In the UK: Sundays, Channel 4, 4.50pm
I ask you, what’s the point of blogging if no one tells you that Channel 4 is showing a programme that features
- Bill Bailey and
- Fluffy animals?
Wild Thing I Love You has been on Sundays for a couple of weeks now and not one person has mentioned it to me. How could you? Actually, you’re forgiven. There were no fluffy animals this week, just adders and lizards by some A-road, but it’s Pine Martens next week. Phew. Glad I caught that one in time.
The programme’s an odd combination of Time Team and nature documentary, with Bailey and a team of experts hurtling around the country trying to save endangered animals according to some arbitrary time limit.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as fun as Time Team. Bailey is a slightly wooden host in comparison to Tony Robinson and surprisingly seems bored by his hosting duties. There’s also no real element of discovery or tension: you know they’re not going to show a bunch of adders/pine martens being squashed by JCBs so the animals will get saved. At least in Time Team, you don’t know what they’re going to discover or how quickly, but here, the only element of mystery was whether the adders they’d already located were going to like their new pit.
It’s more entertaining and educational than the new series of Horizon (shudder…), but a poor second to Time Team. Best watched for the occasional hint of furry beast, rather than because you need to know how to translocate a lizard safely.
