Like many families, we used to have a TV in our kitchen. But the default response when there was nothing immediately to be done became to reach for the remote. This suggested we were all developing a woeful lack of gumption so, when we moved house several years ago, I became a television dictator: it’s verboten Monday to Friday, and our 15-year-old monitor, with its cracked screen and unreliable controls, has long been relegated to the sitting room. 

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Every so often, however, I find my own resolve weakening. This happens every April when SVT, the Swedish national broadcaster, streams The Great Moose Migration, all day, every day, for three weeks. This 500-hour TV odyssey tracks the sedate journey of these massive and charmingly ugly beasts as they move from their winter-feeding ground in northern Sweden across the Ångerman river to their summer pastures in the north-west.

Covering some 56 miles in three weeks isn’t exactly speedy (though it feels depressingly familiar to anyone who drives in London). But The Great Moose Migration is a first-rate example of ‘Slow TV’: the real-time screening of a marathon event. And, while it may not sound like adrenaline-fuelled viewing,........

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