BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

Imagine if BBC’s Countryfile became a programme, like Clarkson’s Farm, about what actually happens in the UK Countryside, rather than a show that appeals more to the four in five Brits who live in towns and cities who tend to prefer to coo at the British Countryside, or tut-tut at rural folk who are just trying to earn a crust.

Imagine if Countryfile dealt with real issues like bTB, badger culls or predation management from actual farmers’ points of view rather than through the eyes of Disney-fed softies.

Imagine Countryfile even discussing the possibility of the negative effects of Net Zero or – God forbid – trusting the nous of viewers by daring to air the arguments of climate sceptics.

Australia has had that show for over 30 years.

If only Carlsberg did Countryfile …

ABC’s programme Landline has tackled lots of issues that mainstream media wasn’t really tackling at the time –issues to do with the environment and the climate.

Landline is an Australian national rural issues television programme broadcast on ABC Television since 1991. The programme discusses rural issues “ranging across agri-politics and economics, business and product innovation, animal and crop science, regional infrastructure, climate and weather trends, regional and rural services, music and lifestyle”

America’s Heartland programme is not dissimilar: bringing the countryside to the town, rather than doing a Countryfile and dissembling the realities of the Countryside via a townhouse prism.

Can you imagine Countryfile focusing an episode on deer culling like Landline focused an episode, skinning and all, on kangaroo culling and the kangaroo parts industry?

Or on live cattle exports?

Or on bush tucker men?

Or on the need to shoot feral cats? (The first line of this clip is ‘let’s cut this thing open and see what it’s been eating’)

These are real stories about real Aussies. The programmes are highly exportable – the YouTube clips above have comments on them from fans from New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the USA.

Where is the Countryfile with real stories about real British Countrysiders? Why are Countryfile not filming the terrier packs taking out farm rats without any need for poisons? Why are Countryfile not filming real stories like the transferring of the jacket of a ewe’s own lamb to an alien lamb?

Instead we are left with Gareth Wyn Jones and his 2 million-strong following on YouTube, filmed on a shoestring budget thanks to a willing family and a star with an incredible work ethic. But why?

Why aren’t the BBC putting their budget behind real Countrysiders and sidestepping so much of the BS that emanates from environmental outliers who the BBC has manicured – those whose extremism is now so exposed and ridiculed? 

By the way, the episode ‘160 years of battling the bunny’ is a cracker too:

Wake up, BBC.

Or continue to die.

Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.