On TV

The Secret Life of Arthur Ransome (BBC2)

IT'S been eight years since Monarch of the Glen first turned up on our screens. Eight years of gentle meanderings through the Scottish Highlands, punctuated every now and then by the laird wondering how he is going to make his spectacularly beautiful estate pay its way, while not forgetting to indulge in a bit of playful banter with the only single woman for miles, inevitably headstrong and feisty, but ultimately unable to resist his charms. In other words, perfect Sunday evening television: undemanding, nice to look at and leaving you with a warm glow at the credits.

But all good things must come to an end, and so began what is promised to be the final series of this Heartbeat of the Glens. As the last series, there are some loose ends and long-running storylines to bring to a close, but not before a few harmless excursions down some well-trodden paths.

Paul, the laird, was having trouble keeping his estate in the black. In fact, things got so bad , cook and general man about the house Ewan had to get on his bike and pedal like fury to get the dynamo going so Tom Baker can listen to the Archers. The last thing Paul needed was trouble from the tenants.

This sounds like a cue for Iona, the spirited shepherdess determined to stand up for tenants' rights. As soon as she appeared, you knew sparks are going to fly, although probably not quite in the way they did. Unable to afford a handyman, Paul fixed her electrics himself, so of course her wires caught fire and her house burned down. Only thing for it, she'd have to go and live at the big house with Paul. Sounds like there'll be plenty of opportunity for not-quite-getting-it-together-until-the-final-episode in the weeks to come, as well as for overheard conversations and misunderstandings, particularly as Iona demonstrated an early ability to get the wrong end of the stick after she sneaked up on Paul, so absorbed in looking rugged he didn't hear her quad bike roaring up behind him.

It's all perfectly agreeable, without ever actually demanding your attention, in a sort of Labrador kind of way. Mind you, maybe it's best it's the last series, because if it were a dog it might be time to think about having it put down, on the grounds it's toothless, a bit incontinent and everything's getting a bit much for it now.

ANYONE who read Arthur Ransome's books as a child might have thought that he, too, was a bit of an old Labrador. Swallows and Amazons, Coot Club, We Didn't Mean to go to Sea - it was a world of japes and pirates and adventures and duffers, where it was all jolly exciting but everyone went home for lemonade at the end. Even pictures of a round-ish old man with the most marvellous droopy moustache somehow fitted the image.

But the reality was very different, at least according to Griff Rhys Jones in The Secret Life of Arthur Ransome. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, Ransome had gone to Russia before the First World War. When war broke out, he became a correspondent from the Eastern Front for British newspapers, and when revolution overthrew the Tsars, he had a ringside seat.

Then he fell in love with Trotsky's secretary Evgenia and started to become more involved with the Bolsheviks than was probably wise, particularly as Britain was backing the other side in the Russian Civil War. He even helped Trotsky set up the Red Army by choosing him books on warfare from the St Petersburg library. So when he returned to Britain he was arrested and accused of spying.

Although Rhys Jones set out to prove if Ransome was a spy or not, there wasn't that much evidence either way, but it was a chance to tell the amazing story of the writer's return to Russia to rescue Evgenia, bluffing his was past soldiers on both sides. And that moustache was amazing.