A large measure of Scotch frisky

THE opening instalment of Outlander felt slower than a Scotsman paying for a round in an English joke.

But stick with it. Things will hot up like a Scotch bonnet up your sporran.

Outlander has Passion! Danger! Sublime Scenery! And a side order of time travel. Basically it’s Goodnight MacSweetheart.

Or, if you prefer, Poldark with plaid and extra shagging.

It starts in 1945 with British Army nurse Claire Randall enjoying a second honeymoon in Inverness with husband Frank. War kept them apart and they’re keen to make up for lost time.

Touring the dirty ruins of the MacKenzie fortress, Claire suggests he should give her a bath.

Frank replies “Why Mrs Randall, I do believe you’ve left your undergarments at home” before, ahem, yodelling in her canyon of love.

You didn’t get that on Secrets of Great British Castles.

There’s talk of pagan sacrifices but the first proper weirdness occurs when Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN Frank catches a ghostly Peeping Tom loitering outside their hotel.

Then Claire touches an ancient standing stone (a Jagger?) and is mystically whisked to 18th Century Inverness where British redcoats are clashing with Jacobite rebels.

She assumes it’s a film-set but the bullets are real.

Enter ruthless Captain Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall of His Majesty’s 8th Dragoons, her husband’s forefather, and also his dead-ringer.

If that isn’t a big enough shock, the blackguard tries to rape her.

Claire, (captivating Caitriona Balfe, pictured), is saved by rebels including dashing kilt-clad clansman Jamie.

She may be “a lady of gentle birth” but she’s no simpering damsel in distress. Claire is strong-willed, capable and by the end of part one she’s brought 20th Century medicine, knowledge and female swearing to 1743. Twentieth century shagging will surely follow.

It won’t be long before Claire is enjoying a Jacobite rising of her own. Insert your own Highland fling/kilty pleasure/ blowing-his-bagpipe reference here.

Her healthy sexuality is what stops this drama from sinking into Mills and Brigadoon territory.

Inevitably the English are the villains. But odds on the Scots will prove equally keen on violating our sassy Sassenach – never trust a MacKenzie, I say.

Based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels, Outlander serves up atmospheric fish out of water fun with lashings of romance. MARY Elizabeth Winstead, right, Fargo...Camilla, Love Island...Sean Bean in anything... Caitriona Balfe, Outlander (More4). DAVID Dickinson’s Name Your Price – two bob...Naked Attraction – Bell-Enders...Dean Gaffney, left – as welcome as a blue shark off your holiday beach. NO wonder Corrie’s Aidan was torn between Eva and Maria. Maria probably puts more effort into bedtime. Eva is classier but looks like she’d lay back and think of Burberry handbags. Any chance they could slug it out in a mud bath? DOES Fargo’s Sy Feltz have a brother called Fuzzy?

And why no cottages on Britain’s Greatest Gay Buildings? PITCH Battle having more rounds than a Geordie Shore pub crawl. TV’s political one-sidedness – it’s now so ingrained in everything the BBC does they probably don’t even notice it.