Breathless approach

Simon Hoggart

Wednesday, 18th June 2008

Britain's Lost World (BBC1); How the West Was Lost (BBC4); Last of the Dambusters (Five); Dickens's Secret Lover (Channel 4)

St Kilda, a set of islands off the coast of Scotland uninhabited for 78 years except by around a million seabirds. Suddenly the BBC sends a crack team of exclaimers to this remote and beautiful place. ‘Amazing!’ they cry. ‘Fantastic!’, ‘stunning!’, ‘great!’, ‘breathtaking!’, ‘spectacular!’ Now and again the team try to dredge from their psyches longer phrases, entire formed thoughts. ‘It’s like another world!’, ‘I can’t believe I’m here!’, ‘if you’re into really remote, wild places, this is the ultimate!’ They are moved to something close to poetry. ‘It seems like ghosts are watching us from their abandoned houses, but only the seals have come out to greet us.’ Wandering round the stone cottages and storehouses, they have a pop at profundity: ‘You have to use your imagination to imagine what this settlement looked like.’ Yup, that’s what your imagination is for — imagining things.

Britain’s Lost World (BBC1, Thursday) is beautiful, though I fear that three one-hour episodes might be just a teeny bit too much. Of course we can’t be trusted to enjoy just the pictures and the story. We have to have two celebs — Kate Humble and Dan Snow — plus a celeb-in-the-making, a naturalist called Steve Backshall. Everything must be spelled out for us by these nice if over-exclamatory people. ‘We’re going up to the settlement, to see if we can find out what made the islanders leave!’ one of them exclaims, excitedly. But everyone knows what made the inhabitants go. It’s been public knowledge since the day they left. This is not like cracking the mystery of the Mary Celeste. The human population had dropped to three dozen, they suffered from cold, disease and an appalling seabird-intensive diet. The average St Kildan ate more than 100 fulmars a year. Without batter. No wonder they wanted to go to the mainland where there were gas fires, mashed turnips, and possibly deep-fried Mars Bars.

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