TV Preview: Discovering wild penguins of New Zealand living in their own mythical past within a forest

New Zealand – Earth’s Mythical Islands, BBC2, Tuesday 9pm; Brief Encounters, ITV Monday 9pm Don’t Tell The Bride, SKY 1 and NOW TV, Thursday 9pm

(Mark MacEwen/BBC)

A group of funny little islands, cut out from the rest of the world, living in their own mythical past? No, not post-Brexit Britain, well not yet anyway, but an apt description of New Zealand, whose extreme isolation has allowed nature to take its own course for the past 80 million years.

I speak for myself, but I don’t think I will ever reach peak penguin, such is my fascination for these cute flightless birds.

That, I think, is a fondness shared by many if the popularity of penguins across popular culture signifies anything. I still nurse fond memories of the recent Channel 5 series ‘Penguin A&E With Lorraine Kelly’. In New Zealand, you’ll be interested to learn, there are more species of penguin than anywhere else in the world.

Who knew? I’m surprised Lorraine hasn’t emigrated. There is, for example, a type called Snares Penguins, which inhabit the still more remote Snares Islands. They have a slightly stooped gait, prominent beaks and a tuft of unruly hair that will put you in mind of our new foreign secretary each time you see them manoeuvring around their own unusual terrain, a forest. Maybe when Boris Johnson gets round to visiting New Zealand he will be introduced to these miniature Bozza-look-a-likes. Maybe in 80 million years’ time the whole of the British population, cut off from the rest of the world, will be a race of pure euro-sceptics.

You will also be enchanted, I think, by the other unique flora and fauna, though in this first episode the famous kakapo bird, a flightless parrot with a humanoid face, failed to put in an appearance. I remember first seeing one almost 30 years ago in ‘Last Chance to See’, a series devoted to near-extinct creatures presented by Stephen Fry and Douglas Adams. Thankfully the kakapo, which had no natural predators until man arrived with rats, cats and dogs, is still with us. So is the Jurassic era mini-dinosaur Tuatara, the kiwi and the magnificently named Dusky Dolphin.

The only thing you may not enjoy is when the show goes off-remit, exploring magnificent Maori carvings and gazing in wonderment at a herd of 29,000 Merino sheep up a mountain. Magnificent, yes, but not wild.

Brief Encounters continues its run, and, half way through the series, you’ll find the humour not as broad as at the start (it is abed on Ann Summers parties, after all), and the drama that much more involving. If anything it reminds me of the Coronation Street storylines that were being used at about the same time as Brief Encounters is set, the early 1980s, something of a golden era for Corrie. For those of us of a certain age, the period details are unfailingly poignant, from eating grapefruit halves out of a special dish to the Sony Walkman to the Triumph Dolomite to the Bad Manners LP. Brief Encounters is developing nicely.

If I had the chance I think I’d recommend to Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and all our other rulers that they make time for an instalment of Don’t Tell the Bride. This would cheer them up, because it actually shows that what are sometimes termed “ordinary people” can be happy and fulfilled even if they are a bit hard up and can’t afford to live in Notting Hill or Islington.

In the case of former prison guard Adam and 23 year old Bianca, from Cardiff, there isn't that much money to spend on the wedding of their dreams, and what there is quite badly budgeted.

Bianca, shall we say, has to make do with a less than ideal outfit, and much else, because Adam and his mates decide to spend thousands of pounds on filling a rusty damp disused warehouse with sand. Can love still conquer all in broken Britain?