GRAND TOURS OF SCOTLAND’S LOCHS,
BBC1, 7.30pm
DOES Paul Murton have one of the best jobs in Scotland?
In this new series he goes “on a loch-hopping journey”, telling us about the legends and history of the great lochs, meeting the people who work alongside them and those who use them for work, play and daredevil sports.
He describes the lochs, of which there are more than 31,000, as “Scotland’s gift to the world”.
Tonight he goes to Argyll to visit Loch Etive, “a landscape which fuels the imagination” and is “steeped in Celtic myth and legend”. The mysterious element, which tourists must adore, is brought to life when Murton visits a reputedly haunted gatehouse. It is said that a poltergeist appears each midsummer night, and locals won’t stay there without company – and a fierce guard dog – but Murton gets out his earplugs and beds down. The loch gets fast and choppy as it nears the sea at Oban’s Falls of Lora and we meet the brave kayakers who battle the water’s famous “white dogs”.
DIANA AND I,
BC2, 9pm
I’M not interested in yet another documentary where the famous and the privileged witter on about the saintly Diana. Thankfully this programme doesn’t contain either element. It’s a drama about the different reactions of four ordinary people in the aftermath of the princess’s death.
Tamsin Greig plays a downtrodden Glasgow florist called Mary. Business is poor, and she’s reduced to making sad little phone calls to the recently bereaved in the hope of drumming up some custom.
When Diana dies, she spots an opportunity and heads to London with a van full of flowers, flogging them to the hysterical crowds at Kensington Palace.
We also meet Jack, a shy teenager whose mother dies on the same night as Diana. He endures his own terrible grief while the whole world cries for someone else.
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