RUSSIA WITH SIMON REEVE, BBC2, 9pm
THIS new programme is fascinating! It’s a three-part series which takes us across Russia, the largest country on earth. It starts in the frozen east, where reindeer are starving to death due to climate change. They eat lichen by nosing the snow aside, but milder temperatures means rain falls and then compacts into ice, and they can’t get at their food.
Then we go on to Vladivostock which is setting itself up as a glitzy casino city to attract Chinese tourists, although the authorities are far less welcoming to the BBC. The police stop them numerous times, and even remove the cameramen to a local psychiatric ward for a series of drug tests, designed to intimidate them.
We end in Yakutsk in Siberia, a city which stands on permafrost but climate change is melting it, and huge craters are appearing called megaslumps, but the locals have a more poetic name, calling the biggest one The Batagaika –The Gateway to the Underworld.
THE SUPERVET, C4, 8pm
I NORMALLY can’t bear to watch The Supervet as the idea of pets in pain just kills me. I’m still traumatised from taking my dog to the vet two years ago to have him chipped: the procedure took about three seconds, but the wee lad yelped, and the sound was so difficult to hear. And when he immediately forgave the vet and put his paws on her shoulders I nearly sobbed.
But I’ve started to watch this great series as there have been some horrible stories on animal cruelty in the news recently and so I need to see kindness, and be reminded that there are good people who can sometimes repair the damage we awful humans do to our animal pals.
Tonight we have a gigantic puppy called Tank whose hefty weight is damaging his elbow joints and kneecaps. At the opposite end of the doggy spectrum is Mouse, a tiny puppy with an even tinier broken paw.
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