Countryvile!

Do you watch ‘Countryfile’ on BBC TV?

 

It demonstrates the Beeb’s unfailing disdain for its licence-payers.

 

It has no fixed abode. It wanders around the early evening schedules from 5.30 p.m.to 8 p.m. withal stops in between (they are now doing the same with ‘Coast’).

 

But that’s not the main issue.

 

Years ago farmer friends regarded it as compulsory viewing because the programme dealt seriously with the countryside as a resource, an industry, a way of life.

 

Then there was evidently a change of production team and the new boss thought the programme should be changed to appeal to a wider and younger audience; in other words, chasing ratings at the expense of quality. At the time the presenters were all people who knew their stuff. Quickly out was the female who was first-class and knew her country matters, but was rated as too old, although they kept that grumpy old git who is in his seventies.

 

In came a selection of townie totty who would be more at home in the West End than the west country, wouldn’t know a bullock from a bantam, but gave the cameraman an opportunity to take long, lingering shots of the girl’s thigh as she clambered into a massive piece of earthmoving equipment.

 

Much of that particular episode was devoted to Cornish beaches, hardly ‘country’. But I guess they are more telegenic than cows and less arduous than trudging round a muddy field. And many episodes are devoted to the sea-side, messing about in boats or scuba-diving, and exploring the bottom. It looked more like a promo for the English Tourist Board than a programme about rural matters.

 

We still have ‘Adam’s Farm’ but now it is Adam who is the story not the farm. In any event it is not typical. Adam is a gentleman-farmer; the only thing he raises is his hat, and the farm is a very large operation that is clearly prosperous, neither of which represent most farming.

 

The programme is clearly not aimed at Suffolk swede-bashers.