Shame about the moose

Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten.

Jeremy Paxman has a dark secret: in real life he’s an absolute kitten. He does continental, gay-enough double-cheek kisses, he doesn’t shout exasperatedly, ‘Come on!’ or pull appalled faces to indicate just how ignorant he finds you, and he has about him a general air of gentleness and kindness you just wouldn’t expect from the horrid interrogational techniques he uses on MPs.

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Even so, for the first few seconds of his new documentary series The Victorians (BBC1, Sunday), I did worry that he might be pushing his Mister Nice act just a bit too far. He’d put on this piping, sensitive, frankly a bit girlie narrator’s voice, as if to say, ‘Look. I know it has been suggested that a political bruiser is the wrong chap to talk about pretty pictures, but actually I’m right cultured, me.’

Fairly shortly after that, though, I stopped noticing. It’s a lovely series, this, and absolutely perfect for Sunday nights. Though a lot of the territory it covers is quite familiar — Queen Victoria really was in love with Albert; Osborne House was a tranquil retreat from the affairs of state; the Victorians had double standards when it came to morality; here’s that famous Holman Hunt picture (‘The Awakening Conscience’) of the poor chap who isn’t after all going to get his oats because his fancy-woman has suddenly come over all religious — Paxo handles it in such an amused, charming way as to make it all seem fresh and intriguing.

I wasn’t convinced by the impromptu moose sequence, though. This was the brief shot where Paxo, exploring a typical Victorian house with the usual loads of stuff on the walls, glanced up briefly at a moose head and treated us to a flicker of a smile which said, ‘The Victorians: was there no end to their craziness?’ But you just know that the shot was very carefully preplanned.