Last Night's Television: Snow, BBC2; Mud, Sweat and Tractors - The True Story of Agriculture, BBC4; The Apprentice, BBC2

The right type of show

God bless the British enthusiast, a breed of men (and they do mostly seem to be men, women being too busy or too sensible to let monomania rule their lives) without whom we'd probably know a lot less than we do now. Men like Leo Bonacina, for example (who doesn't sound particularly British, I agree).

Leo doesn't seem to rate an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, which seems rather unfair really, given that he devoted a huge chunk of his life to compiling historical snow-fall records for the British Isles, a heroic bit of meteorological drudgery that laid the foundations for British snow studies, and allows us to say, with some degree of certainty, that the notion of the "typical" British white Christmas is just a bit of Dickensian fantasy. Snow, from the same strand that a week ago erected a modest electronic plinth to G J Symons, the man who first began the systematic recording of rainfall, this week laid a metaphorical wreath on Bonacina's grave, and well deserved it seemed too.

The same programme also came to the rescue of an unnamed victim of media and public prejudice, whoever it was who explained, back in 1991, that the rail system had ground to a halt because of the "wrong type of snow". This line, ever since an exemplary text of bureaucratic blame-dodging, turns out to have been no more than the truth, though it didn't stand a snowflake's chance in hell against the engrained cynicism of British commuters, neatly illustrated here by a dyspeptic chap muttering "two snowflakes and everything goes wrong". A few more than two snowflakes, as it happens, and, due to a highly unusual set of climactic conditions, snowflakes that were perfectly designed to get through the ventilation systems of electric motors and blow out the workings with a big bang. The right, or routine, kind of snow wouldn't have done this, but proofing trains against a kind of snow usually only encountered in the Arctic would result in season-ticket prices that would have had that commuter threatening to throw himself in front of a train, once they started moving again. So, next time you hear someone laughing scornfully about the "wrong kind of snow", you'll know. It really was.

Interestingly, if there's anyone out there obsessively compiling the first comprehensive gazetteer of British provincial disasters, the town of Lewes got another mention this week, after a strong showing for its recent floods in last week's programme. In addition to high water marks down the high street, Lewes can also boast that it was the site of the deadliest avalanche in British history. During exceptionally heavy winter storms in 1836, a giant cornice built up on the chalk cliffs behind the town and then collapsed on to a row of pauper's cottages, an event feelingly reflected on here by a local vicar, a man with an incipient ZZ Top beard and more earrings than is conventional for a Church of England cleric. Apparently, Lewes can also lay claim to a modest earthquake in 1864, but I imagine there was a minor seismic aftershock when this character pitched up for his first meeting with the parish council.

Mud, Sweat and Tractors: the Story of Agriculture featured plenty of enthusiasts too - farmers whose commitment to British cattle breeds had lasted long enough to know at first-hand what a strange Alice-in-Wonderland transformation they've been through over the last 40 years. In Victorian times, Aberdeen Angus and Hereford bulls came up to shoulder height but consumer demand for smaller joints (and, someone suggested, carcasses that could fit into the decks of Argentinian beef freighters) led to their steady dwindling, until their haunches were just waist high (belt-buckle beasts, one man called them). Now, they have expanded in size again, to such an extent that even the farmers themselves could hardly believe the change when they looked at the old archive film that is one of the delights of this series. "What have we got here," asked one man chuckling at an old home movie,"a bassett hound or a bull?" I thought the series might fall between two stools when I first saw it, with a level of detail that would interest only those who were already familiar with the subject but prove far too arcane for those who weren't. But there is something seductive about its account of the continuities and change of the British countryside, a landscape far less natural than we like to imagine.

In this week's The Apprentice, Sir Alan briefed the candidates in a motorway service station, Nick and Margaret obliged to stand in the rain until he arrived, like North Korean ministers awaiting a visit from Kim Jong II. They looked like a novelty cruet set: salt on one side, pepper on the other and then a big whiskery bottle of vinegar in the middle, happily revealing that the overnight bags weren't a clue to a foreign jaunt but the prelude to a trip up north, trying to flog products to men with padlocks on their wallets. If you're interested, Phil bit the dust, and he didn't like the taste one bit.

t.sutcliffe@independent.co.uk