The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review: Sunday politics shows wake to a new host on the block
ALISON ROWAT
EVERY Sunday morning it is the same: myself, Sophy and Andrew. I’m on the sofa, they are on television in Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday and BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.
Usually there is not much to tempt a viewer over to the other sides, but that was all change this week with the arrival of
The threesome has become a four. Is that even legal on a Sunday? Given Covid-19 restrictions, probably not.
What harm could there possibly be, though, in Alan Titchmarsh,
The Titchmeister, The Titch? He is so easy like Sunday morning they have given him a whole two hours in the schedules.
With HQ set up at Manor Farm in Hampshire, Love Your Weekend aimed to “celebrate everything that’s great about our British countryside”.
That translated to a magazine programme that was a little bit Countryfile, with a touch of The Repair Shop, a drop of The One
Show and, for old timers’ sake,
Pebble Mill (which Alan used to present in the early-1990s).
His first guests were Michael Gove and Yvette Cooper. No, not really. There is no danger of such big political beasts migrating from Marr and Ridge. But who knows? Give it time. Instead, Alan played gracious host to singer-actor Jason Donovan and Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood. The chat was, shall we say, undemanding, with Craig telling us twice that he lived just half an hour away, and Jason sharing his views on gardening. “I honestly see the garden as a piece of art.” Like I said, Andy and Sophy have nothing to worry about.
There were segments on keeping hens, how to build a chicken run (the show has a resident carpenter, fancy), composting and much else. It was well suited to Sunday morning as you could come and go, peel the spuds or have a snooze, and not miss anything important. If only all television was so considerate.
Okay all you mutts out there, paws against the wall. You are busted. I thought
was going to be the same pad through familiar territory: how humans met wolves, domesticated them, we all evolved and now there is Crufts on the telly, etc. It was that initially (not the Crufts bit), but it became so much more.
Narrated by Mark “Early Doors” Benton, the programme bounced around the world taking in research into dogs and how they differed from wolves. What made one lot man’s best friend while the other stayed out in the cold?
It was fascinating stuff. Did you know, for example, that domesticated dogs, unlike wolves, have an eyebrow muscle that they use to give us those “puppy dog eyes”? Since we are hard-wired to respond to anything big-eyed and baby-like we rush to tend to their needs. We are being played, folks, like violins.
The programme eventually arrived at the key question, one many a soppy owner has asked themselves. To wit, are dogs living with us solely because we feed them, or are they with us because they love us? Some complicated stuff with an MRI scan followed. The result doubtless led to a tickled tummy and a treat for whatever bundle of fur was sitting beside you on the sofa.
More animal magic in
Much like Channel 4’s The Secret
Life of the Zoo, the programme mixed interviews with keepers and vets with footage of creatures great and small. It is not easy to break the mould when making a show about a zoo.
This new eight-part series was filmed at Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park, the latter having some very cool wolves. The fanged wonders kept a close eye on the keepers who entered their enclosure to do some maintenance, and vice versa. You wouldn’t have to do that with Labradoodles (although Yorkshire Terriers, never turn your back on them).
Elsewhere, one of the keepers, Karen, was having trouble with Philip the guinea fowl, who kept trying to shred her legs with his beak. No reason why; she was a very nice lady. As was
What’s the story?
Landward.
Tell me more.
The BBC Scotland farming and countryside programme returns for its autumn run. An ongoing theme of the new series will be to shine a spotlight on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected rural Scotland.
What can we expect?
The opening episode comes from Ben Eighe National Nature Reserve in Wester Ross where Dougie Vipond takes a stroll through the ancient Caledonian pine forest and sees how the next generation of trees are being grown using seed from the remaining “granny” pines. Elsewhere, he will be examining how visitor attractions and businesses are emerging from lockdown.
What is the rest of the gang up to?
Euan McIlwraith visits Mull to learn more about the geology of its coastline. He also meets residents living in the Morvern Peninsula who are trying to mount a community buyout for a neglected estate.
Anything else?
Arlene Stuart will be investigating littering in Scotland’s wild landscapes and why it appears to have become worse as lockdown has eased. Meanwhile, Anne Lundon will travel to Ballachulish to delve into why it was dubbed the “dirtiest village in Scotland” during the early-1970s.
When can I watch?
Landward, BBC Scotland, Thursdays, 8pm.
SUSAN SWARBRICK
ALISON ROWAT
ONE of the most crowded markets on television is the “blues and twos” – blue lights, two tones – sector. Be it police, fire or ambulance, it seems we cannot get enough of dramas and documentaries set in the worlds of the emergency services.
Few programmes have lasted as long, or kept up the same quality, as Channel 4’s 24 Hours in A&E, which first aired in 2011.
Filmed in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, London, the format is simple but effective, with cameras following cases from first call to eventual outcome. Interspersed with the action in A&E are interviews with patients and medical staff recalling what happened.
All human life is in an episode of 24 Hours, and viewers keep coming back for more. The new series is the 21st.
It is a bold blues and twos programme that takes on the mighty 24 Hours, but the makers of
have shown themselves smart enough to squeeze into a gap in the market and make it their own.
Starting its run four years ago, the Bafta-winning Ambulance follows crews around the country. The new series starts in London; previous ones have followed teams in Manchester, Liverpool and the West Midlands.
Although this new series was filmed in the autumn of 2019, before Covid-19 changed the world, the essentials of the job remain: getting to people in need as quickly as possible.
Over the course of an hour we see crews race to a building site where someone has had a seizure; tend to a footballer with a broken ankle (the particularly squeamish might want to look away at that point); deal with a couple of panic attacks; and an unconscious drug user whose pal insists on “helping” the crew.
Running through the programme is the scourge of