Browse content similar to Welly Telly: The Countryside on Television. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
About five years ago, something strange happened. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
Television fell in love with the British countryside, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
its people and its animals. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
We are now in the midst of an all-pervading television world, | 0:00:11 | 0:00:17 | |
where every time you turn something on, it's some | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
creature giving birth, rather messily. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:22 | |
There it is! | 0:00:22 | 0:00:24 | |
'The countryside has moved from the niche to the mainstream.' | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
People are beginning to view the countryside in a different way. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:32 | |
It's television that's done it. I don't think there's any doubt at all. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
The programmes have proliferated - more and more and more and more. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
So what lies behind this agricultural love-in? | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
What made the metropolitan media embrace the rural idyll? | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
The heart of Britain does not reside in the countryside. It's an idea we ought to disabuse ourselves of. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:57 | |
Is this the real thing? Or will it all end in tears? | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
I don't feel that television understands the countryside | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
or, I think, makes much effort to understand the countryside. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
Tonight, we salute the heroes of welly telly... | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
Jack Hargreaves was one of the iconographic country characters. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
We relive some landmark shows... | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
I remember watching One Man And His Dog, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
thinking, "Is this actually for real?" | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
..as we tell the story of the British countryside on television. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
MOO | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
# I see trees that are green... # | 0:01:30 | 0:01:36 | |
Say what you like about the British countryside, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
but a lot of people on television like it - a lot. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:42 | |
What a wonderful place the British countryside is. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
I've been to more than 80 countries and I think the British countryside | 0:01:44 | 0:01:48 | |
is the best place on Earth. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:50 | |
There's something inherently British about hedgerows and oak trees, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:58 | |
big swathes of green fields and meadows and butterflies. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
Lately, we've been inundated with shows about shores, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
sheep and sheer drops... | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
Wow! | 0:02:09 | 0:02:10 | |
..as if television's been trying to answer a question of its own devising. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:15 | |
Is it more than just a feeling, or is there something truly special | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
about our countryside and our wildlife? | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
What makes the British countryside special? | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
Everything is there for a reason. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
You may not understand what the reason is. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
The hedgerows were there because they kept stock in one place. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:37 | |
Barns fulfilled a function. Little bridges were built for a reason. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:42 | |
Everything is there for a reason. It is just accidentally glorious. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:46 | |
I suppose what's so special about it | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
is that it is in such close proximity to all the towns. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
MUSIC: "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks | 0:02:53 | 0:02:56 | |
It wasn't always this way. | 0:02:56 | 0:02:58 | |
Town and country may be close, but at times they seem worlds apart. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
In the early days of television, | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
the countryside didn't get much of a look in. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
Since the Second World War, the work needed to be done with inner cities. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:14 | |
The countryside was more or less left to its own devices in the 1950s | 0:03:14 | 0:03:20 | |
and the 1960s. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:22 | |
It never really, you know, never really broke the meniscus. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:26 | |
The heroes of '60s telly were almost all urban, | 0:03:26 | 0:03:30 | |
and so was the spirit of the times. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
The '60s, in the first half, is the apogee of white heat, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:41 | |
of the technological revolution. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
Harold Wilson, Labour Prime Minister appealing to suburban voters, | 0:03:43 | 0:03:48 | |
promising to build this new Britain, scientific and dynamic. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:53 | |
In that Britain, the countryside almost disappears from view. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
In terms of art and fashion and music, it's all urban. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
To be fair, there were practical difficulties. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
Television was still a young medium and didn't get out much. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
If you worked in television | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
in the '50s and '60s, most of your work would have been in studios. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:16 | |
There was very little location work. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
Cameras were cumbersome. It was expensive to shoot on location. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
It was easier to have a studio show in which you held up photographs of the country! | 0:04:22 | 0:04:28 | |
Hello. Do you hear that bird singing in the garden? | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
BIRDSONG | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
Well, here's a picture of it. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
Yes, of course. It's a robin. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
When TV emerged from its urban habitat, it was often to take potshots at country pursuits. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:49 | |
The great moment has almost arrived. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
Still enjoying the protection of the law, | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
the quarry picking at their last breakfast. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
In the ensuing moments, the principle of noblesse oblige will be gloriously vindicated. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:05 | |
Whatever your mamby-pamby queer pinko may say, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
they enjoy it every bit as much as we do. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
Farming was seen as unglamorous. Farmers weren't TV friendly. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:19 | |
Or even friendly at all. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
I freely admit, in my childhood days, it was the belligerent farmer that I knew. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:28 | |
I used to potter around as a kid. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
Inevitably, you find yourself on farmland. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
To a lot of farmers, that's trespassing. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
"Oi! Get off my land!" | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
That was the way that I thought of nearly all farmers for a long time! | 0:05:39 | 0:05:45 | |
Television tried bring farming into the mainstream, with mixed results. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:53 | |
Welcome to the first round of our farming quiz, Top Of The Farm '69. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:59 | |
'Ted Moult was an iconographic country character.' | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
A gentleman farmer who was wheeled out. Very good value. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
Vic, how would you contract - I hope you never do - Weil's disease? | 0:06:06 | 0:06:11 | |
'His farming quiz programme | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
'was terribly scientific, almost like a sketch show now.' | 0:06:20 | 0:06:24 | |
I th... I'm s... | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
There's incredibly complicated questions about silage and tillage. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:33 | |
A disease of cows, called teart, has been known for a long time. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:38 | |
But what's the basic cause of the disease? | 0:06:38 | 0:06:42 | |
BUZZER | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
Parasitic bronchitis. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:58 | |
'Fraid not, Vic. It's scouring caused by excessive micronutrients. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:04 | |
# The city is a great big smoking monster | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
# Man is its slave by night and day... # | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
After years of neglect, television was about to embrace a myth | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
that's as old as the hills - the rural idyll. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
We refer to ourselves as "a green and pleasant land". | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
Brand Britain is actually a country brand. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
# Say what you will | 0:07:28 | 0:07:30 | |
# The countryside is still | 0:07:30 | 0:07:33 | |
# The only place where I could settle down | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
# Troubles there are so much rarer | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
# Out of town... # | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
In America, it's small towns where the real America is, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
where you go to find America. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
In Britain, it would be the countryside. I don't know why that should be. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:55 | |
For people trying to make a living from the countryside, | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
it is far from idyllic a lot of the time. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
But for many of us, it is this idyll. It's an escape. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:08 | |
With fresh air, with sunshine, with birdsong, | 0:08:08 | 0:08:12 | |
rolling down hills in long grass! | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
It took a technological revolution to transform television's relationship to the countryside. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:21 | |
This is the BBC television service. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
We now present another experimental transmission in colour. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
'The countryside becomes important once television goes into colour. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:33 | |
'There was very little point,' | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
until the technology to transmit pictures of it that were attractive, | 0:08:35 | 0:08:41 | |
and also when outside broadcasts became common in the mid '70s. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:46 | |
When we first had colour, we used to sit in front of our screens | 0:08:46 | 0:08:50 | |
and watch a piece of grass, there might have been a flower on it, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:55 | |
in absolute amazement. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
It wasn't a show. It was just a picture of grass and a flower. We thought, "Isn't this wonderful?" | 0:08:57 | 0:09:03 | |
Alongside the coming of colour came a cultural change. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
By the early '70s, it seemed we were falling out of love with the towns. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
As often in British history, the pendulum swings. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
You have the resurgence of the countryside - the romantic, organic hippy movement, back to the land. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:25 | |
The return to communes, the self-sufficiency movement, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:30 | |
and that is a violet reaction against the white-heat ethos | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
of the early '60s. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
The turning point, I think, in our lifetimes, was 1973. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:43 | |
It was the oil crisis that stopped this vision of the future. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:49 | |
Futurism actually hinged on oil. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
You needed oil to make plastic, and the big expression of that was The Good Life. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:59 | |
Tom in The Good Life, his job is to design plastic toys | 0:10:03 | 0:10:08 | |
that are given away in cereal packets. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
A job that is somehow hugely suggestive of this debased, tawdry | 0:10:11 | 0:10:16 | |
world of advertising and modernity. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
It wouldn't be any better if I was designing something useful. I'd still be a cog in a machine. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:25 | |
It's quality of life, that's what I'm after. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
If I could just get it right. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
A couple drop out of the rat race | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
and decide to be self-sufficient in Surbiton, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
much to the chagrin of their neighbours, a very snooty couple. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
If one of you so much as sniggers, I'm going straight back indoors. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
'Gradually, the neighbours, because they're friends, | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
'they muck in, and the clash at the beginning soon becomes' | 0:10:54 | 0:10:59 | |
the four of them working against all other forms of system. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
Weak and feeble, am I? | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
The '70s were a very regressive period where the country became more important. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:19 | |
I hereby declare our first harvest well and truly gathered. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:25 | |
'In popular culture terms,' | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
that was when you've got Tom and Barbara and, more or less, overnight, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
the look shifted from Bridget Riley and Op Art into Laura Ashley | 0:11:33 | 0:11:38 | |
'and kind of "hedgerow art". | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
'Suddenly, we turned the clock back.' | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
That's not a remote thought. I think we went through the same thing about 18 months ago. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:50 | |
By the mid '70s, the countryside was in every living room, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
complete with countryside characters to show us around. | 0:11:55 | 0:12:00 | |
For someone my age, the greatest countryside icon was Jack Hargreaves | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
who had a number of programmes, most notably Out Of Town. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
Each week, he'd look at old crafts, like whittling, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
or he'd go for a ramble with his dog. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
He had a very amiable slow delivery about him. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
If you were a collector of agricultural antiques | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
you'd tell me that was a billhook as I've done a billhook's job with it, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:30 | |
chopping wood, but you'd be wrong. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
You'd have an excuse, though, because it's quite like a billhook. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
There are many kinds of billhooks... | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
'That went on for years.' | 0:12:39 | 0:12:41 | |
The implication was that, if you went out in the countryside, | 0:12:41 | 0:12:46 | |
there was lots of things you could do, from fishing to ferreting. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:50 | |
He was easy to spoof. Even of its time, it seemed that | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
it had passed its prime, but there was something watchable about it. | 0:12:55 | 0:13:00 | |
Alone for the first time in his life, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
he is walking up to meet something he has no knowledge of. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
There's about 25 experienced women interested in him. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:13 | |
It's like turning a schoolboy loose backstage at the Folies Bergere. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
He has absolutely no idea of what he's for | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
or what they want. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:23 | |
It's going to be an extraordinary 24 hours while he finds out. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:29 | |
If television had gone on making those programmes | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
there wouldn't be this huge divide between town and country. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
I think what happened is, with no real portrayal of the countryside, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
people in towns have grown up knowing nothing about it. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
MUSIC: Theme to "One Man And His Dog" | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
To the connoisseur of welly telly, | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
One Man was outstanding in its field. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
This is Buttermere, one of the most lovely spots in the Lake District. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
It's the ideal place for watching sheepdogs work. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
In a green field below me, they're going to start a series of trials specially organised for television. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:10 | |
I remember watching One Man And His Dog and thinking, "Is this actually for real?" | 0:14:10 | 0:14:16 | |
"Is this a really long skit that's going to have a punchline in it?" | 0:14:16 | 0:14:21 | |
Now, that is shedding! That is like slicing it off! | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
Then I realised, "This is actually a television programme." | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
It just seemed amazing, watching sheep being rounded up by a dog. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:36 | |
Ten out of ten for the shed. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
That maximum puts Raymond one and a half points in the lead. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
He's got to be on his toes here, Phil. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
Look at it! Streaming in! | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
Oh, yes! | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
Yes! Ten out of ten! | 0:14:53 | 0:14:55 | |
Its presenter had a reputation as "the baddest man in the Dales". | 0:14:55 | 0:14:59 | |
There's a whistle for "go to the right", one for "go to the left", | 0:14:59 | 0:15:04 | |
one to "come on", to follow on up to the sheep, | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
and one to "stay", and this is how its done. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
WHISTLES | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
'When Phil Drabble was doing it, it was a brilliant programme.' | 0:15:13 | 0:15:18 | |
He brought total authenticity to it. People in the countryside listened to what he had to say. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:24 | |
And I was in | 0:15:31 | 0:15:32 | |
London for three years - the worst three of my life. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
I just didn't laugh | 0:15:36 | 0:15:37 | |
at the same things as these sharp Cockneys. I don't think fast enough for them. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:42 | |
Phil Drabble was the real thing. I think that's why people loved it. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:51 | |
Along with the new love of the countryside, | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
came a fascination with those who lived there and new ways of telling their stories. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:03 | |
CHURCH BELLS RING | 0:16:03 | 0:16:05 | |
There's been lots of films about the country. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
One is Peter Hall and Rex Pike's groundbreaking Ackenfield, | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
which looks at the life of a Suffolk village, | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
but has the villagers playing their own ancestors. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
Ackenfield is about living in Suffolk and working on a farm. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:29 | |
Of course, an author could write a screenplay. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:34 | |
We could shoot that screenplay with actors imitating Suffolk dialect | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
and learning to shear a sheep or plough a field or drive a tractor, | 0:16:38 | 0:16:44 | |
or whatever the agricultural skills may be. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
The one thing I was clear about, it was no good doing it. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
It's one of the first lavish colour films | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
that gave the countryside its due. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:56 | |
Beautifully done. They were there for months filming. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
'Low Birk Hatt Farm in Baldersdale. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
'It's been Hannah Hauxwell's home since she was three years old. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
'Today, she farms its 80 acres alone.' | 0:17:09 | 0:17:12 | |
TV's new obsession led to some memorable films of the '70s. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:20 | |
It's all right, thank you. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:31 | |
Hannah Hauxwell's an interesting character. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
She lived a very sequestered life | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
in this remote rural area. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:42 | |
'In the house, there's no electricity, no water on tap. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
'When she wants a cup of tea, | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
'she goes to the stream in the field where the cattle graze.' | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
What television did, after documenting that life, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
celebrating its separateness from the urban 20th century, | 0:17:57 | 0:18:02 | |
it proceeded to send her out across the world, having experiences, | 0:18:02 | 0:18:07 | |
the very experiences that it valued her for not having had. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
What did you notice when you came to the city, about the difference | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
between there and life in the country? | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
I think, maybe, of course, the traffic and the noise. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:22 | |
And I think, the little that I've been out in the town, | 0:18:22 | 0:18:27 | |
people rush about and they don't look at you.... | 0:18:27 | 0:18:32 | |
'What's interesting is that it seems to replicate' | 0:18:32 | 0:18:35 | |
the kinds of anthropological movements, experiments really, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
conducted on indigenous peoples in the 19th century. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:44 | |
If TV didn't know what to make of country people, it could make fun of them. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:49 | |
Noble savage wasn't the only stock character. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
The classic stereotype is the yokel. It's deeply rooted in English culture. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:58 | |
You go all the way back to Shakespeare. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:01 | |
In Henry IV, part II, they stop on the way to the Battle of Shrewsbury | 0:19:01 | 0:19:06 | |
and meet all these rural yokels. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
Falstaff finds them hilarious, because they're so adrift. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
That is exactly what you get in 20th-century sit-coms. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:18 | |
They buried Jack yesterday, in Shropshire. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
-What part? -All of him. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:24 | |
These guys have a sort of home-spun wisdom that belies the fact that you think they're just dense. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:32 | |
They're probably brighter than you are and that's part of the joke. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
'Ere's one. Think of a number between one and three. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
-Oh, I can't do that. -Why? | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
I shall 'ave me dinner between one and three. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
Once situation comedies actually started to be made on location, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:57 | |
then much is made of the location, probably no more so than Last Of The Summer Wine, | 0:19:57 | 0:20:04 | |
which is set in the wild open spaces. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
'The camera lovingly picks out the tiny characters.' | 0:20:07 | 0:20:11 | |
I used to come here and ponder the meaning of life. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
-I used to come up here for rabbits. -Given up girls? | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
Ee, I've had more lasses than you've had handbags. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
It's moments like this that make you realise | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
just how bloody draughty it is! | 0:20:24 | 0:20:27 | |
'The point about these three was to be | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
'that they were just like young people.' | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
Getting their childhood back, being fancy-free, days to fill. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:39 | |
And when that clicked, that was it. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
I've never written old men, always kids. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
For nearly four decades, it was the show that wouldn't die. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
How do you know when you're dead? | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
-You're expected to take the hint when they bury you. -No. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
When you think about it, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
there's a lot to being dead. It's not summat any fool can do. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
Else why are there so many still alive? | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
'It's an interesting phenomenon.' | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
It ran for ever and it was, essentially, rural. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:12 | |
It was extremely rural. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:14 | |
It was almost embarrassingly rural. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
Its main character held his trousers up with sash cord. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:21 | |
It went through the Thatcher years, through the 1990s, Cool Britannia. It was always there. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:27 | |
If there is an 'eaven, do you reckon you can take your ferrets? | 0:21:27 | 0:21:32 | |
'Summer Wine lasted because it stayed the same. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:35 | |
'It's its own barmy universe' | 0:21:35 | 0:21:37 | |
without any reference to the real world. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
'What it looks back to is this "vanished England" | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
'of tea shops and old folk. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
'All these other shows have come and gone.' | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
That still appeals to people. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
Probably, that was less about country and more about nostalgia. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
Even down to the music, it was about a gentler, simpler time. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:03 | |
By the late '70s, the link between the countryside and the past | 0:22:03 | 0:22:08 | |
was well established and would give TV some of its best-loved series. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:13 | |
One that really made an impression on me | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
was All Creatures Great And Small - I loved it! | 0:22:16 | 0:22:19 | |
My wife and I looked forward to watching it together. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
When we were thinking, "Where shall we move?" | 0:22:22 | 0:22:26 | |
Yorkshire Dales was a part I wanted to see and we moved there. | 0:22:26 | 0:22:30 | |
The experience of living there was true to watching it on TV. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:34 | |
40, 50 years difference in time, but it was very much, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
in terms of the spirit and look, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
it was what All Creatures Great And Small presented. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
I'm sorry, Mr Hanshaw. This cow has a broken pelvis. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
Damaged nerve endings, as well, I shouldn't wonder. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
'I loved All Creatures Great And Small.' | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
That was the reality of things as it was for a Yorkshire vet | 0:22:53 | 0:22:58 | |
in very tough farming conditions. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:00 | |
They don't make programmes like that now. The most you get is Midsomer Murders! | 0:23:00 | 0:23:06 | |
Get her to the butcher's as quickly as possible. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
'It is a sort of blueprint.' | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
It was easy to say, "Let's put the police in the country." "Let's put a doctor in the country." | 0:23:12 | 0:23:18 | |
'"Let's put a detective in the country."' | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
So, TV had found a place in its heart for the countryside - Sunday night. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:27 | |
What people want on a Sunday night, is a family audience | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
that wants to luxuriate in a warm bath of schmaltz | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
before they get up again and begin their working week. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
'Television has always given them, on Sunday nights, programmes that are often nostalgic and always rural.' | 0:23:39 | 0:23:45 | |
A programme set in Salford would never have the same effect. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:50 | |
-How was your journey from London? -Long. The countryside is beautiful. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:57 | |
If rural dramas delivered big audiences at peak time, | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
the realities of country life were less appealing, put out to grass on children's television. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:07 | |
In 1977, a BBC film crew arrived at the farm to film a dramatisation | 0:24:07 | 0:24:14 | |
of a children's story called A Traveller In Time. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:16 | |
The farm was buzzing with cameramen, technicians, actors. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:21 | |
It hit me. This is the world I would love to be involved in. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
119,000! | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
That is the colossal total of leaflets we've sent to people | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
wanting our Blue Peter sledge... | 0:24:34 | 0:24:36 | |
'It's the best job' | 0:24:36 | 0:24:37 | |
in broadcasting, being a Blue Peter presenter. | 0:24:37 | 0:24:39 | |
What a beautiful pair of knockers. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
It was like Hollywood, the BBC, having come down from Derbyshire. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:47 | |
With all this snow, you can imagine what it's like in the Antarctic. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:51 | |
Some of the heaviest falls have been where my father's farm is. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
Having emerged from the countryside Simon was sent back | 0:24:55 | 0:24:59 | |
to teach a generation of city kids that milk didn't start in bottles. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:04 | |
Biddy, the editor, realised there was a rich source of material. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
We would come and film during the seasons. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
Blue Peter had never done anything like that before. We filmed lambing, shearing, milking cows. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:19 | |
In 1984, one of the last old-fashioned severe winters, | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
Janet Ellis came up to film and it was a charming film. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
Wherever you pointed the camera, it looked wonderful. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:34 | |
Then Janet asked me about this harness attached to the ram. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
It's called a ram harness. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:42 | |
There's a marker in there, so when he serves the sheep | 0:25:42 | 0:25:47 | |
it leaves a mark so you can tell whether the sheep are pregnant. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:52 | |
Janet says, "They should do that at the BBC!" People with marks on their backs! | 0:25:52 | 0:25:58 | |
There was a slightly patronising attitude towards the countryside. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:04 | |
Don't remember any programmes. There was a farming programme on Sunday. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:08 | |
It was just farming, nothing to do with countryside issues. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:13 | |
Just for farmers. Not exciting. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
When the programme was replaced by a show aimed equally at townies, there'd be trouble. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:22 | |
Now we begin a new series aimed at all who enjoy the outdoor life - | 0:26:22 | 0:26:27 | |
Countryfile. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
We were the first rural current affairs programme in Britain, | 0:26:29 | 0:26:35 | |
if not in Europe. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
I met a lot of resistance at first | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
from farmers and other people in the agricultural business. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:44 | |
They resented the fact that they'd lost their programme | 0:26:44 | 0:26:48 | |
which had been going for a quarter of a century, | 0:26:48 | 0:26:51 | |
incorporated into this new thing looking at all sorts of aspects of country life. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:56 | |
First, here's the latest news from the countryside. | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
Eventually, they came to see our point of view. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:05 | |
It was much more important for farmers to address the wider nation | 0:27:05 | 0:27:11 | |
than just their fellow farmers. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:14 | |
For 20 years, Countryfile enjoyed the kind of cult audience that only a daytime slot can give you. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:23 | |
When I was on Newsround, I was aware that it was becoming an institution. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:28 | |
To my surprise, exactly the same thing happened with Countryfile. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
We heard about students watching it | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
recovering from a heavy Saturday night. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
Countryfile eased them back into reality. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
Hello. Welcome to Countryfile. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:46 | |
Tonight, we'll be walking, | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
and fishing on the river, but first, here's Whisky and Brandy Bolland, | 0:27:49 | 0:27:53 | |
who found something rather unusual | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
AS A DALEK: ..down on the farm. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
Countryfile was becoming a voice in the wilderness. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
The heroes of '80s telly were almost all urban, and so was the spirit of the times. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:09 | |
The Good Life effect was wearing off. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
No! No! No! | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
We're not watching The bleeding Good Life! | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
Bloody! Bloody! Bloody! | 0:28:17 | 0:28:19 | |
The rural idyll is really, really interesting. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:23 | |
It comes in and out of fashion. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
You were seduced by Tom and Barbara | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
so you thought, "I'm going to give that a go." | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
So you buy John Seymour's book | 0:28:32 | 0:28:34 | |
and suddenly realise that, unlike Tom and Barbara, | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
you would be killing your livestock. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
But there were darker forces at play. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
As the '80s gave way to the '90s, farming was plagued by diseases | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
you seldom saw on All Creatures Great And Small. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
I joined in 1989. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:52 | |
My arrival seemed to coincide with the start of a series of animal health crises, starting with BSE. | 0:28:52 | 0:29:00 | |
Then salmonella, lysteria, bovine TB and, of course, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:05 | |
the disaster of foot and mouth in 2001. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
BSE and foot and mouth caused untold hardship and left the countryside once again looking unsexy. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:14 | |
In 2001, I was asked to make a programme called Town And Country. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:19 | |
It was the time of the foot and mouth crisis, looking at the gaps between town and country. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:26 | |
I spoke to a taxi driver, interviewed him in the cab, and he said, | 0:29:26 | 0:29:31 | |
"I'm not really interested in the fact that you've got foot and mouth. It's not an issue for me." | 0:29:31 | 0:29:37 | |
There was this perception that there was the town, here was the country | 0:29:37 | 0:29:42 | |
and there was not much interest or knowledge of farmer's problems. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:47 | |
It wasn't just about disease. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:49 | |
There was a growing ideological divide between town and country. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:54 | |
There's always been a political edge. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:57 | |
The countryside has been Conservative, with a big C. | 0:29:57 | 0:30:01 | |
The shires have tended to vote Conservative, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
whereas big towns, just look at an electoral map, from almost any period in our history, | 0:30:04 | 0:30:09 | |
the cities and towns tend to be red and the countryside blue. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
What you got in the 1990s, when Labour were in power from '97, | 0:30:12 | 0:30:17 | |
with big majorities, was a lot of people in the countryside | 0:30:17 | 0:30:19 | |
felt their interests weren't being listened to. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
That's why you had the emergence of the Countryside Alliance. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:28 | |
With the rise of the Alliance, it seemed town and country had never been further apart. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:33 | |
The Countryside Alliance, not really a political | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
movement, just the whingeing sound that the right makes | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
when it's out of power. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:40 | |
The frustration that Labour had the temerity to be in power for a decade. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:45 | |
I went on all the marches, the two London marches, the Hyde Park rally. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:51 | |
It was the voice of the countryside. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
The battle lines were drawn up over fox hunting. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
You don't have to live somewhere to know the facts, if there's cruelty, | 0:30:57 | 0:31:02 | |
cruel sports going on, if there's ruining of woodlands and so forth. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:08 | |
It wasn't just fox hunting. The countryside felt very strongly | 0:31:08 | 0:31:13 | |
that they were completely disenfranchised and that | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
the Government was not supporting farmers or the countryside, generally. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:18 | |
Tony Blair wanted to turn the countryside into a theme park. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:22 | |
These were dark days for welly telly. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
Out Of Town had long since passed into broadcasting history | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
and although One Man made it, things were never quite the same. | 0:31:29 | 0:31:34 | |
I very much enjoyed my custodianship of it. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
As the years went by, I presented it for five years, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:44 | |
increasingly it became more like Jeux Sans Frontiers | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
and less like sheepdog trialling, and I walked away from it. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:52 | |
When the countryside did return to our screens, what we got | 0:31:52 | 0:31:57 | |
was something a lot less cosy. | 0:31:57 | 0:32:00 | |
-Would you like me to take you to the country? -Yes, please! | 0:32:00 | 0:32:05 | |
'I've always been convinced' | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
that television is largely a metropolitan-based industry. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:12 | |
With Clarissa And The Countryman, we both felt, because Johnny's been a sheep farmer for years and years, | 0:32:12 | 0:32:19 | |
that the actual country itself was not being portrayed. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
Starring Clarissa and Johnny Scott, complete with culling and coursing, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
here was the countryside, red in tooth and claw. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:34 | |
The show didn't pull back from the townies' taboo - dead animals. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
'I remember filming at the Highland Show one year.' | 0:32:38 | 0:32:43 | |
I wanted to film the carcass room. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:45 | |
The carcass display is magnificent, one of the finest I've ever seen. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:50 | |
They wouldn't film it. I said, "Why not?" They said, "They're dead." | 0:32:50 | 0:32:56 | |
I said, "Why do you think there are all these magnificent animals parading in the ring? | 0:32:56 | 0:33:03 | |
"What do you think they're for? They're not pets." | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
This was, I think, the first time that I became aware | 0:33:06 | 0:33:11 | |
quite how...estranged | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
television was from the reality of death and the reality of food. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:19 | |
The show attracted lots of viewers, but divided opinion. | 0:33:19 | 0:33:24 | |
'Clarissa Dickson Wright is sort of the embodiment of every Telegraph reader's fantasy | 0:33:24 | 0:33:31 | |
'about what women of the British countryside used to be. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
'She's like Britannia, somehow, this figure of utter reliability' | 0:33:35 | 0:33:41 | |
and stoicism and intolerance and rudeness | 0:33:41 | 0:33:46 | |
and other qualities that we admire, for some reason, in this country. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:50 | |
CROWD CHEER: Go on! Go on! Yes! | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
ALL CHEER ON | 0:33:53 | 0:33:57 | |
The fluffy bunny brigade within the BBC didn't like the programme much. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:02 | |
We were talking about filming the Waterloo Cup. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
They were all edgy about the Waterloo Cup. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:08 | |
Then Johnny said, "A lot of Pakistanis go to the Waterloo Cup." | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
'Which they do. Coursing is a major sport in Pakistan.' | 0:34:12 | 0:34:17 | |
They said, "Ethnics! Televisual!" Then wanted to film it. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
-Here they are! -Tolerant voice of reason(!) | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
'There are always protestors at the Waterloo Cup. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:28 | |
'There was a wonderful moment when they were shouting, "One dead fat lady. One to go!"' | 0:34:28 | 0:34:35 | |
The BBC was going, "That's dreadful!" | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
I was saying, "Film it! Show what sort of people they are." | 0:34:40 | 0:34:44 | |
< I love that. "Animals now. Children next." | 0:34:44 | 0:34:47 | |
I think the programme was decommissioned, not because it had run its course, | 0:34:50 | 0:34:53 | |
but because the antis, the people who are opposed to field sports, | 0:34:53 | 0:34:59 | |
protested up to the Governors, | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
and, in the end, the BBC lost its nerve and pulled it. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:06 | |
Some of it got quite nasty. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
I mean, I got a lot of death threats. So did Johnny. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:15 | |
I have a Special Branch officer on the other end of a telephone still. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
If the country wasn't keen on the town, the town had serious issues with the countryside, | 0:35:19 | 0:35:25 | |
summed up in the Simon Nye comedy, How Do You Want Me? | 0:35:25 | 0:35:29 | |
Dylan Moran's wife comes from the countryside. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
He finds himself "marooned" from his comedy club in London that he ran. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:38 | |
Oh, hello. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:39 | |
How are you? Hi. How are you guys? | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
I wanted to shine a loving light and it turned out much darker than I thought it was going to. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:51 | |
Could I have a pint of your most amusingly-named local bitter please? | 0:35:51 | 0:35:56 | |
The random violence surprises him. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
You associate that with London, with urban angst. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:06 | |
Actually, there's rural angst as well and he runs into that in a big way. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
It's a very interesting show because it taps into | 0:36:12 | 0:36:16 | |
what some townies might find that darker side of the countryside, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:21 | |
when some characters seem a little unhinged. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
You live in our village. You live by our village rules. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:28 | |
This is not the country of Countryfile. This is the country of The Wicker Man! | 0:36:28 | 0:36:34 | |
How can I respect anyone who keeps turkeys | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
in an anti-turkey environment and tells them lies | 0:36:38 | 0:36:42 | |
about seeing the New Year? | 0:36:42 | 0:36:44 | |
He takes the view, "I'll see it through. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
"It's like a code and I'll crack the code." But he doesn't crack it. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:53 | |
That seemed to go all right. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
The idea of a darker countryside is very convenient for town dwellers. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:03 | |
The idea that it's to be feared, stick to the paths, people are burnt in wicker men, | 0:37:03 | 0:37:09 | |
all of that really plays into the civilised psyche. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:14 | |
The thing which cityfolk notice is that night is really dark. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:20 | |
There's no light. You need a torch. It's never like that in London. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:26 | |
That means that shadows take on different meanings. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
The trees move in a weird way. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
The town-dweller's fear of the countryside was nothing new. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:37 | |
It had been there since the start of TV. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
Look at John Bowen's marvellous Robin Redbreast. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:44 | |
A woman goes to the country and is immediately, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:48 | |
sinisterly obsessed by what's going on around her. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
The villagers seem other-worldly. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:54 | |
Nothing's shown. Things around the village could be normal but, through her eyes, take on sinister import. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:05 | |
CLATTERING | 0:38:05 | 0:38:07 | |
'The idea that the countryside is going to | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
rip you up like some Grimm's fairy tale | 0:38:10 | 0:38:14 | |
is a very convenient way of justifying to yourself | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
"That's why I don't go there." | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
You farmers, you don't like outsiders, do you? | 0:38:19 | 0:38:23 | |
-Like to stick to your own. -What do you mean by that? | 0:38:23 | 0:38:28 | |
I've seen big-eared boys on farms. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:30 | |
-For goodness' sake! -You see a field with a family having a picnic and there's a nice pond. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:36 | |
You fill in the pond, plough the family into the field, | 0:38:36 | 0:38:40 | |
blow up the tree and use the leaves to make a dress for your wife who is also your brother. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:47 | |
This was the nadir of welly telly. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
Yet, within a few short years, the countryside would be rediscovered | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
and repackaged to delight an urban audience. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
If you'd sat broadcasters down ten years ago | 0:39:06 | 0:39:09 | |
and told them what's happening now they would be dumbfounded. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:13 | |
Because we were still in the middle of a concrete-obsessed culture. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:20 | |
The turning point was Coast. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
The white cliffs of Dover. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:31 | |
Starting point for an epic journey | 0:39:32 | 0:39:34 | |
round one of the most complex and fascinating coastlines in the world. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:39 | |
Our own. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:40 | |
'Coast was such a huge iconic series. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:45 | |
'This was actually a very big celebration of what I think' | 0:39:47 | 0:39:51 | |
is our national logo, that thing that is shaped like that. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:55 | |
Instantly recognisable. We're very proud of it. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
When you do that, you always colour it in green. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:02 | |
Coast seemed to open the flood gates. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:06 | |
The rural idyll was back in its purest TV distillation. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:11 | |
Once they find out people want to watch this, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
then they'll find other ways to exploit it. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:17 | |
Television's always done that. This is no different. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:20 | |
This is mountain country that can be appreciated by anyone, | 0:40:20 | 0:40:24 | |
as Wordsworth wrote, "Who has an eye to perceive | 0:40:24 | 0:40:28 | |
"and a heart to enjoy." | 0:40:28 | 0:40:30 | |
We'll see great lakes and lochs, | 0:40:30 | 0:40:35 | |
climb rocky peaks and mountains... | 0:40:35 | 0:40:39 | |
..and travel through gentle landscapes, too. | 0:40:43 | 0:40:47 | |
This was a golden age for composers | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
and colourists and whoever it is that speeds up clouds. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:54 | |
Once again, technology helped drive the revolution. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:58 | |
The countryside is very present in TV because of high definition. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:03 | |
The Cotswolds don't have to get their teeth fixed, | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
like newsreaders and gameshow presenters. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
The Sussex Downs are not having Botox. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
It's in HD. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:14 | |
It's in 3-D, in some cases, in widescreen and so on. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
The visual experience is so extraordinary. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
The beautiful lavish shots you get, you can almost smell the countryside | 0:41:22 | 0:41:27 | |
wafting off the TV. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
The great thing was, you didn't even have to go there. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
There is a temptation to stay in your armchair, not get wet and cold | 0:41:36 | 0:41:42 | |
and have somebody tell you what you're looking at. | 0:41:42 | 0:41:44 | |
It's become soft porn. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:47 | |
The countryside has become a top-shelf pursuit | 0:41:47 | 0:41:52 | |
for a largely urban television audience. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
They're not going to consummate a relationship with the countryside | 0:41:55 | 0:42:00 | |
but they don't mind having a...furtive little firtle. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
If the countryside was sexy, so too were the people who worked there. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:10 | |
Farmland isn't just part of the British countryside, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:16 | |
it IS the British countryside. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:18 | |
For the first time in television history, farming was fashionable. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:23 | |
Jimmy Doherty's had a bright idea. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
-He's chucked in academic life... -They're just specimens in a case. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:35 | |
..to start a pig farm. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:37 | |
I'll never face anything like this again in my life. | 0:42:40 | 0:42:43 | |
'What people like Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Jimmy Doherty have done' | 0:42:43 | 0:42:49 | |
is make the idea of how food's produced | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
very approachable, very understandable. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
They can get all their natural foods now, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
which is the whole point of me having pigs in the open. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:03 | |
Naturally reared. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
'You could argue that they appeal to a largely middle-class audience | 0:43:05 | 0:43:10 | |
'that may have the money to then go out only buy organic,' | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
but they ARE making people think. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
One effect of television's new take on the countryside | 0:43:19 | 0:43:21 | |
was the extraordinary renaissance of Countryfile. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
We ploughed a lone furrow on daytime television. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
Then suddenly, it seemed to take off. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
Urban television makers discovered | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
there were things happening outside towns and cities. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:39 | |
We've all benefited from that. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
Countryfile now at prime time is getting six or seven million people | 0:43:41 | 0:43:46 | |
every Sunday evening, wanting to see what's happening in the countryside. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:51 | |
Soon, it wouldn't be enough to report on the countryside. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:55 | |
You had to immerse yourself in it. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
Back home in Bristol, my dream of escaping to the West Coast | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
looked exactly like this. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
It feels like I've left the city behind. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
There'd been a sea change in TV's attitude to the countryside and everyone was swept along, | 0:44:07 | 0:44:12 | |
apart from one or two people in the country... | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
The current crop of shows are aimed entirely at people in the towns. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:19 | |
I don't think people in the countryside watch them. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
..and one or two people in the town. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
I'm not excited by the countryside on television. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
The idea that you can make a picture of Britain | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
by driving around Britain's bumpy bits in a 4x4, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:37 | |
is I think a preposterous idea. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
The heart of Britain does not reside in the countryside. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:43 | |
So, my next goal is getting some livestock. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:47 | |
I need pigs for bacon, hens for eggs | 0:44:47 | 0:44:49 | |
and, of course, a vegetable patch for my own chives. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:53 | |
Shows like Beachcomber Cottage gave us the real-life Good Life. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:58 | |
This time, it wasn't playing for laughs. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
The countryside on television at the moment is very documentary based. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:06 | |
Now, Lenin, don't be silly. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
'What we don't have is what we had in the '70s, | 0:45:09 | 0:45:13 | |
'which is countryside based sit-coms or children's programmes.' | 0:45:13 | 0:45:19 | |
At the moment, we don't want countryside, the fiction. We quite like countryside, the fact. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:26 | |
That's a really recent explosion. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:27 | |
Of course, TV still had a place for countryside drama. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
Good lord! | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
Big Eric! | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
And that place was still Sunday night. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
Based on the Compton Mackenzie novels, | 0:45:43 | 0:45:46 | |
it was brought into today's world, except we looked as if | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
we were still living in the '50s. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
Everybody hankers after this beautiful life in the country | 0:45:52 | 0:45:56 | |
with magnificent scenery. The scenery was the star of the show. | 0:45:56 | 0:46:01 | |
With old-fashioned feel and lovely views, Monarch Of The Glen continued | 0:46:03 | 0:46:08 | |
the tradition All Creatures had begun. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
One day, I was getting on the train | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
to go up to the Highlands and a lady said, "Oh, I love your show!" | 0:46:14 | 0:46:20 | |
I said, "Yes, it's so humorous and the scenery's fantastic." | 0:46:20 | 0:46:25 | |
She said, "We turn off the sound and look at the pictures." | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
You learn all your words and they just want to see the pictures! | 0:46:29 | 0:46:34 | |
Thanks to television, everyone now wanted to move to the country. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:39 | |
Thanks to television, they could. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:41 | |
'On Escape To The Country, I'm househunting on the Cornish coast, | 0:46:42 | 0:46:45 | |
'with a group of London friends hoping to surf their way to success. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:49 | |
It's got such a nice feel. Look at that view! Fantastic! | 0:46:49 | 0:46:54 | |
-If you woke up to that.. -You'd never want to go to London. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:59 | |
The view and the feel about the place is just fantastic. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:04 | |
Not only was TV encouraging real people to escape to the country, | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
but real TV presenters were leading by example. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
Simon Groom returned to work his father's farm, bringing Goldie. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:18 | |
She's gone. He ploughs on. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
Years ago, it wasn't cool to live in the countryside. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:24 | |
You've now got Elizabeth Hurley, rock stars. It is quite fashionable. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:29 | |
I wonder if there might be something spiritual. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
I don't believe we were designed to sit at computers. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
People find it's fun to get your hands dirty. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
When we moved to the Cotswolds, there was a lot of that, | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
"But you're going to get your Jimmy Choos muddy." | 0:47:46 | 0:47:50 | |
"The farmers are going to shoot you because you've got big floppy cuffs." | 0:47:50 | 0:47:55 | |
I would say the countryside is extraordinarily friendly. | 0:47:55 | 0:48:01 | |
I don't know, statistically, | 0:48:03 | 0:48:05 | |
whether there are more people getting into the countryside. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
The answer must be that there are. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
Whether that's good depends how they behave. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
This week on Countryfile, we've come to this Welsh mountain | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
partly because of the rural environment and the ecosystem, | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
but mainly because this is the last place in Britain | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
that hasn't been covered by that BLEEP Bill Oddie. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
We've noticed that the beardie bird-fiddler gets everywhere... | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
By now, it was impossible to take a walk in the country without bumping into a presenter. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:40 | |
..enjoy the peace of this corner of the countryside while it lasts. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:45 | |
Oh, tits! | 0:48:45 | 0:48:47 | |
Tits indeed! That's why I've come to this Welsh mountain, | 0:48:47 | 0:48:52 | |
a rare and natural habitat of the great tit. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
Those wondering what welly telly would do next the answer was simple. | 0:48:56 | 0:49:01 | |
The British countryside was about to go live. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:04 | |
We're here at the Fishleigh Estate, a wonderful organic farm in Devon. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:09 | |
I promise you, it is literally buzzing, tweeting, flapping with wildlife. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:15 | |
You're going to see that wildlife, courtesy of... | 0:49:15 | 0:49:19 | |
well, we've got about 50 cameras. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:22 | |
It seemed like a nutty idea to me to do British wildlife live, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:28 | |
but so nutty that... | 0:49:28 | 0:49:31 | |
you couldn't say no. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:33 | |
I wasn't surprised at the success of Springwatch or Britain Goes Wild. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:39 | |
If you've got something that has the excitement of a wildlife "Olympics", | 0:49:39 | 0:49:45 | |
all these cameras over the place... | 0:49:45 | 0:49:47 | |
"We'd better go over there, because here he comes!" | 0:49:47 | 0:49:51 | |
Instead of an athlete, it's a bird. It makes for very good television. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
There's something of the car crash culture. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
"It could be a complete disaster and nothing will happen." | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
"Bill, have you got...?" | 0:50:06 | 0:50:07 | |
"No. You haven't got anything. Um... How about Kate?" | 0:50:07 | 0:50:11 | |
"No. Kate hasn't got anything." You've got to have a few of those! | 0:50:11 | 0:50:16 | |
-Are they there? -No! -No, they're not! | 0:50:16 | 0:50:18 | |
That phenomenon that this is actually happening, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
for some, is like watching paint dry, for others, it's a living link with the countryside. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:28 | |
Andy Warhol could have made Springwatch. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:30 | |
It's CCTV images of nothing happening | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
in a field in a place where you will never go. | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
It is like watching... It's like going to the Turner Prize. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:43 | |
Suddenly, it's as if the whole lawn was lit up. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:49 | |
Yet Springwatch gave us genuine drama, | 0:50:50 | 0:50:54 | |
thanks to anthropomorphism | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
that would have made Johnny Morris blush. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
At last! He has found his love. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:06 | |
'What was gripping the viewers' | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
was personal stories. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
They had characters, for a start. Kate and I named everything. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:15 | |
-We have to go back to a forlorn little figure. -We do. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:19 | |
To Damian, our jackdaw. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
'It's soap opera.' | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
That's what people love, | 0:51:25 | 0:51:27 | |
a real-life soap opera with characters they're familiar with, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
but seeing them in this way, that is unfamiliar. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:34 | |
The countryside is, currently, its own reality star. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:39 | |
Rather than having real people, we've got birds. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
Rather than the Big Brother house, we've got a nest. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
Here was human interest without the humans. | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
Springwatch could play out, pre-watershed, age-old obsessions - | 0:51:49 | 0:51:54 | |
sex and death. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:56 | |
You can show so much more when it's wildlife. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
I'm not saying it's joyful to say this, but death was fairly frequent. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:04 | |
Very often, we had heartbreaking moments | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
when one little blue tit wasn't going to make it. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:10 | |
One of these chicks was smaller than the others. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
All the others got the caterpillars and this one was a bit feeble. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
And they all fledged. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
We watched this happening, apart from the little one I called Runty. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:26 | |
It was nearly nine o'clock. We were about to go off air. There's Runty, "Peep. Peep." | 0:52:26 | 0:52:32 | |
Adults hadn't come back. What's going to happen to Runty? | 0:52:32 | 0:52:37 | |
I don't think anything has united the people of Britain | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
in a common concern, quite as much as what's happening now. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:46 | |
We had people phoning the programme saying, "Don't let Runty die." | 0:52:46 | 0:52:51 | |
Did Runty survive the night? We'll tell you after the titles. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:56 | |
He fledged the following morning, and all was well. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:59 | |
In 2010, welly telly made its next great leap forward. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
For years, TV had treated sheep as extras, | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
herding them, treating them...like sheep. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
Now, they were ready for their close-up. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
Lambing Live is probably the only programme ever | 0:53:12 | 0:53:17 | |
in the history of television, ever, to be able to discuss, live, | 0:53:17 | 0:53:22 | |
prolapse, castration and how to skin a lamb to do an adoption. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:27 | |
We did all that on one night AND we had live births. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
Fannies and goo everywhere. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:32 | |
-How's it looking, Jim? -No problem. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
No problem. There it is! | 0:53:35 | 0:53:37 | |
OK, little one... | 0:53:37 | 0:53:40 | |
'When I pulled my first lamb!' | 0:53:40 | 0:53:43 | |
It is just the most miraculous thing in the whole world. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:48 | |
Let's get you in front of your mum. There you go. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:53 | |
'Jilly, my wife, and I watched Lambing Live feeling sceptical.' | 0:53:53 | 0:53:58 | |
We thought, "This is going to be really bland, really sanitised." | 0:53:58 | 0:54:02 | |
You know, "It's for the townies." We couldn't have been more wrong. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:07 | |
It's marginally better than other programmes. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
The most important thing about the tup is you want two good balls. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:15 | |
-You want a good pair of balls on him. -How do you...? | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
Without... No. Let's get graphic. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:21 | |
-How do you tell whether it's got two good balls? -You can feel. | 0:54:21 | 0:54:25 | |
-You want two testicles the same size. -Right. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
Good, firm. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:30 | |
-Is a girl allowed to do this without asking? -Course you can! | 0:54:30 | 0:54:35 | |
LAUGH | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
Those...are certainly the same size. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
Judging on my not extensive experience, they felt quite good to me. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:45 | |
'I think Lambing Live' | 0:54:45 | 0:54:48 | |
was unusual that it probably had an urban audience and a rural audience | 0:54:48 | 0:54:54 | |
kind of swept along and experiencing it | 0:54:54 | 0:54:57 | |
'in the same way.' | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
Jim takes all his animals to a small, family-run abattoir, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:04 | |
one of a handful left in Wales. | 0:55:04 | 0:55:06 | |
We hadn't glossed over the tricky bit. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:16 | |
These people produce sweet fluffy lambs, that end up on somebody's plate. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:22 | |
I know you've done this a hundred times, Jim, but do you always feel | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
a little emotional about this stage? | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
It's what we're in business for. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:31 | |
We produce lambs and pigs for the butchery trade, so... | 0:55:31 | 0:55:36 | |
To be honest, I'm quite proud. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:39 | |
'Things have changed in the last few years.' | 0:55:39 | 0:55:42 | |
Programmes have shown animals going for slaughter without flinching. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:47 | |
I think the general public are taking that on board more and more, | 0:55:47 | 0:55:52 | |
understanding how farming works. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
MUSIC: Theme to "Countryfile" | 0:55:54 | 0:55:58 | |
Has welly telly finally squared the circle by uniting town and country? | 0:56:01 | 0:56:07 | |
Programmes like Lambing Live and Countryfile and the great upsurge in interest in that sorts of programme | 0:56:07 | 0:56:14 | |
have made people think about the countryside in a more practical way | 0:56:14 | 0:56:19 | |
and understand that the people who look after it play a vital role, | 0:56:19 | 0:56:24 | |
not just for themselves, but for all of us. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
Or will the old symbol of our differences come between us? | 0:56:27 | 0:56:31 | |
We thought there were two foxes. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
Each day, we kept seeing more and eventually saw seven. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:38 | |
Foxes are not cute. They are vicious killers. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:42 | |
When you're told by somebody like Springwatch | 0:56:42 | 0:56:45 | |
that the nation's favourite animals are foxes, badgers and otters, | 0:56:45 | 0:56:51 | |
all of which are classed as vermin, it's slightly worrying. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:55 | |
All of a sudden, foxes are turned from, | 0:56:55 | 0:56:59 | |
"It's exciting to see a fox in town," into, "They're vermin." | 0:56:59 | 0:57:03 | |
"Bring back the hunt!" I want to see the Hackney hunt! | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
Where next for welly telly? | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
Will this passion for the countryside burn itself out? | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
Come on! | 0:57:15 | 0:57:16 | |
'Television, consuming so much material, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
'you can get a certain type' | 0:57:20 | 0:57:22 | |
of Countryside Lite, or Wildlife Lite. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:26 | |
There's nothing wrong with it but I think it's not quite so interesting. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:31 | |
And it's not quite so...useful. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:35 | |
Most things are cyclical. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
I guess the current obsession with countryside programmes will pass. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
That's not to say they'll disappear altogether, | 0:57:44 | 0:57:46 | |
just like reality programmes won't disappear, | 0:57:46 | 0:57:49 | |
but they won't dominate the airwaves like they seem to at present. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:52 | |
For now, it seems television's version of the rural idyll, | 0:57:52 | 0:57:57 | |
pioneered by Jack Hargreaves, popularised by The Good Life, | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
personified by Phil Drabble, has still got legs. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
MOO | 0:58:04 | 0:58:06 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:26 | 0:58:29 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:29 | 0:58:32 |