TV the new Nature-substitute
Declan Lynch A Wild Irish Year (RTE1)
IDON’T have any scientific evidence for this, but I figure that if you took it to the TV Lab, you’d find that all these programmes about Nature in all her manifestations, are a kind of methadone treatment — since the viewing public has largely cut itself off from Nature, as that would distract them from their smartphones, they can experience this nature-substitute, this TV Nature, which mimics the real thing without all the unpleasant bits, like the weather.
Indeed the third part of the four-part series, A Wild Irish Year, gave us such outstanding images of autumn, of squirrels and badgers and the emerging fungi, you felt it would almost be detracting from all the hard work and expertise of presenters Tara Shine, Rob Gandola and Eoin Warner, to go out there yourself and to experience it with your uneducated eyes and ears.
In Avoca, Co Wicklow, they found the local butcher, the excellent Isaac Lett, who could be seen throwing tasty morsels of meat onto a roof, to be picked up by the fabulous red kites which thrive in that area.
Now I actually know Isaac Lett, but I didn’t know that he fed the kites — that’s how thorough these programme makers are, that’s a measure of the trouble they go to, for our relaxation.
David Attenborough started all this stuff a long time ago, as a public service which enlightened the multitudes about the wonders of Nature, and which raised awareness of the need to conserve whatever is left of it. But it’s a different kind of a public service that is being offered now, this TV Nature, a kind of a tranquiliser in visual form, a genre of television that has such a calming effect, it may eventually be available on prescription.
And I am referring here not just to the conventional “wildlife” programmes, but to anything with green fields and flowers and animals in it — is there a better way to lower stress levels than to watch an episode of Ear To The Ground? I think not.
Indeed the farming sector is bringing some added value to the market, because sometimes you can watch them engaging in physical work, milking cows and ploughing and the like, while you recline on the sofa wishing them all the best in their endeavours.
To this end, Countryfile on the BBC, shown on Sunday evenings to ensure that the viewers are in a state of maximum torpor, can increasingly be seen as a reasonable alternative to Valium.
I guess there’s just more stress, more anxiety in Britain because it’s bigger, and so the TV Nature crews have developed these new and more powerful sedatives in programmes like Springwatch, which are actually live, or Live! with an exclamation mark. So the viewer, in an internet-induced coma, can be persuaded that in some part of his being he is out there, right now, in the wilderness, observing at close quarters the fascinating survival strategies of a stoat.
Then there is TV Nature in her more cultivated form, particularly strong at this time of the year with the recent Chelsea Flower Show on both BBC channels throughout the week — and there’s RTE having a wonderful time at Bloom, providing an inspiration to all those viewers who would very much like to create their own gardens, if only they could stop texting, which of course they can’t.
Likewise we greatly admire the achievements of the contestants in Super Garden.
Indeed having invested several halfhours in it, that we might otherwise have been spending on Twitter, we can start to feel that there’s a little bit of Capability Brown in all of us — or perhaps in our case, with all the other pressures we have to endure in our busy lives, Incapability Brown.
The argument can also be made that people are not really looking at sports on TV any more to find out what happens — they can get that on the phone — but to rest their eyes in shades of green.
It’s not Nature but it’s TV Nature, which is better. Visit the RTE Player at rte.ie/player
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