Oz and James Mark II

I've just been listening to the morning news that quality has been slipping on the BBC because of cuts to jobs and budgets but there was no sign of that on last night's first programme in the second series of Oz Clarke and James May's Big Wine Adventure – this time in California.

The production values were great, I thought, in this first programme filmed in southern California. Venice beach looked brilliantly sunny, the vineyards beautifully bucolic – indeed more luscious than in Sideways which I admittedly watched in a rather small preview theatre. There had been no cutting back...