Who needs the gym when you can round up sheep for a living?
Very belatedly, telly bosses have realised that millions of viewers really do want to see programmes about ordinary rural life. Countryfile has been one of BBC1’s biggest successes for years, but there’s long been an ingrained snobbery in the upper echelons of the Beeb, an automatic assumption that life outside the city can be comical or sinister, but never really normal.
recent shows have challenged that idea, though they have generally come from a city- dweller’s perspective. Back To The Land focused on entrepreneurs setting up off-beat, middle- class businesses in the wilds, while the ludicrous Love In The Countryside was a dating format for lonely farmers.
The Family Farm (BBC2) is a solid, entertaining investigation of life on a sheep farm in Snowdonia, albeit one that still expects that the average Briton knows nothing about working the land: ‘I thought sheeps were females and goats were boys,’ pondered one puzzled teenager, gazing around the pens.
The three couples and their children, tasting the hardships and rewards of an open-air lifestyle for the first time, are definitely enjoying a glamorous fantasy version.
Instead of wooden settles and straw mattresses under a leaky slate roof, they have luxurious beds in fashionable yurts or circular marquees. At night, electric lights make the yurts glow like spaceships in the fields, or A-list accommodation at Glastonbury.
But the labour is real enough. On the first morning, the families were up at dawn to gather the flocks, 4,000 sheep scattered across 27,000 acres of the Carneddau Mountains in North Wales.
That’s a lot of land: no wonder one of the sheepdogs hitched a lift on the handlebars of farmer Gareth Wyn Jones’s quad bike.
By lunchtime, with most of the sheep rounded up, the novices were exhausted — and the work was just beginning. every animal had to be inspected, dosed with vitamins, treated for injuries and, in some cases, marked for slaughter.
Some of the newcomers loved it. ‘We’re going to cancel the gym membership and buy some sheep,’ declared businessman Mark, 42, from Stalybridge near Manchester.
His wife Sarah, an ardent vegetarian, was less sure: her husband’s callousness to the animals destined to be mutton dismayed her.
Presenter Kate Humble, a born-again farmer herself, urged Sarah to stop being so sentimental. But the edit was evenhanded: Sarah and her daughter came across as kind-hearted and empathetic, not hysterical. The camera lingered on the faces of the doomed sheep, reminding us that these are living creatures, not just cutlets on the hoof.
emotions were a dangerous luxury on 24 Hours In Police Custody (C4), as detectives tried not to let their feelings muddy a horrific domestic abuse case.
One copper admitted that he was suffering sleepless nights, after medics raised the alarm over a girl found unconscious with bruises, burns and a fractured skull.
When she finally came round, the young woman claimed to be 19, though she looked five years younger. A local man called Ali had plied her with drink and drugs, she said, before tying her up and keeping her as a sex slave for weeks.
Prosecution was impossible, however. There was simply no evidence and the girl was confused, half-believing she had consented to some kind of ‘Fifty Shades’ sex game.
This was an inconclusive, half- told story, which was a frustration. But it gave an insight to the pressures police face daily, when they know a suspect is guilty, and fear he will commit more crimes soon — yet are powerless to act.