Countryfile series is a celebration of the great outdoors
This was an exercise in spinning an extra episode out of an old series by looking back at the best bits from Countryfile.
This was an exercise in spinning an extra episode out of an old series by looking back at the best bits from Countryfile.
It has been a thoroughly endearing series – a sort of reality television for Mother Nature.
Television loves reality programmes because the suckers who queue up to get their silly faces on cooking, DIY or coach-travel programmes cost a lot less than proper performers.
Mother Nature is even cheaper. Just point the camera into the reddening westward sky and the sun will sink, delivering a perfect performance for zilch.
I suppose Matt Baker charges a fee, but he always looks as though he's just turned up for the fun of it.
What a national treasure he is. Whether presenting Blue Peter or the One Show, waltzing on Strictly Come Dancing or scrambling over the glens on Countryfile, he brings a rare blend of boyish eagerness and competence.
And sometimes, luck. There are few genuinely scalp-tingling moments on television but Baker's encounter with the Brocken spectre phenomenon in a Perthshire mist was one.
It happens when the sun projects your shadow on to a white background of mist. Baker's guide, Donald Riddell, has spent years in the mountains and never seen it. Suddenly, their two vast figures were shape-shifting in the mists across the valley.
"You are a good-luck charm!" exclaimed Riddell. Unscripted and unforgettable.
Julia Bradbury took to the wild river Wye, proving once again that rapids are much bigger and scarier inside the canoe than they are from the bank.
The Wye has the distinction of being the birthplace of English tourism in the 18th century. Until then, folk admired the neatness and straight lines of cultivation and regarded untamed mountains and gorges as ugly and threatening.
How times change. Reporting from Ennerdale in the Lake District, Ellie Harrison described it as "a secret valley, well off the tourist vale." You could almost hear five million viewers making their minds up to swamp the place.
Later, a new series of Upstairs, Downstairs began. It tries hard, setting the lives of ordinary and upper-crust folk sharing the same grand house against the shadows of the approaching Second World War. But it suffers from the twin problems of not being as engaging as either Downton Abbey or the original ITV Upstairs Downstairs of blessed memory.
In order to succeed, any drama series must have characters you genuinely care about. The excellent Call the Midwife which ended its run last night, was stuffed full of them, but Upstairs Downstairs has none.
On Saturday at 6pm, for reasons beyond all comprehension, both BBC News and Sky News cancelled their normal headlines and news service for live coverage of Whitney Houston's funeral.
If you wanted to know what was actually going on in the world, and have Freeview, you could always turn to Al Jazeera's English service.
This, in a measured and professional way, examined the continuing war in Syria and the fear of nuclear proliferation in Iran and did not try to kid us that the funeral of an American singer was the biggest global event of the day.
Peter Rhodes
