Where's Yogi and boo boo?

What we learnt from tonights telly:

Yellowstone BBC2. What did we learn well you can only ever be po-faced about nature. This programme was one of the beebs new High Def nature programme so it was full of stunning images. You can imagine that the fur of the fox on the credits looks amazing in real life or in HD. We also got the obligatory helicopter shots and speeded up time lapse shots. Frankly I could have done without the programmes portentous voice over (by I think Spooks' Peter Firth). There doesn't seem to be any other way of describing nature on TV but in these hushed tones, tonight though we had at least three bits which we just plain funny:

A fox hunting for mice under snow diving headlong into a drift, if this was your dog you would've got 250 quid from Harry Hill but on Yellowstone just more seriousness.

Next up we had the otter, now otters are just funny. I bet even Brer otter giggles a bit when he sees his mate bound up. Otters in the snow are even more amusing.

lastly we had the punch line to the old Indian naming joke "so how did you get your name "2 wolves F**cking" " . We had to put up with Mr Serious intoning something about the alpha male as a hapless interloper wolf tries to run of from the pack all the time trapped in the "embrace" of the cheeky minx who lured him in. I bet this isn't the bit the BEEB want on youtube.

One of the great things about David Attenborough was that he wasn't afraid to laugh when confronted by the sheer joy of nature. But of course in this HD world you can't have presenters on screen on wildlife programmes anymore because you can't dub them into Portuguese to sell to Brazil.

Which is why we had to have the pointless 12 minutes Yellowstone People slot (to bulk out UK timeslots minus adverts to an hour). This film was about some bloke who shovels snow of buildings (to stop them being crushed) it was shot by someone who have never seen this or even this as what was an interesting tale was stretched way to long. Next week fascinating tales from the parking attendant.

So in future maybe just some music and perhaps a website with the minimal science they sneak into this sort of thing.

Oh and don't get me started on the Monty Hall's Great Escape. This is just the most expensive holiday video you've ever seen. At least the tossers on similar Channel 4 programmes are opening a Tuscan b&b with their own money. Old tossy Monty is on a paid holiday from my £139 lecturing us on we should all build our own compost toilets and make friends with our local clam fisherman.

Monty's proud of his carbon foot print but Monty it's fine to grow your own cabbages not sure if they are that organic if you have a helicopter shot of them going to market. Oh what's he doing now oh we are seeing that incredibly rare creature the pine marten as seen on every cocking Scottish wildlife show eating off someone's bird table whoopy do! I off to see if Family Guy is on!

Monday Update:

“Great minds” agree in T’old Sam Wollaston’s TV review of Yellowstone (in the paper) he comes to much the same conclusions as me. This is reassuring as I often seem to be at odds with large swathes of the viewing public’s taste. It’s good not to be the odd one out all the time.

There’s also an interview with School of Seven Bells. So let’s get this right the female members of band (who just happen to be striking looking) like eating pies and chips and talking about obscure dead mountaineers I may well be smitten.