Pastoral Prozac: How Britain’s ‘Countryfile’ Became the World’s Favorite Rural Screensaver

Countryfile: The BBC’s Rustic Sedative, Exported to a World Already Half-Asleep

By the time the opening credits roll—mist over a buttercup meadow, a Labrador doing its best impression of a civic mascot—roughly 82 million people outside the United Kingdom have already seen something today that made them want to lie down in a field and never get up again. Climate reports, inflation charts, drone footage of yet another port ablaze. Into this planetary anxiety ambles Countryfile, the BBC’s long-running Sunday evening lullaby, now beamed to 170 countries via iPlayer, BritBox, and the kind of illicit streaming sites that also host Nigerian soap operas and North Korean karaoke. The show’s remit is simple: celebrate the British countryside, interrogate its problems, and make sure no one changes the channel before the weather forecast. The global gag, of course, is that most of us no longer possess an actual countryside to celebrate; we possess only the televised souvenir.

Internationally, the program functions as a form of pastoral palliative care. In Singapore, insomniac bankers queue it up at 3 a.m. to watch a Cotswold sheep shearer explain Brexit-related labor shortages in the soothing tones usually reserved for bedtime stories. In São Paulo, climate scientists binge back episodes to remember what non-anthropogenic grass looks like. And in Kyiv, residents report watching the 2023 “Winter Farming Special” on battery power during blackouts, finding perverse comfort in footage of Somerset cows that may outlive them. The BBC insists this is soft-power triumph; cynics note it’s the only British export that can’t be sanctioned.

The show’s darker charm lies in how faithfully it mirrors the planet’s own contradictions. One segment extols regenerative agriculture, the next laments the death of small abattoirs. A presenter enthuses about rewilding lynx while the camera cuts to a local councillor warning that children could be eaten. The result is a masterclass in cognitive dissonance, served with lashings of gravy. Viewers from the Netherlands—where nitrogen emissions are turning meadows into court cases—recognize the choreography instantly: praise the farmer, bury the lede, cue the lambs. It’s the same dance on every continent, only here it’s scored by Elgar instead of EDM.

Then there are the geopolitical Easter eggs. When Countryfile visits a Welsh valley piloting drone-delivered medical supplies, sharp-eyed observers spot the same Chinese UAV model currently mapping Philippine reefs for “research.” The episode on Scottish salmon farms airs the week Norway signs a lithium deal with the EU, proving that a single fish supper now contains multitudes: fishmeal from Peru, antibiotics from India, and the entire North Atlantic security architecture. Even the weather forecast has gone multilateral: presenters warn of storms “originating in the Gulf of Mexico” with the resigned air of a butler announcing that dinner is burnt because the cook eloped with a TikTok influencer.

Perhaps most telling is the merchandise ecosystem. Countryfile-branded wellington boots are manufactured in Vietnam, sold in Dubai malls, and modeled on Instagram by influencers who think silage is a crypto coin. The show’s own website lists “rural experiences you can book from anywhere,” including a two-hour sheepdog workshop in New Zealand conducted over Zoom, presumably for wolves. Meanwhile, British farmers watching from a Herefordshire barn with one bar of 3G wonder if the signal might be the only thing not imported.

The global takeaway, if you insist on having one, is that Countryfile has become the planet’s screensaver: a pastoral tableau we alt-tab to whenever reality overheats. It reassures us that somewhere, a hedgerow is still unmolested by data centers, even as we scroll on phones containing cobalt mined where hedges used to be. The show’s genius is that it knows we know this—and keeps the drone shots lingering just long enough for us to forgive ourselves. By the time the credits fade, the world has not been fixed, but it has, momentarily, been framed. And really, what more can art do in an age when even the sheep are GPS-tagged?

Sleep well, dear viewer. The lambs are counted; the wolves are merely consultants.