TV Eye: Playtime with a nostalgic note

Jill Scott (as precious Ramotswe) and James May charmingly reminding us of old-fashioned values. Photo / Supplied

James May, who is another version of that heavy metal bloke who has spent his grown up life dressed up as a school boy, has a show called James May's Toy Stories (Monday nights, TV3), and the first episode was about making Airfix models.

He wanted to build an actual-size Spitfire! A ruddy big plane, made like an Airfix model. This was just another version of dressing up as a schoolboy when you are actually a ruddy big bloke. What a wheeze! What a giant jape! Did I want to watch a show about a schoolboy fantasy? No thanks. The bloke did. Of course. There was nothing else on. We watched the show.

It was utterly charming. I like the premise: kids today are welded to their gadgets, they spend their entire lives with things in their ears, removed from the real world, playing on their computers, watching the telly. What will they be like when they grow up?

They won't be able to make an Airfix model. They have no interest in making an Airfix model. I might have thought nothing of this because, what skills would making a model of a plane give any kid?

Old-fashioned ones, perhaps. But making a giant plasticine garden and entering it in the Chelsea Flower Show? May's next jape sounded beyond whimsical. It was. It was pure indulgence. It was a triumph. And, again, utterly charming. I love this show. It makes a serious point about the nature of play, and how it has changed.

Parents and kids used to play together and that often involved making things. Even if they were totally useless things like, say, a plasticine daffodil, the play itself was useful because it involved communicating. I know of a father and 14-year-old son (this knowing is a tragic accident of proximity rather than choice) whose idea of communicating is watching Girls of the Playboy Mansion.

This family is unlikely to be watching the delightfully dishevelled James May entertain his giant schoolboy fantasies, more's the pity. But we are. Although I am a little worried about enthusiastic noises coming from the giant schoolboy in our lounge about the joys of giant Airfix models ...

The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, an adaptation of the series of books by another charming, and also dishevelled fellow, Alexander McCall Smith, is on Vibe on Tuesday nights. Set in Botswana, this is the story of Precious, a lady of "traditional build" whose beloved Daddy dies and leave her his herd of prize cows.

She is suddenly a very rich lady and able to set up her agency and become Botswana's first lady detective. She is a very nosey lady and so is well qualified to solve cases such as that of the Dubious Daddy, an imposter who goes to sponge off his long lost "daughter", and the case of the cheating husband. There is a delightfully acerbic secretary. "Most men are unfaithful. You don't need a detective to tell you that."

This is lovely, gentle, whimsical television, true to the spirit of the books which is, like James May's Toy Stories, that an old-fashioned value like community is worth something. We would all be a lot happier and smarter if we played together nicely.