In which it doesn't rain and everything goes back to normal.

I have a guilty secret - well, I have a few guilty secrets, let's not go into them all. The one I am going to reveal today is that pretty much every Sunday night I watch Lark Rise to Candleford.

Lark Rise, for those unacquainted with it, is an Edwardian-era costume drama of such surpassing gentleness that the experience of watching it is like lying in a bath of cotton wool being fed candyfloss by your grandmother. It makes Cranford look like The Wire. If that doesn't sound like a good thing, that's because I am not quite sure it is a good thing. And yet I watch it, every week.

Lark Rise is a show in which nothing happens, set in a sepia-tinted corner of the West Country* in which it never rains. In fact, were it to rain in Lark Rise, that would be an episode's-worth of drama all in itself, as the yokels of Candleford come out of their picturesque hovels to stare in awe at the water coming down, and a mysterious umbrella-seller comes to town and flirts with Dorcas the postmistress to the envy of Miss Pratt, and at the end of the episode it stops raining and the umbrella-seller leaves and everything goes back to normal because everything always goes back to normal at the end of Lark Rise to Candleford.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here is a list of everything that happened - and I use the word "happened" loosely - in last night's episode of Lark Rise.

1. Daniel and Thomas (two adult men) got competitive over a game of conkers.
2. Thomas bought his wife some new wool underwear, but it was itchy.
3. A new seamstress came to town and scandalised the locals by wearing trousers. She then left town again and moved to America.
4. A goose came to town. Sydney (a child) got emotionally attached to the goose. The goose then left town again, possibly to move to America (not specified).
5. Laura and Minnie (two adult women) used numerology to try to figure out how suited they were to their menfolk.
6. Dorcas got a new stove. It didn't work.
7. It didn't rain.
8. Everything went back to normal.

I once heard that looking at penguins is as effective as taking Prozac for warding off depression. In which case looking at Lark Rise to Candleford is like taking Valium. I suspect that I will be watching again next week. Laura's mother is getting a job as a teacher. It won't rain.

*I stand corrected. North Oxfordshire, apparently - thank you, Baroness Black - but if you are guessing from the accents you might think otherwise. Or for that matter "otherwoise".