If you like middle-market tabloids, you’ll be into Coast. Like a reliable tide, the show about the sea has been washing up on BBC Two’s shores since 2005. A factual series defined by the ocean main which surrounds the British Isles, it comes with a stock of stories that, unlike the mackerel population, seem in no danger of running out. They are so plentiful, in fact, that last year David Dimbleby felt free to fish in pretty much the same waters with his series Britain and the Sea.
Rather than rely on a single presenter, Coast goes for the multi-person approach. Nicholas Crane, geeky in specs with a voice that still hasn’t quite got the hang of being on TV, tops and tails and pops up throughout. Then it’s over to the rest of the team. For the ninth iteration, that means gnarled Scottish dreamboat Neil Oliver, perky Miranda Krestovnikoff and hyperactive mollusc Mark Horton (pictured). Dress code: cagoules.
This series is all about two coasts, as supplied by southern England and northern France and the waterway that connects them. Coast darts about the place hunting for stories as if for crabs under a rock. Part one told of Mont Saint-Michel and its Cornish twin St Michael’s Mount, segued into D-Day, briefly reported on the scallop wars, demonstrated the history of triangulation, visited a naval ship which checks up on fishing vessels, and – most fascinatingly – told of the sinking of the Mendi in 1917 with its vast cargo of black South African soldiers.
It’s essentially Reader’s Digest on your telly, or The One Show in pursuit of an Open University degree. Quite why it goes out after the watershed is a maritime mystery because most of this breathless grab-bag of history and science with splendid aerial photography would be fascinating to younger viewers. Or it would have been 30 years ago before factual television began its long project to infantilise us all.
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