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Secret Gardens with Chris Collins

Chris Collins
  • Posted at 10:42am
  • 26 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 1 comment

I'm a sucker for tranquil television. You know, the kind of non-threatening programming that has you letting out long, deep sighs of contentment, rather than giving you clammy palms, or forcing you to throw magazines about, or have you muttering about writing a stern letter of complaint to some kind of ombudsman. Man, I love the word ombudsman.

I love gently paced, reassuringly peaceful cookery shows. Non-hysterical shopping channels. On a recent flight to Japan, the fact that they woke me up with a video of a smiling woman doing gentle stretching exercises was enough to make me almost weep with pleasure.

And the most viewed thing on my Sky+ box recently is a three-hour tutorial on how to use a piece of video-editing software that was broadcast at 2:00am on some minority-interest channel. I don't even own the software. It just made me feel good.

So it's a shame that I have absolutely zero interest in gardening, because gardening shows generally fulfil very similar criteria to all of the above. I suppose it's only a matter of time before some charismatic, foul-mouthed gardening expert emerges to present a show in which he screams at celebrities and forces them to dig herbaceous borders neatly, or else they'll be voted off the show by the general public. But that hasn't happened. Yet. So instead we have Chris Collins.

Chris is an amiable chap in jumper and jeans, offering us helpful advice on composting in a South London accent while an acoustic guitar picks away gently in the background. During this series, he wanders through a number of gardens around the country that are open to the public at certain points during the year, under the National Gardens Scheme.

He indicates interesting grasses, attractive flowers and well-maintained lawns as he goes. And that's it. No nail-biting suspense. No concerns as to whether he'll unleash a torrent of abuse at the landowner. Just gardens. Even his interviewing technique is designed not to upset either the interviewee, or indeed the viewer.

"Can you tell us your technique for cutting hedges?" "Well, we use hedge cutters." "That's pretty interesting."

This programme, rather gloriously, is totally unchallenging on every level. It's marvellous – and, in the current TV climate, almost weird. Going into the commercial break, a question popped up on the screen. "Q: What is a weed? Answer after the break." After the break, the answer appeared. "It's a plant in the wrong place!" Having failed to make my synapses crackle, the show just carried on showing me nice plants with details of whether they like direct sunlight. Or shade. Or being gently pruned. Or the music of Randy Crawford. Soothing stuff.

Most wonderfully, at the end of the show, anyone interested in the National Gardens Scheme was asked to write to an address that flashed up on the screen. No website. No email. No desperate pleas to interact in real time. No urging to hear our half-baked opinions on wisteria or orchids – no, just sit down, and write a letter. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe this is a television revolution. I'm not sure which.

Secret Gardens with Chris Collins is on weekdays at 8:30pm on UKTV Gardens (Sky 258, Virgin 267).

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  • Posted on 26 October 2007
  • at 12:05pm
  • by robsoft
Good call old hoss. I'm tired of the intrusion of unnecessary interaction into every TV programme. It's often half-baked and seems to be tacked-on just to tick some box about interactivity and public accountability. Who wants to hear emails from the viewers? I bloody don't. They should get their own programmes if they've got something worthwhile to say. Then we could have programme wars, like the good old days.At the end of the day, we are the audience; we have one mouth, two eyes and two ears. They should be used in the correct ratio. Thinking about your software tutorial comment for a moment, I'd honestly consider paying money to watch a Photoshop expert steadily going about the task of say, touching up a photo of Cameon Diaz. Just focus the camera on the monitor and have him/her quietly mumbling away in the background on a very low-key running commentary of what they were about to do (and why).There's cheap, quick but wholesome TV for you.

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