All hail Judi, Queen of Scots... and Countryfile
Judi Dench, though nominally a mere dame of the realm, is really something closer to royalty. Monarch of the stage and sovereign of the screen (and a serial occupant of thrones, having played Victoria twice and Elizabeth I once), her status as a ermine-lined national treasure – a queen if not the Queen – was the unspoken subtext of her honorific appearance as special guest editor of the Dame Judi Dench Countryfile Special (BBC One).
She was first on the show in 2016 when the subject was Shakespeare. Here it was Scotland, where she was interviewed about her lifelong love of the outdoors and passion for protecting its future. As she reminisced while sat in a chair before Inveraray Castle, it was all you could do not to assume she owned it, and reigned over the lochs and glens beyond.
We already know quite a lot about Dame Judi’s connection to nature. Louis Theroux had a tour of her trees only last year. But it’s always a treat to hear her speak about anything. Come to that, it’s even worth it when, regally, she says nothing at all. So, wondered Charlotte Smith, why this love of Scotland? Dame Judi pointed to the 360 panorama and measured out an eloquent silence. “Do you have to ask any more?” she eventually said.
To fill an hour’s Sunday night telly, you actually do. Thus Dame Judi “commissioned”, as it were, a report on replanting trees by the National Trust of Scotland, and a visit to the British Wildlife Centre founded by her partner David Mills. She joined her enthusiastic grandson Sam loom-side in Edinburgh for the creation of a Dench tartan with numerical nods to Shakespeare and her marriage in the weave.
The reverence for Her Denchness maxed out when a Scottish landscape artist invited her to add some splodges to his painting of poppies and cheerfully saluted the kindergartenish results. Dame Judi, lest we forget, suffers from macular degeneration, so her watercolour daubs are possibly not what they were. But this is what made the climax of the hour so moving. With a kilted Hamza Yassin as a guide, she took a trip into the moors to discover if, for the first time in her life, she could see a golden eagle.
However great the actress, there’s only so much pretending anyone can do with peripheral vision. But then the camera caught two eagles dancing in the far distance. Monitor on her lap and light-obscuring blanket over her head, she too was able to see them too. Perhaps. The sight – of them, and of her believing she could see them – was majestic.
