The only things left worth watching on the BBC are foreign buy-ins like The Last Wave

Soon, very soon now — even sooner than I imagined, if A Suitable Boy turns out to be as lacklustre as some critics are saying — the only things left worth watching on the BBC will be old repeats and foreign buy-ins like The Last Wave.

A bit like The Returned (Les Revenants), The Last Wave concerns the effect of a supernatural event on a small community, not in the Alps this time but in a seaside resort on the Atlantic coast famed for its surf. During a competition, ten surfers are enveloped by a mysterious sausage-shaped cloud and disappear in the sea for five hours. They re-emerge, apparently unharmed yet subtly changed. One little boy’s eyes have turned electric blue; he also no longer requires glasses and can see through solid objects. Another lad has acquired the gift of healing.

It being French, all this takes ages to happen. I totally respect the French for this: they are like the televisual equivalent of the slow-food movement. Unlike, say, those vulgar, trashy Americans, they would much rather you gave up watching out of boredom and frustration than submit themselves to the indignity of grabbing your attention with instant thrills.

Compare and contrast The Umbrella Academy, now starting its second season on Netflix. Within the first five minutes, the world has been obliterated by meteors, you’ve watched half a dozen people fry, Texas has been invaded by the Soviets in 1963, and our superheroes have wiped out sundry Russky soldiers using hallucinations, tentacles and the power to make their heads explode. Nothing is left to chance here: the colours are bright, the special effects spectacular, the violence ultra — you will be entertained and you will keep watching.

But with the French, it’s a case of bof — we cannot begin the action without some amuse-gueules: a typical French teenage girl being bolshie and riding off crossly on her moped; a typical French lefty masseur shagging his clients; a typical French beach bar where a man with old-fashioned, rural French facial hair is drinking something French, etc.