Give the Spanish time team a little attention I

FINLAND is the happiest place on Earth.

The country in the frozen north of Europe comes top of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 2018 World Happiness Report, which is a bit of mouthful. Easier to call it the Happiness League.

The UN ranked 158 countries for the sort of life experience that includes personal finance, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom and absence of corruption.

The United States is at 18 but they have Donald Trump and obesity. The UK is at 19 but we have Brexit and a bunch of politicians for whom you have to go back to Neville Chamberlain and Peace In Our Time to find a comparison in incompetence and lack of leadership.

Or am I just being overly cynical which is, I suppose, a national trait.

Still, nice to see Finland and its five and a half million population enjoying life and the Northern Lights and a good standard of living despite having Russia to contend with on their border.

They are followed in the league table by Norway, Denmark and Iceland, all places I have only visited FOUND a perfect escape from the recent bad weather of ice, snow and disruption: Spanish time travel.

No, it wasn’t a hotel in Benidorm that hasn’t changed since 1969. This escape was via Netflix.

I was looking for a new boxed set in which to get immersed for the duration of what is left of winter, and found The Ministry of Time or, to give it it’s proper name, El Ministerio del Tiempo – see, I speak Spanish already.

I started with low expectations that were dispelled in the first 10 minutes.

This was quality TV drama, great characters, quirky plotting, wit, fine acting and scripts that never shirk from reality, which sounds daft when talking about time travel.

It follows the exploits of a team of three, plucked from different periods of the past, who undertake missions to ensure history does not change. America has tried similar formulas on TV with pathetic results.

This one deals with adult themes and emotional conflicts: would you save a person you love from a fatal car accident if it meant changing time and history?

Bad language and ethical dilemmas, an insight into Spain’s past, and making fun of most things American.

My wife Maria was dismissive when I suggested we watch it. courtesy of Scandi Noir (in its widest geographical sense) that compulsively watchable drama series of murder, intrigue and political conflict.

Great characters, actors and locations that make you realise how small the world is when you see people living ordinary lives in places like Kiruna in Sweden’s Lapland and Seyoisfjorour in Eastern Iceland (they figure in Rebecka Martinsson: Arctic Murders and Trapped respectively) and being amazed that everybody still drives in the snow without so much as a hissy fit or an amber alert on the weather forecast.

“I’ve found a series about time travel.”

“I’ve already travelled in time,” she said. “From when we were married 50 years ago until now. I’ll pass.”

This was not a comment on our marriage but an expected reaction: Maria does not like any form of what she would describe as sci fi.

So I have been watching it on my own and thinking wouldn’t it be wonderful if time travel really did exist.

It would be fascinating to visit the past to see the glory of Rome or visit a Victorian music hall or make trips back to when you were young to see if you really were a prat.

There would have to be obvious safeguards: you couldn’t slip the Lottery results to your great grandad