First impressions

I greatly enjoyed The Impressionists (BBC1, Sunday) in spite of clunky lines such as ‘This is Paris, in 1862,’ and ‘Cézanne! Do you know everybody?’ There are the scenes where they are painting their actual paintings, when Rolf Harris seems to have been parachuted into an episode of ’Allo, ’Allo! There was an unconsciously funny moment when Renoir is injured by a discus hurled by the English discus champion — who just happens to be training in the Forest of Fontainebleau, an activity which seems only marginally less stupid than practising the shot put on a mud flat.

But the series charges along, helter-skelter, artists-behaving-badly, no pause for reflection except to toss off some runic remark, such as, ‘Reality has no place in my studio!’ The makers had to get over the problem that the works are now familiar to us all from a thousand chocolate boxes and jigsaws, yet have to be seen as daring and revolutionary.