THE British obsession with the weather might be clichéd, but in a country where you can be sporting a puffer jacket one day and sunburn the next, is it any wonder? Telling the story of the roots of this preoccupation is Hurricanes and Heatwaves: The highs and lows of British weather (BBC4, 13 June) (repeat). It is an episode from Timeshift, a series of documentaries utilising archive footage and narrative story-telling to explore Britain’s social and cultural history.

We begin in the Victorian era, when predicting the weather was still seen as a prophetic art, through the early days of weather reporting in print media, followed by radio, and, finally, progressing to a television screen with a disembodied hand pointing to a crude map. The technology has changed drastically over the decades, but the science of meteorology remains firmly rooted in Chaos Theory, and, as such, can still be imprecise — or, as Michael Fish famously discovered in 1987, woefully wrong.

I enjoyed this gentle stroll through the history of the Met Office and weather forecasting, which includes all the dubious weather-related synonyms we’ve come to expect from weather forecasters: for example, I have yet to experience a squally band.

I would have appreciated a discussion about the psychological impact of using increasingly alarmist colour-coding on weather maps — imagery that makes it appear as if we’re living in Dante’s Inferno. This is not a comment on whether we ought to be taking climate change seriously: it is about the importance of neutrality versus what seems to be an increased politicisation of the weather forecast. For a country that loves to talk about the weather, the language that we use when we do so really does matter for the well-being of our national psyche.

The impact of language featured in Chris Packham’s latest ornithological outing, Invasion of the Parakeets (Channel 4, 15 June), a fascinating investigation of the impact of ring-necked parakeets on the native bird life of Britain. “Hooligans”, “aliens”, “invasive”: just a few words used to describe the non-native parakeets, but are these chatty, sociable, clever birds to be celebrated as adding to the diversity of our nature, or are they a menace, draining resources from the birds who are already here? Questions for our time!

I am unapologetic in adoring Chris Packham. He is feisty, fearless, and full of integrity, and, while I cannot match his enthusiasm for peregrine falcons (who can?), I have developed a passion for the feathered friends who share my garden, aided and abetted by the Merlin Bird ID app. Unsurprisingly, I loved Invasion of the Parakeets, which really delves into the changing face of British ornithology, while unashamedly drawing parallels with the current conversation about the impact of immigration.