Passions: How I convalesced with the help of the can-do Homestead Rescue team

Misty, Marty and Matt Raney are the hosts of Homestead Rescue, streaming on Discovery

I’m back at work after several weeks’ convalescence. I’m much better, thanks, but did not expect to return able to regale my colleagues with my new, deep, knowledge of how to craft a hanging water feeder for a chicken coop. Or my new appreciation of a log cabin’s thermal properties. Or what to do about apex predators threatening your wife.

Allow me to explain.

Released from a hospital bed after a week, but stuck on my sofa for longer still, it wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to guess what my psyche was craving as I browsed the deeper folds of the TV guide.

Netflix’s true crime stuff was too depressing. The Succession box set reminded me too much of places I have worked. I needed to see horizons beyond my coffee table. Escapism. Something gentle on the soul, and light on my addled mind.

Step in Homestead Rescue, lurking on the Discovery channel, where the Raneys – a father, son, daughter trio from Alaska – use their expertise to help people across America who live off the grid, one family at a time. It turns out there are tens of thousands of them. And, it appears, many appear to be in deep, deep trouble. Quite how much trouble is often staggering.

How did the couple move to Nevada and not think about sorting their crap-polluted water for two years? Did the couple who moved to an abandoned town in Montana not consider the local mountain lions before moving in? Why did city-dwellers think it would be straightforward to quit the city and start rearing pigs? (Rowdy beasts, I now know.)

Luckily, beyond the occasional Raney sideways glance, the show doesn’t dwell too long on such questions. Instead be-Stetson’d patriarch Marty, Misty (the sensible, and green-fingered daughter) and Matt (the ZZ Top-bearded hunter) set to work, showing guile, generosity of spirit and simple hard work to put things right.

The drama is perfectly contained, with time pressures and battles with nature and trees, and family dynamics, and a reliably uplifting conclusion that might make you tearful. And there’s 12 seasons of it: plenty to sustain you for weeks, and to convince this city-dweller that I wouldn’t even last days living off-grid.

Neil McIntosh is Editor of The Scotsman