TO mark a mini-season of highlights from Glastonbury festivals past, Radio Times this week published the recollections of various bods. Fran Healy reminisced about playing Why Does it Always Rain on Me while it was battering down, Jo Whiley had fond memories of John Peel giving her a piggy back, and so on.
Here’s my “Glasto” story. I was on a train once out of Liverpool Street and a woman got on and sat beside me. She was wearing a beautifully tailored tweed skirt and jacket. Money, obviously. But she was also caked in mud. Between this, her wellies, and the time of year I surmised she had just been to Glastonbury and was heading home.
She stank to high heaven – that mud, my God, what was in it? – so I tutted very loudly, got up and marched into another carriage. I can safely promise that is the closest I will ever get to Glastonbury.
Which does not mean to say I won’t be in front of the telly for David Bowie at Glastonbury 2000 (BBC2, Sunday), one of a run of shows to plug the gap where the festival would have been had it not been for the virus.
Only half an hour of what was a two hour set has been seen on television before, so this is a real treat for fans. All the hits are there, from Life on Mars to Let’s Dance, sung by a long-haired Bowie wearing, at one point, a suit that looks as if it was made out of the curtains. He still rocks it, though. And there is not a spot of mud on him. Another must see is Amy Winehouse’s 2007 set (BBC4, Sunday).
Scotland’s Home of the Year (BBC Scotland, Wednesday) reaches its grand finale this week. This was one of the new channel’s hits first time around and has made it back for a deserved second series. The concept is simple. Three judges, an architect, an interior designer and a lifestyle blogger, have a nosey around other people’s homes. Not just any homes, mind. These are homes into which have been poured time, money, and love, so much so that the owners want to show them off. The contest goes all around Scotland, and from three properties each week one is selected to go through to the final.
This show ought to be sponsored by the Scottish Government or the tourist board, such a fine picture does it paint of Scottish life. From what is on display here, anyone would think Scotland was chock a block with fabulous houses decorated by residents with impeccable tastes. Scotland as a middle class, bifold door-sporting, Scandi-hued paradise. Which it is, in some parts.
Now, if you had to choose a spot to see nature in all its glory, would you plump for London’s M25? Though not.
But as Helen Macdonald shows in The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway (BBC4, Tuesday), there is a lot to learn from the area, not least how nature adapts to encroachment by humans.
Macdonald, a falconer and the author of the prize-winning memoir H is for Hawk, takes a slow journey round the green parts usually only glimpsed by motorists.
The trek takes her from woods to waterways, grassland to wetland, all of it packed with plant and animal life.
If you caught Macdonald’s wonderful The River: A Year in the Life of the Tay, you will know she has a distinctive presenting style that takes a little getting used to but is well worth sticking with. She flits like a butterfly from topic to topic, with the result that her film is as much a meditation on roads, architecture, and science, with a brief stop off at the works of JG Ballard, as it is a nature programme. It’s rather like a television version of Radio 4’s Something Understood: sometimes bewildering but always amazing.
While I didn’t always agree with her on what constitutes beauty (concrete underpasses anyone?) she has a lovely turn of phrase – the road gives off a “marine roar”, a stream is “gin clear” – and her extensive knowledge is deeply impressive.
If you haven’t already gorged yourself on Talking Heads there are seven more on next week. Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) is bound to be a draw on Monday when she takes on the part of an ambitious actress, a role previously performed by Julie Walters, in Her Big Chance.
I’m also looking forward to seeing Martin Freeman step into Alan Bennett’s comfy shoes in A Chip in the Sugar on Tuesday. But highlight of the week looks like Kristen Scott Thomas as an antiques dealer with a nice line in withering put-downs in The Hand of God on Thursday. Wonder if KST has ever been to Glastonbury?
David Bowie at Glastonbury 2000, BBC2, Sunday, 9.30pm; Amy Winehouse, BBC4, Sunday, 9.30pm; Scotland’s Home of the Year, BBC Scotland, Wednesday, 8pm; The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway, BBC4, Tuesday, 9pm; Talking Heads, BBC1, Monday-Thursday.
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