TV Eye: Wild life not in my nature

<i>Our World: Yellowstone</i>. Photo / Kathryn Kasic

Nature's nice, isn't it? From a distance, which means preferably on the television. Nature is also a bit boring and I know this because the bloke and his mate like to go out in nature, which means going up hills with ruddy great packs on their backs and then, when they come back, moaning (boasting, really) about the weather and making me look at interminable photographs of the great New Zealand outdoors.

The great NZ outdoors all looks the same to me: dripping, greeny-brown foliage, the occasional fern - which would look rather nice in a hanging basket (if that is your sort of thing) - and huts devoid of architectural merit but full of steaming socks and Germans.

Apart from the Germans there are few exotic beasts lurking in the undergrowth, which makes taking pictures, or making nature documentaries, a little tricky.

Yellowstone (TV1, Sunday) has beasts aplenty and mostly of the ravenous, ravening sort.

This is a BBC production, which means it is beautifully shot and narrated with serious intent and only the odd flight of fancy. Sunday's episode was "Winter". You wouldn't want to be going up hills with ruddy big packs on in Yellowstone in winter. You'd end up as dinner. The great survivors of a Yellowstone winter are the wolves. For them, the park at minus 40 degrees (the temperature at which fahrenheit and celsius read the same), is one great big butcher's shop. As the rest of the beasts get weaker, the wolves get friskier.

Bison, who are pretty tough guys themselves, are reduced to eating grass with the nutritional value of cardboard. A red fox dives into snow 1.8m deep to catch a mouse. A coyote steals a fish, hidden under ice, from an otter. The water in the air turns to ice: "Diamond dust. A cruel beauty." Lovely pictures though.

In Rivers, (Prime, Sunday) nature photographer Craig Potton followed the Mighty Clutha from high in the Southern Alps. Rivers is beautifully shot and narrated and presented, enthusiastically, if with furrowed brow and earnest concern, by Potton - whose face has the craggy, schisty contours of the great NZ outdoorsman.

Because we don't have exotic beasts, when nature docos are made about New Zealand, we have to have "characters". We either have far too many of these characters, or not enough. It's hard to be sure which. Perhaps we just have people, who are introduced as characters, and who fail, through no fault of their own, to live up to whatever expectation one might have of a character - that they are "colourful", presumably. This usually means an old hippie who lives in a filthy old shack, some place nobody in their right mind would want to live. Thankfully, there was only one of these characters in Clutha: a mild-mannered chap with a plait, who seemed a decent sort but not particularly colourful.

We have wetlands, which are special places and act as an enormous sponge, retaining and then releasing water during times of drought. Walking on wetlands is not something most people get to do. Potton had a stroll: "Which is very cool," he said.

He said, "there is still gold in them thar hills". Both of these comments are probably obligatory for any documentary made about New Zealand. This was the Clutha story from a conservationist's point of view, although apparently going on jetboats is okay for rivers. I wouldn't know and have no intention of finding out - doing so would involve going into the great outdoors.

Well, you just don't know, do you? There could be wolves, or hippies, in them thar hills. Lovely pictures though.

- TimeOut