British spring now starts up to three weeks earlier than it used to, according to research conducted for the 2015 run of BBC2’s Springwatch.
This is unfortunate for the show, which already rather distorts the natural calendar. Springwatch traditionally begins around eight weeks after the start of British Summertime and will conclude in mid-June, which most people call summer.
The best explanation for this oddity is that, in another sign of BBC cuts, the seasons have been reduced to three – there are Autumnwatch and Winterwatch spin-offs, but no Summerwatch.
After numerous rotations over the years, including the extinction of Bill Oddie and Kate Humble, the presenting team is now Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan – who spend most of the time in or outside a studio-hide at the RSPB nature reserve in Minsmere, Suffolk – and Martin Hughes-Games, who does the danger-money stuff, fronting segments from a plane or up a tree.
As is now common on adult factual television, the hosts seem to be encouraged to treat the viewers like children with ADHD. The presenters wave hello and goodbye and conduct hysterical introductory discussions about what they’ve got coming up: “What a series it’s going to be!” / “Yeah! It’s not exactly Game of Thrones, but I’d watch it!”
Though disowned in that quotation, Game of Thrones – or TV drama in general – is openly the tone for which the show is going. “Drama, death and delight – it’s like a mini-series!” promised Strachan one night, cueing up a reel of previous highlights that began with the deep-voiced TV drama trailer phrase: “Previously on Springwatch ...” The latest report on a hawk was said to contain “dramatic twists in his soap-opera plotline.”
Revealingly, the creatures featured are referred to throughout as “characters” or even “superheroes”, and given names such as “Sophia La Wren” and “Simon the Stickleback”, updates on whom included the news that “spineless Simon has still not had much success with the ladies”. The presenters speculated about “which one of our characters will become the star of the series”. That question was soon answered by the inevitable revelation: “Simon the Stickleback has his own Twitter account!”
Avoiding comment on the ominous white dome of the Sizewell B nuclear power station that is visible in many of the panoramic shots, the hosts maintain a jokey, upbeat tone wherever possible. But there’s an obvious problem with turning wildlife into actors in that they, unlike human performers (with the exception of a few it would be legally unwise to cite) are far from guaranteed to get through the shoot. Simon and Sophia La Wren might fall to predators before the end of week three. It would be intriguing to see how this adult show with an insistently kiddish tone would deal with that.
But, beneath the often irksome words, the pictures are thrilling, and the technology improves each season: “We’ve now got a water-vole camera, which has been providing us with much more than we thought.” We see a swift inside its nesting box, and a stone curlew in closeup – Disney nicknames and anthropomorphic storylines (“sparrowhawk v goshawk: who’s fastest?”) aren’t necessary, because the images are already high-drama without them.
And, refreshingly, Springwatch is unusual among current BBC leisure shows in the absolute avoidance of double entendre. Whereas The Great British Bake Off has now essentially become a vehicle for sneaky parallels between making cakes and making love – and even the Chelsea flower show coverage sometimes meaningfully wobbles over the word “forking” – it is vital that the presenters of Springwatch never acknowledge any oddness in the fact that they are the only people outside of Carry On movies contractually required to deliver sentences in which the only noun is “tit”.
Springwatch is on BBC2 at 8pm, Monday to Thursday, until 11 June
