Last night just wasn’t the same. When I turned on the TV it wasn’t there.

Sunday night has always been Heartbeat night, when my native Yorkshire landscapes I know and love are beamed into the living room.

Whitby, the North York Moors, the steam railway – things I grew up with and love.

As a detective show, Heartbeat wasn’t great, but it was enjoyable to watch. It was one of those shows which my dad describes as ‘pleasant rubbish’, in which the plot is predictable and the characters dull – but the settings are lovely.

Friends say the same, and we wonder if it’s our age. Programmes that offer nice views of nice places – Coast, Secret Britain, Wainwright Walks – we sit glued to them. One of my favourites was An Island Parish, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about life on the Isles of Scilly. It wasn’t the real-life stories, but the images of golden sands, blue seas and picturesque harbours that held my attention.

I’m sure if there was a channel called ‘Nice Views Around The World’, I’d watch.

I used to like Taggart, but in recent years I’ve gone off it. Maybe the grimy backdrop of the less salubrious parts of Glasgow turned me off. If the show relocated a bit further north, to Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, or Portree on the Isle of Skye, perhaps, I’m sure I’d get back into it.

I wish they’d bring back Bergerac – I don’t thing I fully appreciated the Jersey setting 20 years ago, but now I’d gladly settle down on the sofa to feast my eyes on those holiday vistas. And I seem to remember that Lovejoy – which was on TV around at about the same time in the late 1980s and early 1990s – offered some gorgeous shots of Suffolk.

What does this say about me? That, like my parents, I’m trying to see the world through rose-coloured glasses or, simply, that in an increasingly stressful world, I find looking at nice places on the telly more relaxing?

The thing I particularly liked about Heartbeat was that I knew each and every location. I missed half the action through watching the background as opposed to the characters. “Look, it’s Whitby, they’re on the beach, come quickly!” I would shout to my children.

Midsomer Murders is another favourite. Nice locations, but about as plausible as a Grimm’s Fairy tale.

And speaking of grim, during the last ever episode of Heartbeat, my husband and daughter both spotted a figure not unlike the Grim Reaper ambling across the screen in one of the scenes.

I missed it – being the final programme, for once, I must have been watching the action.