Yorkshire By the Sea does exactly what it says on the tin. It shows you Yorkshire – specifically, the bits of it that are by the sea. And it shows you some of the people who live there. We meet the Robsons, a family of fishers in Bridlington; the boatbuilder Jim Morrison in Whitby; volunteers at Bempton Cliffs nature reserve (and then back to Whitby, to visit the wildlife rescue centre that takes care of any other waifs and strays people like them find). We are introduced to Dave Brewin at the music venue the Scarborough Spa, plus sea swimmers from the Hub – who plunge into the waters of the south bay and live off the endorphins until they can do it again – and others parcelled out at a rate of four or five an episode. Presumably, this is so that viewers don’t miss too much of whatever else they are doing while watching this quintessential summer filler.
As a Lancastrian, it pains me to say it, but God’s own country lives up to its name in every shot. Bridlington looks buffed and shining. The kittiwakes flying round Bempton are like a flurry of snowflakes lit by the sun. Spending a day at the Scarborough Spa, with its unchanged mood and the trappings of Victorian gentility, feels like travelling back in time.
The people are lovely, too. Angela Belk has been a volunteer with the bird charity the RSPB for 33 years and looks as contented while watching the kittiwake colony settle to its egg-bearing work as anyone I have ever seen. We meet the Robsons as the patriarch, Neil, is teaching his grandson Louis, who longs to go to sea, how to tie a clove hitch. Their boat, the Genesis Rose, is treated as tenderly as any other member of the family. Neil may be retired, but he is investing his would-be pension pot in a new boat instead, so that his sons can keep the business going. “I don’t know how I got on without them,” he says. Your heart melts a bit before he adds: “Because apparently I do everything wrong,” and you remember that we are in Yorkshire, after all.
Alexandra Farmer gave up her job as a primary school teacher to become a full-time employee of the Whitby wildlife sanctuary – and who can blame her? She has traded a life beset by brats for one surrounded by chicks, cygnets, badgers and a peacock, one of the 6,000 casualties the charity takes in each year. She does also have to deal with the injured gannet Rocky, who basically wants everyone dead and has the beak to make it happen. It takes two employees to treat him every time, but he is eventually released at Bempton and takes to the skies without a backward glance. Still better than a whole classroom of ingratitude, I suppose.
The wider world does not intrude. Neil mentions in passing some of the differences between fishing in the North Sea now and when he started out, but we don’t delve into any knotty issues. Angela talks of warmer seas making food harder to find for the kittiwakes, but this is not a programme to dwell on the ravages of the climate crisis. Jim’s boatbuilding yard is one of the last around, but we don’t linger on what this means for locals or British industry.
Industry in its broader sense is a thread that runs through the series. Neil talks about the difficulty of finding people “willing to work with their hands. All they want to do is go on holiday. A holiday for me used to be a fine week on the North Sea.” He has his sons and he has Joe, who “loves working hard and fast”. Neil notes with almost paternal pride that Joe has been employed since the day he left school.
At the Scarborough Spa, Dave should have retired two years ago, but didn’t want to: “I’m happy to carry on as long as they’ll have me.” This pride and pleasure in a long career evokes a bygone age, even more than the orchestra playing in the bandstand. Zero-hours contracts and the gig economy can’t provide the same satisfaction, the same dignity. How many people today make through work the kind of friends for life that Jim talks about? How many get to pass on a family and a national, historical tradition to their children, like Neil? Who gets enough out of their job to want to stay as long as they will have you?
But who wants to think about all that? Let’s go back to the kittiwakes and the cliffs. Angela has spotted the first egg of the season. Life goes on.
• Yorkshire By the Sea aired on Channel 4 and is available online
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• This article was amended on 7 August 2024 to correct Jim Morrison’s first name.
