A preview of ‘Hebrides – Islands on the Edge’

by Iain Maciver

Even though he is only reading words written for him, there was always bound to be loads of silly hype when a Hollywood star best known for losing his underpants in his movies is signed up to do what seemed to be a fairly run-of-the-mill Scottish islands nature programme.

McGregor at work narrating Hebrides

Yet Hebrides – Islands on the Edge, which begins tomorrow (Monday) is, in fact, in another league to most of the recent tight-budgeted efforts but the star of the first show is not the horny boy from Crieff.

It’s the horny boy on the island of Rum; a stag known as The Master.

Okay, so this is just another nature programme but the three years it took Maramedia of Glasgow to put together using some of the talent which made the jaw-dropper series Frozen Planet with Sir David Attenborough is evident, welcome and worth it.

Sir David got into a bit of bother for allegedly faking scenes in the frozen wastes but I was a bit incredulous when I saw the high quality of the action-catching shots of swallows in the roof of an Islay distillery, the Kleenex-moistening Cecil B de Mille-type close-ups of a lonely young otter shunned when his mum got a mate, the poor bedraggled seal pups learning to swim and the bloody, lethal gouging of those two rutting stags, The Master and The Older Challenger, on Rum. All absolutely genuine and obviously painstakingly done.

Of necessity, McGregor’s commentary may have been penned afterwards to fit the pictures but the stories he tells are crystal clear to all. No faking here – not even McGregor’s accent which is more solidly Perthshire than in recent years. There’s blood, sex and a lucky someone comes close to bagging a venison dinner. It’s got it all.

Oh, and I forgot to mention pathos. It’s got that too. You may never have felt any emotion for a rutting stag before but watch this and you just might.

The programme I watched, which goes out tomorrow, is also red in teeth and claws when white-tailed eagles lunch on a barnacle goose – but not enough to give you nightmares. You have to watch the news for that.

The three Hebrides shows are part of a wider series entitled Wild Scotland, said to provide intimate but also inspiring images of Scottish wildlife and landscape. Four-part Wild Cameramen At Work, made by BBC Scotland itself, shows how the Scottish landscape has inspired a generation of world class cameramen to capture wildlife across the globe. They have wheeled out Sir David himself to narrate that one.

Then Midsummer Live, on June 21, comes live from the Callanish Stones here on Lewis. Dougie Vipond presents a long show about a long day tracking the sun going down behind the submarine communications mast at Aird, Uig. Long-haired New Age types usually turn up for a spot of lovemaking al fresco at the Summer Solstice, though the sight of Dougie and his long lens may put a brake on that this year.

The BBC statement has failed to make it clear whether Dougie will present the show naked, as is traditional at all such midsummer rituals on Lewis. Even that shrinking violet Billy Connolly danced in the scuddy around the Stones one chilly solstice of yore.

When I was young, we each got our willy out at the Callanish Stones on late-night summer visits. Not for New Age lovemaking, you understand; it was more to do with the cheap Co-op lager we always took as an offering to Seonag, Cailleach na Mointich – or the Old Woman of the Moors, the distant mystical hill formation in the shape of a reclining lady with big boobies.

While we may be mostly Free Church on this island, we have always been just a little bit pagan when it comes to having a good time.

Hebrides – Islands on the Edge - BBC 1 Scotland 9pm. Monday 6 May