TV review Big Yin finds just the right place to park his bike

BILLY Connolly is not so much taking a daunder down memory lane as running through a marathon’s worth of memories. Earlier this month

STV paid tribute with Billy Connolly’s Ultimate World Tour. Last night BBC2 took him back to his roots in Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland (BBC2, 9pm).

Scotland has not always embraced the Big Yin with such gusto. His language, his humour, hobnobbing with the royals and Parky, he was the tall poppy that many wanted to cut down to size. Glasgow had it trickiest. Connolly reflected the city in all its glory, and otherwise. It was the otherwise part that was the problem for some. In his routines, Connolly talked about the drunkenness, the violence, the sectarianism, all that dirty laundry washed in public.

Made in Scotland showed he still had a clear-eyed view of Glesga. “It’s the blether, the laughs, the deep respect for culture that makes me love my hometown for what it is, not what it could be,” he said. But age had mellowed him. If anything, he was too soft on Glasgow’s problem with drink. He spoke of his own sobriety only briefly. There was nothing, either, about his appallingly unhappy childhood, although there is another film, next Friday, to come.

This was not the kind of film that went looking for trouble. Complete with tributes from the likes of Michael Grade, Val McDermid and Tracey Ullman, the story it told was a familiar one, but Connolly’s narration was inspired. He painted wonderful pictures with words, as when he described a dense crowd, exiting Parkhead, lifting him off his feet so that he “levitated” his way homewards.

love – discovering along the way an interesting courtship technique among wombats. Then, at the North Pole, BlizzardCam, SnowballCam and SnowCam get within a paw’s swipe of a polar bear play-fight. Finally, on the other side of the planet, PenguinCams slide into action, showing there are no animals quite like emperors when it comes to parental devotion.

Les Miserables (BBC1, 9pm)

It doesn’t have any songs – although some fans of the musical may find themselves singing them anyway – but the BBC’s new six-part adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 19th-century novel does boast an impressive cast and a script by Andrew Davies, the man behind the 1995 adaptation of Pride and