In praise of stately homes and giant carrots

Alan Titchmarsh and David Dimbleby create a celebratory frenzy of Britishness
How We Built Britain BBC1
The Great British Village Show BBC1

I've been in Iran for ten days, which makes it doubly disconcerting (though shamefully comforting, too) to turn on the television and find the BBC in a celebratory frenzy of Britishness. On 3 June, two new series began on BBC1: How We Built Britain (9pm), which is presented by David Dimbleby, and The Great British Village Show (6.50pm), whose host is Alan Titchmarsh.

I should say right away that I have a borderline obsession with Titchmarsh. Embarrassing, but true. He has a weird everyman quality that I find quite fascinating. It's as though your Uncle Norman - life and soul of the party, oddly camp, preposterous sense of self-belief, deeply into amateur dramatics - had suddenly appeared on TV, having always been perfectly happy with his job at a car showroom in Filey. My mouth falls open, and I am transfixed. In this show, the Titch is surrounded by vegetables so big, you could cut a door and windows in them and move in. I'm agog!

But let's talk about Dimbles first. He is perfect for this gig - a broad history of our buildings and what they say about us - because, quite apart from his presenterly gravitas, he is somewhat architectural himself: his outsize head has, I've always thought, a hint of the Easter Island statue about it. Plus, in his shirt the colour of tinned salmon, he looks so very establishment, and this series has a format so traditional that, save for its whizzy opening titles, it could have been made at any time in the past 20 years. Glorious shots of keeps and naves are cut with images from art and encounters with experts - not historians (that's Dimbles's job), but warreners, pargeters and stonemasons. The whole thing is then set to appropriate music: hysterical strings for castles, stately timpani for his questing Land Rover, and something with castanets for rabbits running across common ground.

The information on offer is faultless, as is the access to some truly wonderful buildings. At Gainsborough Old Hall, a medieval manor house in Lincolnshire, Dimbleby was served the head of a cockerel sewn on to a pig's bum. At a 13th-century barn in Cressing Temple, Essex, he threshed corn until his flail broke in two. I love this kind of stuff, however cheesily it is presented - though even I blushed when Dimbles attempted to air-sword fight on a spiral staircase (he looked about 12). But while the past is brought vividly to life, the present is unrecognisable: no traffic, no rubbernecking day trippers, no discreet National Trust signs. How on earth did they pull this off? Lavenham, in Suffolk, was so spookily bereft of people, it was like watching Doctor Who. Some will object to this con trick of beautification, but I don't give a fig, not when it all looks so stirring.

It does, however, add a definite element of pomposity to the proceedings. Dimbleby is no mere presenter, you gather: he's an explorer, an adventurer, a pioneer. He drives on A-roads where others fear to journey.

The Great British Village Show comprises six regional heats featuring the competitions found at a traditional fete; the winners in 14 different classes go through to a final, to be held at Highgrove. I was all set to be sniffy about this (how twee - like Midsomer Murders without the blood), but I just don't have it in me. Those taking part are too genuine; they really do spend their weekends growing runner beans so straight and long, they might as well be arrows. Plus, the series is unintentionally hilarious.

The judges say things like "It's a pleasure handling this leek", or "These pickling shallots look like droplets of burnished gold". As for Alan, if ever a man was born to make double entendres about carrots, he was.

Is it significant, this sudden desire on the part of the BBC to make television about a kind of Britishness that is all white and cosy? Perhaps. But if so, it is strategic, rather than sinister. It will reassure a large subsection of licence-fee payers, a group that the BBC needs to have onside in the difficult times ahead. That it's also enjoyable for the rest of us - the Titch has dished up a kind of anthropological masterpiece - is merely a bonus.

Pick of the week

Talk to Me
10 June, 9.30pm, ITV1
Shlocky drama about a DJ who falls for his best friend's fiancée.