This eclectic, observational documentary series has been quite a hit with the critics. Described as "fascinating" and "brilliant", tonight's episode - about residents on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, is especially noteworthy.
To most people, the A and B roads scored across the bleak and lonely grassland of Bodmin are a way of getting from one side of the Moor to the other, but, to Arthur Boyt, they are more like a chain of exotic delicatessens. Unlike most meat-eating Britons, Arthur never goes into a butcher's shop. He gets his meat by scooping up the carcasses of animals crushed under the wheels of passing traffic. It is a diet as varied as it is strange, and he boasts a taste for the meat of cat, barn owl, squirrel and hedgehog, as well as badger.
However, after years of harvesting the Cornish tarmac, his lifestyle is suddenly under attack. His wife - a vegetarian - is not impressed. And Arthur has started receiving abusive and threatening nuisance calls at their isolated moorland cottage. But, as the bizarre phone siege of their property mounts, it is clear there is one thing Arthur will never contemplate: changing his diet.
As well as Arthur, film-maker Daniel Vernon meets Clifford (the self-appointed guardian of the Moor and a man who spends much of his life following up reports of panther sightings); father-and-son farmers Peter and Simon; and local detective Barry. Vernon finds surprising patterns in the lives and behaviour of the men who have chosen to live in such a remote outpost of Britain.
Hello Angela, I recognised one piece of music from this brilliant documentary; "Tumbling tumbleweeds" featured in another film called "The big Lebowski" by the Cohen Bros. It's by a group called the Sons of the Pioneers. There's another track called something like "Lonesome town" which I wrote down but lost! Will track it down
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