Sadly, not on the endangered list

THE return of Down To Earth demonstrated that this rural series, with Warren Clarke and Pauline Quirke as a couple enjoying the good life, has everything we've come to expect - and dread - from a series in the Sunday evening feelgood slot. It is nice with a capital N, and totally predictable from start to finish. People lurch from one crisis to another, but always come up smiling. Whether it's called Where The Heart Is or Monarch Of The Glen, you can be certain that everything will come right in the end. A wedding is happy occasion to start any new series. Not that anyone seemed to have anything to smile about, from Quirke's: "Do people still wear shoulder pads?" ("They probably do in Devon," replied Clarke) to the debt-laden daughter with "a face like a wet weekend in Llandudno". The bride, inevitably, had a long-lost father she insisted on inviting to the ceremony. The bridegroom fell out with his father over money. A wise old local remarked, on seeing a couple kissing in public: "It's enough to put you off your pork scratchings." And that old favourite, the dog eating the canapes, was revived yet again. Much time was taken up with people saying sorry or hugging each other while muttering: "I'm proud of you, son". It was so sentimental and slushy that it made The Royal, over on ITV1, look like a Quentin Tarantino movie.

There was more genuine drama, complete with tears and laughter, in the splendid Natural World documentary, Flying Home. Scientists were on a mission to save the endangered whooping crane. There are only 286 truly wild ones left in America. Ten chicks had been artificially breed for the experiment. The plan was to raise them, then help them fly south for the winter. There were remarkable scenes of the chicks being reared - fed by a glove puppet on the arm of a scientist wearing a white sheet over his head and body, while recordings of real whooping cranes were played. The disguise, which made them look like Rod Hull and Emu dressed for a Ku Klux Klan meeting, was because they didn't want the birds to know they were human. The second part of the plan involved persuading the cranes to follow microlite planes on the 1,250 mile, 50-day journey to their winter home in Florida. They were followed on the ground by a crew of ten in Operation Migration. Eight birds and three pilots (still wearing their absurd white sheets) took off on a journey that was not without drama. At one point, birds and pilots were grounded by fog. One bird got lost, although located again thanks to a radio transmitter on its leg. One died after hitting power lines. Another was chauffeured to the destination after failing to keep up with the others on the flight. That wasn't the end of the story. After wintering in a Florida wildlife refuge, the big question was whether the birds could fly back home alone. The news was good and bad. Two were lost to bobcats while in Florida, but the other five did manage to return home safely. The even better news is that scientists are continuing the scheme, with simliar flights planned annually until the flock is big enough to take the species off the danger list.