James reviews Countryfile on BBC1, and Coogan’s Bluff (1968) on ITV4.

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the thirty-fifth episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’ 

This is where I review Freeview programs. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews, past and present. And if you’re curious about the future, see the ‘What’s up next’ section at the end, or look on the website. That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com. 

In this episode, I will review:

Countryfile on BBC1, and

Coogan’s Bluff (1968) on ITV4.

Growing up in a small country village, I’ve always felt I should watch ‘Countryfile’ as a nod to my childhood. Tractors! Thatched cottages! Mud! Men with trouser legs tied with string! But in all honesty, I don’t expect anything like that. Except maybe the mud. So it should be interesting. Fingers crossed it’ll be bucolic and informative. And in contrast, an old Clint Eastwood movie I’ve never managed to see. He’s usually good value so - as I’ve said before - if I’m watching, I might as well review.

By the way, the image for this episode was generated by a free AI image generator with the prompt:

wheat fields, a cosy thatched cottage and a tall, menacing, clean shaven deputy sheriff.

Yep, I know: the sheriff isn’t clean shaven and I should have added some cattle or maybe a dog or two, but all the free AI generators I use only allow freeloaders like me a few goes, and I’ve had quite a few bashes at it. So this is it, I’m afraid.

Time now for a trip outdoors!

Countryfile on BBC1, Sunday September 8, 7:00pm

This starts with the two pleasant presenters Sean and Anita walking along a West Exmoor track, surrounded by acres of scrubby flowering ermm … Gorse? Lavender? Lilac? I don’t know what the plants were, but right now, on my big telly, Exmoor does look absolutely stunning. (Grunt)

So, Countryfile.

Last time I watched, by accident, many years ago, it hopped like a kangaroo from one topic to the next. I can’t remember any details, but I expect it had items on building haystacks, deworming sheep and ferrets down trousers - demonstrated by Harold (now Sharon). (Ha!) The old ones are the old ones.

But no, no hops this time! There was a very definite and deliberate focus on West Exmoor projects that use animals as a vital part of restoration and conservation. We only strayed away once, for what looked like a regular monthly or weekly visit to a weathered chap called Adam on his Cotswolds farm.

To start, Sean looks at a wetlands project. Ponds have been dug out and drains removed, resulting in flowers, bees, grasshoppers, toads! In a word, diversity, which is axiomatically taken as a good thing. 

We meet Jack, the chap in charge, and he waxes eloquently on the benefits of water. Drains and humans, he tells us, have to be removed.

They’ve already got local livestock munching, defecating and stomping away, but that’s not enough: Sean and Jack toddle off to see 6 water buffalo, being prepared for release into the ponds. Somewhat oddly, they come from Scotland. When in place, they’ll wallow around creating new channels and stopping ponds from silting up. 

Today they’re getting GPS collars fitted, so they can be tracked. And in a way, that encapsulates the whole approach: rewilding in a very controlled and careful manner. It’s not a simple case of leaving alone and letting nature do its thing. No. They have a definite aim in mind, and a planned approach. I wouldn’t mind betting, somewhere, in a lush valley, there’s a wooden hut with sheets of colour coded maps pinned to the wall, plotting, year by year, how everything will be edged slowly back to how it was several centuries ago. So - presumably - if the water buffalo splosh their way into the wrong time zone, they’ll be herded back to where they belong.

Next, Anita meets Ellie, the project manager for butterfly conservation. As an aside, everyone we meet has an impressive title, which the cynic in me believes is probably to make up for lack of staff and a shortfall in funding.

Right now Ellie is concerned about the High Brown Fritillary. When Anita rocks up, it’s late in the season and they’ve stopped flying, but never mind, here’s a stock photo or two. It’s fashionably brown, but with yellow dots. 

Anyway, the high brown is failing, and something must be done. So what do they do? Well, propagate dog violets and call in the fluffy pigs! Otherwise known as mangalitsas. As Finley - the friendly chap in charge of them - explains, they’re the nearest you can get now to a wild boar. He takes them to a suitable area and lets them loose to do their thing. Afterwards, with the ground sufficiently rooted over, peed on and generally flattened, Ellie follows up and plants her dog violets.

The idea is the High Brown Fritillary caterpillers will have lots to eat and we’ll then have more butterflies. Hurrah!

I might sound flippant, but I’m not. I so admire things like this. Dedicated professionals, beavering away, fixing things very few people knew needed fixing and thus making our world very, very slightly better.

After a couple of minutes of slow-motion dragonflies, we see efforts to connect woodlands by planting thousands of trees, all different types. Some are given little woolly overcoats. 

We’re about halfway through now, so - abruptly - it’s over to the Cotswolds for a regular visit to Adam’s farm.

Its been a wet Summer, so he’s running late with his crops. He shows us a field of sunflowers. And then he’s weighing lambs and sending the heaviest to market, (which is probably a euphemism for ending up as a Sunday roast) before striding off to see his Suffolk Punch, Lexi, and her foal Victor, who are going to get their feet filed down. 

I ask you: does life get much better than this? Running round a field trying to get an enormous horse to enter a pen so a farrier can attack the toenails? Probably not: it certainly beats sitting on your bum in front of a screen.

Then this busy in a sluggish way program hot foots it back to Exmoor and here’s Lucy, the grandly named Exmoor park historic environment officer, talking about Ada Lovelace (a Victorian mathematician) who lived in the area and like to stroll along country paths and enjoy the view. 

Anyway, in an item that can only really be understood if the word ‘filler’ is splattered around like soup thrown on a wall, 7 or 8 minutes are used up with Lucy first walking in slow motion along a path or two and then discussing them with the chap in charge of renovating those paths. Inevitably, they tell each other stuff they must already know. 

And so - after a lengthy look at the weather for next week - more rain, if memory serves - we gallop into the final straight. Which is, appropriately enough, all about the Exmoor pony.

And, fan though I am of this commendably hardy small horse, I’m now wearying of the sheer worthiness of this program. My eyes close and my head drops. 

Next thing you know, the screen is blank and I need a pee. I blame Ada Lovelace. If she hadn’t been famous and walked down some paths, I’m sure I could have made it to the end.

For this particular, focused Countryfile hasn’t really got the legs for a whole hour. I appreciate the concept, and understand what they are doing, but it would have been better served by keeping the basic idea but without restricting themselves to one smallish geographical area. Plainly, there were just not enough projects of the right type. 

It would have been better to expand the remit to the whole of the UK. I mean, the water buffalo came from Scotland. Immediately, I wished to know, why from Scotland? What were they used for there? Rewilding? Haggis? Decorative objects in a wildlife park? Who knows?

Overall, ‘Countryfile’ tries very, very hard not to be completely misty eyed and full to bursting with green fields, cattle and picturesque trees. And to their credit, there was not a single horny handed yokel chewing a straw and holding a pitchfork. Bernard Miles this was not.

You knew, if it started raining, they’d just keep going. But they’d be sure to include a couple of artistic shots of raindrops hitting leaves and puddles. And instead of legging it for cover, the presenters would have resolutely continued, albeit under a sou’wester. 

‘Countryfile’ tries to walk that difficult tightrope between reality and the idealised, nostalgic memory we have of a countryside that probably never existed.

And, credit where credit’s due, they do make a reasonable fist of it. But only just. You always felt, just over the horizon, was the lurking threat of yokels Morris dancing around Constable’s haywain.

But then, TV is TV and ‘Countryfile’ is a popular TV program. It effectively combines information, misty nostalgia, welly boots and the great outdoors, serving it up on a platter for people sitting on sofas drinking tea and demolishing hobnobs.

Long may it continue. But, I have to add, without me.

Which might or might not be a good intro to:

Coogan’s Bluff (1968) on ITV4, Monday September 9, 9:00pm

It’s hard to know where to start with Clint Eastwood. He’s been around so, so long he’s stopped being just a film actor and is now almost mythical. He’s starred, and/or directed, Google tells me, over 80 films. And ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ is number 5. 

So it’s an early Eastwood, and the first to be set in the present day (of 1968). Not a horse or a poncho to be seen. He was born in 1930, so he was already pushing 40 when he made it. But he looks so young! Hardly a crinkle. Good head of hair, lithe walk, impressive fighting skills and a somewhat dismissive, even a misogynist, attitude to women. Which, incidentally, doesn’t stop him from trying to seduce anyone in a skirt.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Coogan is an Arizonan Deputy Sheriff, sent to New York to bring back a fugitive. He gets up the noses of the NYC police, messes up, and the fugitive escapes. Coogan is ordered to go home, but of course he doesn’t and sets out to relentlessly hunt down his prey. On the way he romances a couple of women, gets into fights and sneers a great deal. 

So it’s part country bumpkin showing big city folks how things are done back home and part terminator with an ever-ready willy.

The opening scenes of ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ are interesting in several ways. There’s a native American Indian hiding out in a rocky outcrop in a desert. He has a rifle and is obviously waiting to ambush his pursuer. He wears only a loincloth. It’s hot and timeless. You can’t tell if it’s 1860 or 1960.

Coming towards him is a puff of dust. The Indian stiffens, raises his gun. This must be his pursuer.

The dust resolves into a small jeep. Driving it, sitting upright, with his stetson rigidly horizontal on his head, is a tall, remorseless, figure. Yep, it’s Clint Eastwood.

So it’s present day, and he’s on a jeep rather than a horse, but the echos back to his previous spaghetti Westerns are clear. Once again, he is the lone avenger riding stony faced into a situation you know can only be solved with violence.

He establishes himself as a maverick by ignoring the squawks from his radio to contact the sheriff, captures the Indian by suddenly appearing behind him after he’s fired all his bullets and stops on the way back to have a bath with a toothsome lass who’s husband is away.

That’s all in the first 10 minutes or so, and you think, ah, well, OK: it’s Clint as we’ve known him, albeit with a lack of horses, but, as compensation, they’ve chucked in a bit of sex.

But things slow up considerably when he’s sent to NYC to bring back a prisoner. The script is uneven. Some attempts at comedy are made (most notably when a short, rotund lady accuses everyone she meets of trying to rape her) but then we get 10 minutes or so of him romancing an attractive probation officer, and … well, it’s all easy on the eye, but .. c’mon now: it doesn’t ring true. Clint Eastwood smiling and carrying groceries? Ummm … not sure. I haven’t really signed up for this. But more of that later.

Anyway, on being told the man he’s after is in hospital and to get him out requires time and admin, Coogan bluffs his way in and takes him, handcuffed, to the airport, where he’s ambushed, knocked unconscious and left lying on the floor as the criminals leg it out of there.

When he comes to in hospital, he’s ordered to drop the case and go back to Arizona.

But …. (sigh), as expected, all the familiar tough-guy film tropes make their appearance.

Before anyone thinks he can even stand, he discharges himself. He doesn’t go home. He uses subterfuge and trickery to get a clue or two. He gets beaten up again. He finds the man’s girlfriend, and seduces her. Then - and I found this most distasteful - he roughs her up, forcing her to lead him to his prey.

To be honest, I might have mixed up the order a little bit, maybe even left out a meaningful incident. (I think he went to jail at one point.) But more and more, as the plot chewed its way remorselessly to the final climatic scenes, I was losing interest.

I didn’t drop off (as I had done in Countryfile) but I did begin wondering when my tortoise was going to hibernate, and if it’d rain tomorrow. (If you’re interested, the answers are soon and probably)

After a goodish start, ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ became progressively more vacuous as it trundled along. But it did make some attempt to develop the central character, possibly to give Eastwood more depth than the indestructible gunslinger of ‘the man with no name’, so kudos for that.

But in all honesty, the script was not good enough. In the romance scenes there is little wit and no fun. Sure, Eastwood has all the confident arrogance of the alpha male, but his chat up lines are feeble to say the least and there’s no sense of intimacy. 

But, then, most cinematic tough guys - when meeting an attractive woman for the first time - seldom waste time in verbal niceties. James Bond, for instance, in ‘Die another Day’ on seeing Halle Berry sashaying her way up the beach, speaks about two sentences so mundane I can’t remember what they were and next thing y’know, they’re humping away like rats in a sack.

So - I dunno - maybe having Coogan actually chatting for more than a cursory minute or two is a start.

Whatever. We’ve always got to remember this is early Eastwood. Over the years, as we all know, his acting skills and range increased dramatically. And - as I mentioned a few weeks ago when discussing Jack Lemmon - it’s nearly impossible to see past the fog of later celebrity and success, and truly critique an early performance.

But, all in all, I have to rate this film as a failure on several levels: the storyline is simplistic and has many lazy plot holes; it’s characterisation is poor; the script is workaday at best and - worst of all - it endorses, even lauds, clear, nasty themes of stereotypical strong hero male doing what he wants and getting away with it while leaving a trail of destruction for others to clear up.

So I’m deleting my recording and won’t watch again. But if those fine, late Eastwood films ‘Unforgiven’ or ‘Gran Torino’ or ‘Million Dollar Baby’ come along, I’ll be right there, and I advise you to be as well. They are gems, and show how much he has matured. After all, he did then what he knew how to do. Now that he knows better, he does better.

And that very slight misquote from Maya Angelou concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Next time, I will review:

Strictly Come Dancing (S 22 E 1: Launch Show) on BBC1, Saturday 14 September, 7:20pm

The Northman (2022) on channel 4, Saturday 14 September, 9:00pm and

Buddha: Genius of the Ancient World on BBC4, Monday 16 September, 1:55am

Yep, I’m going for 3 reviews this time as I’m half expecting to give the first short shrift, the second to be a snooze-fest and the third to be interesting but - counter intuitively - I doubt there’ll be enough substance for more than a few minutes. 

We’ll see.

As ever, contact me via email to contact@IReviewFreeview.com or through the website IReviewFreeview.com where you can also click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ to see what programs I’ll be reviewing next time.

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.