Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is at his most exciting when he sets out to shock and provoke. Slammed recently for his blasé remark that puppies could be farmed for their meat, one approaches his shows with a sense of gory trepidation.

But we know on his sanitised River Cottage that we won’t see the excesses of his culinary imagination, and this show is the worse for it.

River Cottage Winter's On The Way is at its most thrilling when he’s diving for scallops in Weymouth or convincing the genteel folk of the Women’s Institute to skin rabbits.

He doesn’t hold back from showing us the skinned, sinewy carcass of a cow which he has reared and taken to market for slaughter.

But like Marmite, his shows divide opinion. This series of four episodes from the last season of his River Cottage boxset is written and presented by the bespectacled chef.

He may be an ambitious though not technically blessed cook, but he is certainly no writer.

There are some horrible stretches of cliché in his dialogue, with talk of darkening nights, and colder days adding to the wearying sense of the bleeding obvious.

He’s also competing in a crowded market of TV chefs, but his recipes do not match his bolder approach to showing us how we get our food.

There is also a tiring air of self-congratulation about his cooking. In one instance he holds us something he’s made in a jar then proudly announces that he’d be delighted to receive it as a Christmas present. From who, himself?

Fearnley-Whittingstall is to be congratulated for reminding us that fluffy bunnies are sometimes killed to make nice food.

But he’s become too caught up in his own importance to bring real captivating culinary delights to our screens.