolds is an ex-physicist, so while it is soft-SF he doesn't muck about with FTL, most of his novels play around with the Fermi Paradox in some way. If you do end up being interested I'd pick up Revelation Space or one of the standalones first.