LOCH LOMOND: A YEAR IN THE WILD, C5, 8pm
Is Loch Lomond “wild”? Can it be “wild” if you can reach it easily on “a wee run in the car” from Glasgow? Or perhaps it’s “wild” in a negative sense if we’re referring to the louts who go camping there and leave beer bottles and litter behind.
But let’s stop the debate about what makes it “wild” and see how Channel 5 are portraying Loch Lomond.
This is a new four-part series about the loch and its environs, with each episode focusing on a different season. Tonight’s programme is about spring. As well as depicting the beauty and variety of the Loch Lomond in spring it also reminded me – with quite a jolt – that’s there’s rather more to it than the strip of shoreline which might be visited on sunny day trips from the city.
The series shows, not just the lochside but the whole, vast National Park of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, and there is brilliant footage of the mountain hares, ospreys, deer and eagles who live there.
Yes, it’s definitely wild.
THE GREAT POTTERY THROW DOWN, BBC2, 9pm
Reviews have been mixed for this new show, but the programme-makers have no one to blame but themselves for the more harsh comments they’ve received.
By peddling yourself as another version of the Bake-Off (albeit with pots in place of cakes) you’re clearly setting yourself up to fail, because the only thing on this Earth better than the Bake-Off is an actual slice of cake. And an Angel Cake, at that. I’m not talking Soreen or Eccles cakes here…
This week, the nine contestants have to make decorative hand basins and then add designs to some plain tiles. Their final challenge of the evening is to make a tall cylinder. That sounds simple enough for these experienced potters, but the difficult part is that they must do it blindfolded, relying wholly on touch and texture.
Some of the finished items tonight are so beautiful that they reduce the male judge, Keith Brymer Jones, to tears. Oh come on! Would Paul Hollywood cry over scones? Is Mary Berry even capable of basic emotion? This is one aspect where the show definitely deviates from The Bake Off.
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