This documentary looked at the history and culture of the families who run 'the shows' in Scotland.

Everyone has been to 'the shows', even scaredy-cats like me who prefer to stand to one side, holding the coats, whilst others have all the fun. But this programme, Showland (BBC2) wasn't about fun. It was often sad, sometimes melancholy and even grim. Things are not all right down at the fair.

Narrated by Mitch Miller who was raised amongst the colourful caravans, trucks and stalls of the shows, he opted not to follow in his father's footsteps and forged a career as an artist instead. He has now made this poignant documentary to look back at the culture of the 'showmen' because, as the programme makes clear, their traditional way of life is under threat. The glitter, imagination and hard work which creates the Scottish fairground experience is being stamped out by petty bureaucracy and big business.

Years ago, the children of show families weren't treated with respect by the education system. Moving from town to town, they would only be in a school for a few weeks before journeying elsewhere and so they weren't allowed a jotter like every other child. Why waste the paper? They'll only be filling a few pages, after all. So, as the other children sat down to their sums and spelling, the show children would be given plasticine to play with. Campaigns by their mothers - an indomitable lot, according to this documentary - ended this poor treatment, but other threats remain, not least of which is the dreaded local council.

Plenty of literature and comedy exists in Scotland to mock the self-important men of 'the cooncil', but there was little room for joking when the showmen described the damage a 'white collar scribbler' from the council can do to their livelihood. 'They're oppressing the business. Oppressing the people, big time,' we were told. Scotland's fairs are the most heavily regulated in Europe, with endless public entertainment licences to be applied for from different petty bureaucrats in different councils across the land. There are various fees and regulations and the strangling, maddening effects of red-tape. There are rules to deaden and restrict every aspect of 'the shows', including the ridiculous edict that you may no longer win a goldfish at a wee stall.

Some showmen see this as a deliberate campaign to stamp out their way of life. If the councils make the fees so high, and entertainment licences unaffordable, then the traditional families simply can't ply their trade. This leaves the designated local fairground empty for the clunking arrival of big business. As the old families, one by one, bow out of the trade, big business takes their place.

You may not care who is operating the waltzers, as long as they waltz, but consider that the man running the machine is simply there to press an on/off switch. He has no personal pride in it, polishing and maintaining it, ensuring it's in a condition to feed his family and be handed down to his son one day. The bored, minimum wage employee of big business just presses the buttons then goes home. No pride, no joy, no tradition. The soulless money-spinning of big business takes over and the experience of the fair is deadened and reduced.

This programme had a thread of melancholy running through it, as though the narrator accepts the old life is dying, unable to fight on against council bureaucracy, big business and, of course, the younger generation of the old show families being lured away by job opportunities previously closed to them.

One old man told the camera, 'you're better off working for somebody.' How sad to hear that. He had always been self-employed, living this colourful, challenging, unorthodox life, but his conclusion now was that it's easier to give up the struggle and try to slot into the rat race like everyone else.

It seems those who dance to a different tune are being ground down by red tape and market forces. Perhaps one day we'll be nothing but a gigantic Tesco with a few call centres scattered around. Until then, the remaining families try and keep their traditions alive. The narrator reminds us why they don't give up: 'It's called showmanship.'