A series of three programmes about beef, the beef barons and the beef-eaters; and about the people who won't let a mouthful pass their lips at any price.

There is no business more full of ironic contradiction than the raising of cattle. It is at once the most glamorous and the most horrific of all the forms of farming. The cowboy is a folk-hero from Stockholm to Tokyo. The slaughterman is a figure of the shadows, with a social standing about equal to that of the public executioner. The Perfect Beast is about the modern cattleman, in Britain and in the Big Country of the USA. Some deal in a few dozen prize animals, some in hundreds of thousands. No other industry or agricultural enterprise is so wrapped in romance as the cattle business. In 1972, how much of the romance is left?