Hang out the bunting! This isn't a review of an album that's been sat on our desk for too long, or a film we saw weeks ago and are now being nagged about by the PR. It's a review of a TV show that (at the time of publishing) hasn't yet broadcast. How about that?

However, it is a BBC4 documentary about English folk dance traditions. We'd be tempted to start such a review by pointing out that this obviously isn't everyone's cup of tea. But the overriding theme of Still Folk Dancing... After All These Years is that it very much used to be everyone's cup of tea and for a lot of people on specific days of the year, it still is.

Morris dancing will be familiar to most. Though what we're familiar with bears little relation to the reality encountered in this film by director Ellen Hobson. The comedian Stewart Lee once told us he believed Morris dancing's ridicule mostly stems from 1970s TV comedy such as Dad's Army and The Two Ronnies portraying it as the domain of ineffectual bumbling old men flicking hankies about in a daft fashion. They weren't entirely wrong in their summation, but what they missed was that while it's supposed to be daft - it's anything but effete. This is a pastime, as are most of the dances featured in the programme, that was traditionally favoured by working men letting off steam, enjoying a lot of drink and celebrating their friendship and community. Basically that's you trashed at Fabric. There's no difference, except that Morris men have been at this for hundreds of years and in less ridiculous clothing. Morris is hardcore.

Our tour guides for this trad travelogue are Rachel and Becky of Mercury nominated band The Unthanks, themselves clog dancers. Leading us by the confused hand, the girls encounter, amongst others, the bizarre and unique Britania Coco-nut dancers of Bacup, the revivers of the precarious rushcart ceremony at Saddleworth, the Bacchanalian revelries at Padstow on May Day and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance (which may date from the 11th century). This is old weird England, but the weirdest part is these traditions are very much alive and thriving.

At the turn of the last century, posh music teacher Cecil Sharp discovered these odd ritualistic dances performed by commoners and was convinced they'd die out if he didn't write them down. The documentary shows his early notations and Kinetoscope films of his efforts to formalize dances into something that could be taught to the nation. 100 years on, and freed from such constraints, Morris dancing is in rude health, attracting younger and by nature far more athletic dancers. It's hard to reconcile their gravity defying and aggressive leaps with any previously held notion of picture postcard, village green cosiness.

What this film shows most is the unchanging human need to meet together, drink together and act like twats together. And that's something quite beautiful, in an awkward English way. Get your bells on.

Still Folk Dancing... After All These Years can be seen on BBC4 on Friday, December 10 at 21:00.