Angels on a lifeboat who saved a very lucky selfie-taking tourist

Great documentaries have important lessons to impart. they educate and enlighten us — and

Saving Lives At Sea (BBC2) had much to teach.

For a start, if you’re a tourist coming all the way from turkey to see the Queen, don’t catch a cab to Deptford. the last time royalty were spotted that deep into London’s east end was during the Blitz.

Second, if you do stray into docklands, as Ismail the Wandering turk did, don’t walk off from your friends to take selfies at night. and if you really must film yourself on your phone, don’t do it on the brink of the river.

Ismail was lucky. Not long ago, the thames was so polluted that anyone who fell in would be poisoned before they could drown. By clinging to an iron ladder on the river wall, our selfiemad tourist managed to keep his head above water until the river rescuers arrived.

How they found him in the dark was a miracle, but the tower Crew were able to haul him onto their highspeed boat, very little the worse for his adventure. ‘ People think angels are up in heaven,’ Ismail said earnestly. ‘that day, all those people were angels.’

Saving Lives is built around footage shot on helmet cameras that gives a vivid sense of exactly what rNLI lifeboat crews are seeing as they dash to the rescue.

We witness the terrifying walls of water and feel the buffeting of the spray. Microphones even pick up the barked exchanges between volunteer seamen making splitsecond decisions that could cost them their lives.

But as the show returns for a second series, it added an extra dimension. Instead of simply describing their experiences, the crews were invited to reflect on the power of the sea.

the philosophies of these men and women, who all lead ordinary working lives when they are not performing heroics, were powerful and poetic.

‘I see the sea as a living, breathing creature,’ said Nathan from the redcar crew in Yorkshire. ‘You are there at its good grace and it’s important not to become complacent, even on a calm summer’s day.’

Down the coast in Bridlington, lifeboatman Steve added: ‘the sea is like your best friend, but you have to be very aware because that best friend could soon grow horns and turn nasty.’

Saving Lives has grown since it was first screened last year. as well as recording firstperson footage, of a kind never shown on tV before, it now pays proper tribute to the people on the boats — the angels, as Ismail calls them.

also fulfilling the documentary brief to educate as it entertains, A Year On The Farm (More4) was a complete guide for anyone who fancies trying their luck at freerange turkey farming.

But if you’ve ever wondered how the farmers manage to time the breeding cycle, so that all the turkeys are ready all at once for Christmas — well, you don’t want to know. It’d put you right off your sprouts. Farmer Paul, his three student children and 86yearold dad, Derek, were passionate about poultry, and this could easily have become a comic reality doc, like BBC2’s Normal For Norfolk.

But the director honoured the show’s aim, depicting the farm as a perilously delicate machine for rearing birdmeat, that could go wrong at any stage.

One problem was aircraft: when these overgrown chickens see a passenger jet flying overhead, they think it’s a falcon and panic.

Honestly, turkeys and Ismail the turkish tourist . . . they’re both liable to end up getting a bit stuffed.

UH-HUH-HUH OF THE NIGHT: The 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death was marked with a half-hour documentary, The World’s Most Photographed (BBC2+BBC4). Is the King worth no more than that now? How quickly TV forgets.