Scottish Highlands

As previously mentioned, there's not a lot being transmitted in the routine Telly week that I want to watch. So - despite being ignorant of nature in most of its forms - I've given the series on the Scottish Highlands a go. Well, four goes, in fact, since it's been on over the last four weeks, and I've watched every one.

On the down side, someone's told Ewan MacGregor "This is a great script. Imagine it's Shakespeare." It isn't, and its phoney solemnity, backed up with some suitably self-important music, almost made me watch with the sounds turned off. But that would still have been with it, because the photography has been phenomenal. I have distant but vivid memories of walking in Scotland, but realism says that I shan't be doing that again. So this not only brought all of those snapshots back, but added detailed observation of wildlife which was simply amazing. Some mug with a camera has stood there for months, maybe years, just to bring us these sequences - osprey catching fish, salmon leaping up stream, baby guillemots somehow summoning up the guts to throw themselves off a huge cliff when they have no clue as to whether they'll survive. Utterly stunning. thank you, BBC. Again.