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IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR WHEN many of us start having delusions of summer. Flowers are blooming, sunlight is filtering through the clouds and suddenly we think we're living on the continent. Eating outdoors seems feasible, as does wearing short sleeves and heading off on a walk without waterproofs. This sort of fanciful behaviour usually results in getting soaked by a sudden downpour, but if you enjoy being carried along on the tide of sunny optimism, The Impressionists (Sunday, BBC1, 6:35pm) makes for suitably breezy viewing.
This new three-part drama from the BBC opens with scenes of Claude Monet's garden at Giverny. Those waterlilies and that bridge are instantly familiar, and the whole scene looks so blissful that you'll contemplate moving to France at the first opportunity. Remember that cosy, nostalgic air that the Darling Buds of May used to create? The Impressionists does exactly the same thing with its soothing music, images of rural idylls and charismatic players.
This dramatisation is based on factual accounts of the lives of the Impressionists - their letters, recordings and interviews. Claude Monet acts as narrator, with Julian Glover playing the painter towards the end of his life - long-bearded, cream-suited and nostalgic. From the garden of his twilight years we're taken...