Best intentions don’t yield the best TV shows
A MAJOR survey carried out a while ago revealed the slightly worrying fact that most folk get their idea of what farming is like from what they see on the telly.
While everyone used to have grandparents, aunts or uncles or at least some distant relation living or working on a farm, with more people and fewer farmers around these days, that’s no longer the case.
I suppose that getting your notion of what a job is like from the TV isn’t confined to farming – and I guess what most of us know about detective, police and forensic work will be taken from the crime thrillers which never seen to be off the box
Similarly, programmes about hospitals, doctors, chefs, vets and other professions appear to be almost nightly viewing and colour our view of the these professions and the people working in them.
A lot of the farming programmes which regularly grace our screens are probably made with the best of intentions – and we farmers are lucky our industry gets air time.
But it has to be said that some of the stuff served up which is supposed to be about agriculture and the countryside often has farmers shouting at the gogglebox.
At this time of year these shouts are often in the form of an encouragement to hurry up and get to the weather forecast for the week ahead – but there’s also a bit of a feeling that too much time is spent on soft and fluffy reports, while the few hard-edged pieces often seem to be having a bit of a go at the farming industry.
I suppose that’s life though and if we don’t like how the industry is being portrayed, then it’s up to us to do something about it.
However few would criticise last year’s BBC series This Farming Life which followed several Scottish farming families for a year, cataloguing the ins and outs, the ups and downs and the highs and lows of their farming lives.
I believe a new series is currently at the editing stage and I heard that, as they take a year to film, a third is currently on the drawing board.
The characters in the first series were entertainingly down-to-earth and most came across as excellent ambassadors for our industry, telling it like it is.
Let’s just hope that the programme makers manage to maintain these high standards and not let too many of the weird and wacky who often begin to appear in later series of successful “real life” programmes take over the show.