Why do so many Americans want to bazooka their glorious wildlife?

The most glorious landscapes on God’s earth are in the U.S. Vast chasms, churning rivers, epic mountains — all home to spectacular wildlife found nowhere else on the planet.

So it’s miserably tragic that so many Americans, given one glimpse of anything from a chipmunk to a bear, immediately want to blast away at it with guns.

It’s the same in every state. Redneck, Yankee or Good Ol’ Boy, his idea of holiday heaven is hunting moose with a bazooka.

For natural history film-makers this is a particular problem, as cameraman Casey Anderson discovered while working in the Montana Rockies on Mountain: Life At The Extreme (BBC2). he spent months tracking a mountain lioness that was using a ghost town in a remote valley to store her kills.

This was the first time these big cats had ever been known to take over deserted houses. The evidence was everywhere, with gnawed bones scattered through the rooms, but Casey couldn’t find the lioness.

But the hunters and their dogs did. he awoke one morning to the sound of baying howls and the roar of 4x4 engines. In a tense tenminute addendum to the documentary, we saw Casey dash towards the hubbub and find his lioness cornered, waiting for the killer shot.

On this occasion, the men backed off after Casey pleaded with them not to ruin months of work. But 400 mountain lions are killed as vermin in Montana every year — even though they are an endangered species.

What’s most frustrating is the sheer pointlessness of the slaughter. The hunters head home with a truckload of dead animals: stuffed or skinned, the trophies will be moth-eaten junk in a few years.

But if, like Casey, they did their shooting with long lenses, they might capture images to be seen and admired by millions.

This series includes shots of breathtaking grandeur that cry out to be watched in high definition. If you’ve got a new telly, Mountain is the perfect programme to record and play on repeat, just in case the neighbours drop round. It’s so gorgeous it hurts.

We watched clouds boiling like steam up cliff faces . . . black wolves stalking through deep snow . . . a dazzling rainbow plunging into flooded meadowland where bison grazed. You might want to turn the sound down, though, because Douglas henshall’s melodramatic narration began to grate after a while. Footage this good doesn’t need an overblown voiceover.

One old TV hand who won’t be asked to voice wildlife docs is Alan Titchmarsh, whose West Yorkshire accent seems to be getting more tremulous with the advancing years. Close your eyes and you could almost be listening to Alan Bennett.

But he’s as energetic as ever, and with Love Your Home And Garden (ITV) he has expanded his usual makeover remit to include everything from the front door to the back fence. his humour is as corny as ever. ‘have you got an ammafur?’ he asked his assistant, Katie. The naïve girl asked: ‘What’s an ammafur?’ ‘Knocking nails in!’ retorted a jubilant Alan.

For all its cheesy jokes and bizarre decor ideas (this week’s makeover appeared to be inspired by Sixties DIY mags), this is cosy, happy viewing.

The family Alan chose to help, where two young girls were caring for their blind mum, really did deserve a bit of good fortune for a change. And the reaction to their new bedrooms from nineyear-old Leoni and sister Claudia, 12, was priceless. This is telly to restore your faith.