Hammond gets tails wagging as she takes over from O’Grady
For the Love of Dogs
ITV1
★★★☆☆
We are living through canine television’s golden (retriever) era. Flick through the channels and it’s odds on that you’ll find a programme about dogs who need a home, or need to be better trained in the one they have.
For the Love of Dogs is the original, the top dog, the leader of the pack. Paul O’Grady hosted this look behind the scenes at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, for which he was an ambassador, from 2012 until his death last year. The title bore his name. These are big shoes to fill.
It makes sense, then, that Alison Hammond would be the presenter to take over. At this rate, all TV institutions will soon be under her stewardship. I’m looking forward to her stint as host of Antiques Roadshow, University Challenge, or even as landlady of the Queen Vic.
What Hammond brings to Bake Off is warmth and amiability, and on a snappy and wholesome documentary about rescue dogs, those are good qualities to possess.
With O’Grady, you had the sense that he liked dogs more than people – in an interview a few years ago, he told me as much – and that he was always on the verge of taking the dogs home with him. Sometimes, he did. That, then, is the test for me: would I watch this and suspect Hammond might be in danger of ending a day’s filming with a oneeyed nine-year-old spaniel called Nelly tucked under her arm? She doesn’t actually do that (at least not yet) but clearly, she adores dogs, and, crucially, they seem to like her, and I do believe that dogs are often good judges of character.
Hammond gets all the wagging tails. “This is the best day of my life,” she beams, as she manually burps a three-week-old puppy called Oscar. She looks delighted.
Poor Oscar was found in a bin. His full-time carer has to be up every few hours in the night to feed him. “He might get up in an hour or so, have a poo, back to bed,” says one of his carers. “What a great life,” sighs Hammond.
There is a short, sweet, fittingly un-mawkish tribute to O’Grady at the start. As a tiny brown bundle of burps falls asleep on Hammond, you get the sense that she is more than capable of carrying the torch.