One of the great educational pioneers was A.S.Neill, the man who created the unusual school called Summerhill (BBC1). He had been a conventional teacher as a dominie in Scotland but that experience convinced him that children need freedom rather than indoctrination, love instead of repression. Sadly, few people have paid serious attention to his ideas. In some ways today's education system is even more oppressive than it was in 1921 when Neill founded Summerhill, as kids are now subjected to endless tests, exams and inspections, while the curriculum gets narrower by the day.

The TV series about Summerhill is on CBBC as well as BBC1 at teatime, so it is clearly aimed at children, but adults would benefit from seeing it. It dramatises the situation some years ago, when David Blunkett (with help from Ofsted inspectors) tried to shut the school down. It is a fictionalised account - and you could say that it takes a rose-coloured view of its subject, but this reflects A.S.Neill's optimism and belief in people. The drama provides an accessible introduction to the school and its views, contrasting them with the uptight attitudes of the Ofsted inspectors. The chasm between the two is exemplified in an exchange when the school head says "Summerhill teaches children how to manage themselves, to manage their minds, their bodies, their relationships, their emotions - to give them an owner's manual for life." The inspector dourly replies "I'm sorry, but we just can't measure that."

As Zoe Redhead, the headmistress (and Neill's daughter), Geraldine McNulty was superb: a very different role from the appalling Mrs Raven in My Hero. In fact. all the acting was good, and the children were convincing. If you missed this week's broadcasts, there are repeats next week and an omnibus edition is on BBC4 on Monday evening.

Some people regard A.S.Neill as an eccentric, but there are plenty of eccentrics around - as we are being reminded by the documentary series Wonderland (BBC2). Last week's programme looked at the ageing Norman Wisdom as his relatives tried to find a way of dealing with him and his eccentricities. Eventually they found the answer: putting him in a home where he at last had the captive audience he always wanted.

The theme of this week's Wonderland programme was encapsulated in its title: The Man Who Eats Badgers. Reporter Daniel Vernon spent four weeks visiting some inhabitants of Bodmin Moor, "a lonely stretch of Cornish moorland, with a small, mostly male, population". Daniel discovered some quite eccentric males, including Arthur Boyt who cooks and eats dead animals he finds in the road. His menu includes a wide range of fauna: badgers, rabbits, pheasants, hedgehogs, squirrels, dogs, otters and "a barn owl - very nutritious". His vegetarian wife is not happy, especially as Arthur is pestered with nuisance phone-calls from people who think his diet is disgusting. Bodmin seems a suitable place for loners - like Clifford, who patrols the moor on the lookout for the Beast of Bodmin, which he believes is a panther. Clifford says he came here to escape the "nastiness" of "ex-wives and ex-children".

Satish Kumar loves the peace and natural beauty of Dartmoor, which he shared with us in Natural World: Earth Pilgrim (BBC2). Satish might be considered an eccentric: a former Jain monk who walked round the world for peace and now edits the ecological magazine Resurgence. Accompanied by beautiful film of Dartmoor, Satish described the region in spiritual, almost mystical, terms - talking about "the interconnectedness of all living things." Like A.S.Neill, he's a visionary encouraging positive alternatives. His attitude to nature could be dismissed as naively idealistic but he finds books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. The programme ended with a quotation from Gandhi: "We must become the change we want to see in the world." Naive? Eccentric? It sounds entirely sensible to me.