This fascinating documentary looks at people who have traded modern life to live on minuscule British islets. Its script might be banal, but their existence is a joy to see
Our Tiny Islands is dangerous television. Ostensibly the gentlest of concepts, this four-part series of hour-long documentaries narrated by Meera Syal is about life on some of the hundreds of minute, ancient islands scattered off Britain’s coastline. Not your Lundys, Lindisfarnes or Merseas – which are Manhattan, Vegas and Dubai compared with what is on offer here – but scraps of land where birds and wildflowers outnumber humans by thousands to one, the only transport is boats or bikes and life is what you make it. It is paradise for introverts.
We are talking about the likes of Rathlin, a puffin-stuffed 14.5 sq km (5.6 sq miles) off the coast of Northern Ireland, home to 150 people including ferryman Tom and assorted RSPB staff and volunteers who are preparing to rid the place of rats and ferrets – non-native species whose appetite for eggs is causing the island to become less puffin-stuffed than it once was. Or Tresco, much of whose 1.15 square Cornish miles are taken up by the Abbey Gardens established in the 19th century by the then proprietor (whose family now leases the island from the Duchy of Cornwall) and which are now overseen by head gardener Andy and his wife, Kate.
