The North York Moors: A Wild Year

BBC2, 9pm

Up in the North East, the North York Moors are an entrancing haven of natural beauty, where the extremes of the English winter can be felt at their fiercest, from expanses of heather and gorse on the highest hills down to the depths of the dales.

In the final part of the series we see that landscape first blanketed with snow but then stirring into life. Time-lapse photography achieves miraculous effects, as a churchyard is almost instantaneously blanketed with daffodils, while enormous moths are suddenly born.

But humanity is also on view, whether fishing or tending to sheep, indulging in cream teas, or braving a cycle ride up the steepest public road in Britain – it rises 600 metres in only a mile and is sadistically dubbed ‘the chain-breaker’. Heaven knows what it’s like to pedal up this beast: it’s exhausting just to watch.