Snow Cats And Me
Quizmaster
Rating: 
Poor old Bryansk the lynx has had a rotten Christmas. He’s been given the greatest gift of all, his freedom . . . and all he wanted was a scratching post, maybe with a feather and a bell on top.
Bryansk was raised from kittenhood in a Moscow flat as a pet, by an animal lover whose forte was not forward planning.
Baby lynxes are adorable handfuls of deaf-and-blind fluff, but that doesn’t last.
This film shows us wild behaviour under controlled conditions in the protected enclosure where big cat specialist Dr Victor Lukarevsky helps prepare the animals to fend for themselves. He is pictured above with the young animals
At six months old, explained wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan on Snow Cats And Me (BBC2), they’re as big as labradors but with many more sharp bits.
Imagine that sitting on your lap, lovingly kneading your legs with inch-long, needle-pointed claws.
Bryansk’s owner was eager to be rid of him and his sister, Dasha — even though he’d paid 80,000 roubles (about £1,000) for each as kittens.
Dasha, who was spotted like a leopard, seemed keen to discover the great outdoors . . . but Bryansk, who had the look of a giant ginger tom, just wanted to curl up on the sofa.
He wasn’t a clever cat. Gordon dangled a chicken carcass over him and Bryansk couldn’t work out how to leap for it.
It’s hard to imagine him hunting for rabbits, the wild lynx’s staple prey: if he killed one by accident, he’d be traumatised.
Poor old Bryansk the lynx has had a rotten Christmas. He’s been given the greatest gift of all, his freedom . . . and all he wanted was a scratching post, maybe with a feather and a bell on top. Dr Victor Lukarevsky is pictured with Gordon Buchanan and Bryansk
This two-part documentary follows the pattern of Gordon’s film last year about bears, tracking them from rescue, through rehabilitation, to release.
When I interviewed him last month, he explained that this system provides unrivalled opportunities for close-up filming.
‘Getting this close in the wild would be unbelievably difficult,’ he told me. ‘In Siberia, where prey is few and far between, they cover huge distances.
‘You might see their tracks, but they are very elusive — I’ve been lucky enough to spot a lynx twice, but you could spend a lifetime looking and never see one.’
This film shows us wild behaviour under controlled conditions in the protected enclosure where big cat specialist Dr Victor Lukarevsky helps prepare the animals to fend for themselves.
But it also brought us face to face with the horrific conditions suffered by the lynxes before rescue. Miass and Koshka had been trapped by a furrier who kept them for four years in shoebox cages in his garage as a breeding pair.
Their cubs were killed for their skins. With such cruelty overshadowing the documentary, it was sometimes hard to appreciate the beauty of the cats themselves.
It’s difficult to see what chance poor Bryansk, in particular, has for survival.
Survival hopes were also thin for the brainboxes on Quizmaster (ITV) as 15 veterans of general knowledge gameshows were put to the test by Jeremy Vine.
Facing rapid-fire questions on everything from nuclear physics to the career of Piers Morgan, winners from The Chase, University Challenge, Fifteen To One and Mastermind tried to beat each other to the buzzer.
Introductions took more than seven minutes — and then half the hopefuls were knocked out in the first round. After that, the pace picked up. Presenter Jeremy Vine is pictured above
But one format emerged triumphant. The final three were all champions of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? — and even the genial Canadian genius Eric Monkman couldn’t keep up with them.
Kevin Ashman, many times Brain of Britain, went out when he failed to name 18 Agatha Christie novels within half a minute.
The chief disadvantage of the show was that, with so many contenders, it took an age to get started. Introductions took more than seven minutes — and then half the hopefuls were knocked out in the first round.
After that, the pace picked up. Egghead Pat Gibson took the prize, proving he knew oodles of trivia about both deadly diseases and the Spice Girls. What a bizarre combination.
Monotone of the weekend:
Motoring presenter Freddie Flintoff was a great cricketer, but he’s a rotten reader.
Ploughing through his voiceover on the Top Gear Nepal Special (BBC2), he sounded like a sulky schoolboy forced to recite poetry aloud.