Like religion and waistlines, Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons are a lot bigger in the States than they are over here. It's a shame, because his uniquely twisted perspective on life has something peculiarly English about it.
A classic Larson strip depicts cows chatting in a field, stood on their hind legs. As one shouts a warning that a car is approaching, they drop to all fours and pretend to graze.
The Private Life of Cows (Wednesday 9pm, BBC2) went in search of similar revelations. Premium sausage peddler Jimmy Doherty was the man charged with putting one over on David Attenborough and getting that historic first footage of bovines playing backgammon (not easy with hooves, you'd imagine).
It turns out that when they aren't waterskiing or wife-swapping, cows spend most of their time standing about in fields waiting to be milked or eaten. Or actually being milked. Or eaten. Or composing wry political commentary. Well, perhaps not that last one.
In fact, there was nothing startling or even particularly private on display here. And while you'd think there was endless fun to be had with clips of folks getting chased by stampeding cows, it could have been livened up considerably with a bit of Yakety Sax on the soundtrack (though that's true of pretty much anything on TV, especially the news).
Jimmy - who, deep down, must realise he'll always be Five Bellies to Jamie Oliver's Gazza - also pondered why cows react so skittishly to sudden movements. At the risk of veering into highly technical evolutionary brain-science type stuff, it's surely possible that centuries of being turned into tasty beef products have made cows collectively go a bit... well, paranoid.
Mind you, things have certainly improved on that front. When Jimmy said he wanted to know "what goes on inside a cow's brain", it did rather call to mind the dark days of BSE and John Gummer feeding burgers to his unsuspecting kids.
This was the first in a three-part series, with Jimmy a pig farmer by trade next week set to learn the shocking truth of where eggs really come from. Perhaps, for our peace of mind, some things should remain private after all.
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A classic Larson strip depicts cows chatting in a field, stood on their hind legs. As one shouts a warning that a car is approaching, they drop to all fours and pretend to graze.
The Private Life of Cows (Wednesday 9pm, BBC2) went in search of similar revelations. Premium sausage peddler Jimmy Doherty was the man charged with putting one over on David Attenborough and getting that historic first footage of bovines playing backgammon (not easy with hooves, you'd imagine).
It turns out that when they aren't waterskiing or wife-swapping, cows spend most of their time standing about in fields waiting to be milked or eaten. Or actually being milked. Or eaten. Or composing wry political commentary. Well, perhaps not that last one.
In fact, there was nothing startling or even particularly private on display here. And while you'd think there was endless fun to be had with clips of folks getting chased by stampeding cows, it could have been livened up considerably with a bit of Yakety Sax on the soundtrack (though that's true of pretty much anything on TV, especially the news).
Jimmy - who, deep down, must realise he'll always be Five Bellies to Jamie Oliver's Gazza - also pondered why cows react so skittishly to sudden movements. At the risk of veering into highly technical evolutionary brain-science type stuff, it's surely possible that centuries of being turned into tasty beef products have made cows collectively go a bit... well, paranoid.
Mind you, things have certainly improved on that front. When Jimmy said he wanted to know "what goes on inside a cow's brain", it did rather call to mind the dark days of BSE and John Gummer feeding burgers to his unsuspecting kids.
This was the first in a three-part series, with Jimmy a pig farmer by trade next week set to learn the shocking truth of where eggs really come from. Perhaps, for our peace of mind, some things should remain private after all.
More from this column
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