First impressions

I greatly enjoyed The Impressionists (BBC1, Sunday) in spite of clunky lines such as ‘This is Paris, in 1862,’ and ‘Cézanne! Do you know everybody?’ There are the scenes where they are painting their actual paintings, when Rolf Harris seems to have been parachuted into an episode of ’Allo, ’Allo! There was an unconsciously funny moment when Renoir is injured by a discus hurled by the English discus champion — who just happens to be training in the Forest of Fontainebleau, an activity which seems only marginally less stupid than practising the shot put on a mud flat.

But the series charges along, helter-skelter, artists-behaving-badly, no pause for reflection except to toss off some runic remark, such as, ‘Reality has no place in my studio!’ The makers had to get over the problem that the works are now familiar to us all from a thousand chocolate boxes and jigsaws, yet have to be seen as daring and revolutionary. This was achieved by the ancient practice of bringing in a snobbish, stuck-up critic, who says things like: ‘This painter is a degenerate. He looks as if he has painted it with a scrubbing brush.’ (At least there were no mock French accents. ‘Ziss pent-eur, ’e ees…’)

I suspect a modern critic would hate it, and hate especially the jolly, child-friendly tone implied by its early-evening slot. But it was great fun, it made you appreciate the paintings once again, and for us oldies it brought back the half-forgotten exuberance of youth. For a television reviewer, the only question that matters is, ‘Can you be bothered to watch episode two?’, and in this case, yes, I will.