CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Twitcher Jim should focus on his birds

Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir (Sky Arts) ***

Chimp Kingdom (Netflix) ****

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer rarely talk anymore. The double act has broken up, so permanently that Vic no longer exists – the actor Jim Moir has dumped his comedic alter ego.

They don’t say what caused the split. In 2019 they were still doing their relaunched Big Night Out on BBC4.

But now Jim says he turned down all offers for a reunion, and the pair don’t even speak on the phone. Perhaps it didn’t help that Bob, always the sidekick in the duo, landed a hit streak with Gone Fishing.

That would certainly explain the rationale behind Painting Birds With Jim And Nancy Moir (Sky Arts), which is really Gone Twitching.

Birdwatcher Jim travels across the country with his wife of 20 years, former model and I’m A Celebrity contestant Nancy Sorrell. They look for unusual species to study and capture on canvas, starting with curlews on the Aln Estuary in Northumberland.

There’s the makings of a feel-good format here, just so long as Jim focuses on the birds and stops bouncing around

“It’s Britain’s largest wading bird,” said Jim, like a game show host announcing tonight’s grand prize. Vic Reeves may be dead, but he won’t stay buried.

Painting Birds doesn’t achieve the rural bliss of Gone Fishing, as it refuses to relax. Jim was in a shelter with a waterfowl expert and didn’t even pretend to listen. Instead, he peered into the box with his binoculars, not paying attention until the cameraman spotted a peregrine falcon.

He is happier when he and Nancy are alone. Driving along the causeway to Lindisfarne Island at low tide, he warned her that they might have to spend the night there, cut off by the sea.

“Can we get stranded there?” Nancy asked. “I didn’t buy my pajamas.” That elicited a dirty chuckle from Jim.

If they had stayed longer to watch the seals and eiders, the show might have been more satisfying. But it kept bouncing around. One moment Jim was in his studio at home in Kent, begging Nancy for biscuits while drawing a curlew.

Then they cut out paper bird silhouettes at a museum in Berwick-upon-Tweed, or taught actor Mark Benton which way to go to hold a paintbrush.

Mark claimed he’d hardly thought about art since leaving school, which is odd as we saw him drawing landscapes with friend Robson Green on BBC2’s Weekend Escapes earlier this year.

There’s the makings of a feel-good format here, if only Jim focused on the birds and stopped bouncing around. He also needs to buy some waterproof clothes. A safari suit on the beach is not very practical. Within ten minutes, his turn-ups were waterlogged.

The wildlife unit that was filming Chimp Empire (Netflix) had the right gear. This dramatic study of the largest chimpanzee group ever discovered, featuring more than 120 animals in Uganda’s Ngogo forest, was shot in ultra-high definition, making it look like a Hollywood superhero movie.

Chimpanzees saunter toward the camera in slow-mo, the image so clear and sharp that every bristly hair is visible. Water drops fall and explode like glass balloons and the butterflies appear as big as hang gliders.

The close-ups in Chimp Empire are so vivid you can almost feel the warmth of the animals’ breath. Impressive, and not a bit scary.

True Detective’s Mahershala Ali delivers the narration, his voice deep and powerful enough to make the speakers buzz.

But it doesn’t provide much information, and some segments feel too long because we’re not told enough about the behavior we’re seeing.

Yet the close-ups are so vivid that you can almost feel the warmth of the animals’ breath. Impressive, and not a bit scary.