TV Review: It's Not Easy Being Green

By Jeremy Clay

It’s Not Easy Being Green (8pm, BBC2). But it’s a doddle compared to making decent TV.

The eco-doc returned for a third run in an awkward new magazine format, after fashioning itself into a programme with no discernible purpose.

Seasons one and two of the show concerned themselves with the Strawbridge family’s efforts to marry comfort and creed, as they set out to build a environmentally-friendly life on a Cornish farm.

All well and good, if you like that sort of thing. But series three isn’t all well and good, even if you do like that sort of thing.

It’s aimless, grey telly: a mish-mash of this and that, which winds up looking like one of those non-specific stews dished up in a 1980s veggie cafe.

We find the family still hard at it with their green DIY. Last night, they were putting solar panels on the roof, to go with the wind turbines and the eco-khazi.

But now they’ve been joined by an unusually lacklustre Lauren Laverne, who Reports On Stuff. Yesterday, it was green swimming pools. I like Laverne, ordinarily.  She's irreverent, witty and wry. But here she had the air of someone whose been lied to by the producer.

There’s also a bit about a London couple trying to renovate their house in the Strawbridge style, and a lifeless segment which calculates a celebrity’s carbon footprint. First up was Phil Tufnell, who may as well borrow Krusty the Clown’s “Will Drop Pants For Food” placard.

Holding it all together – just – is the extravagantly mustachioed Dick Strawbridge, who looks like Willie Thorne’s Walloonian cousin.

Dick’s a bombardment of bonhomie who greets strangers with bear hugs and erupts into great gales of crippling laughter at light-hearted small-talk.

I think it would be quite gratifying to meet Dick. He’d make a manic depressive feel like the life and soul of the party.

Channel 4 are airing a promising sitcom about two stuck-in-the-past estate agents blithely ploughing on while the housing market goes into meltdown.

Each week, against all the odds, they manage to unearth someone who’s looking to buy. A bit far-fetched, perhaps, but amusing all the same. Look out for it: it’s called Relocation, Relocation (8pm).

Rick Stein’s a genial chap. Amiable, influential, admirable, even. But does he really merit a 90 minute hagiography, built from old clips already airing on Saturday Kitchen (Memoirs of a Seafood Chef, 9pm, BBC2)?

No, thought not.