A BBC sitcom star has been exploring Wiltshire folklore in his new series.

The BAFTA award-winning writer and actor Charlie Cooper is best known for his role in This Country – a mockumentary co-written with his sister Daisy May Cooper about life in rural Britain.

In his latest series, Myth Country, Charlie travels around the UK exploring folklore tales by speaking to eyewitnesses and conducting his own experiments.

Episode two, Marks on the Landscape, sees Charlie visit Wiltshire to explore the recent phenomenon of crop circles, which are often made up of intricate shapes and designs and appear on the land overnight.

(Image: BBC)

He says there have been over 380 crop circles recorded in Wiltshire since 2005, making it a “hotspot for modern marks on the landscape”.

One commonly held belief is that they are the work of aliens and Charlie sets about proving whether aliens are involved, or whether it’s the work of human hands or the Earth’s energies.

He begins his adventure by meeting researcher and photographer Lucy pringle, who had been photographing crop circles since 1990.

She explains that she knows of people from all over the world visiting Wiltshire’s crop circles and they often feel drawn towards stepping into one but sometimes feel unwell, experiencing symptoms like feeling faint, migraines and nausea.

Lucy said: “A lot of people think when they go in they’re going to feel absolutely fine - they don’t always. I always say to them ‘listen, if you don’t feel well come out right away’, but the majority I think do feel well.”

Later Charlie rang his sister Daisy to tell her about his crop circle experience and having “goosebumps”.

She then replied saying she knew someone who was convinced she was “lifted up by aliens” while walking her dog and ended up 20 miles away in Devizes near crop circles, but could not get back because there were no buses running on a Sunday.

Then Charlie met farmer Tim Carson, who he described as “the George Clooney of Wiltshire”, to explore the supernatural theories in more depth.

Tim told Charlie he had seen 130 different formations of crop circles on his land in the last 30 years and had never seen anyone making the markings, suggesting the possibility of aliens could not be discounted.

Charlie and his friend Scott also visited The Bridge Inn pub to speak to a man who claimed to make crop circles and wanted to remain anonymous in fear of  losing his job, because it is illegal under trespassing and criminal damage.

The man told the pair that he used to be “utterly convinced they were made by aliens” and still does not know the cause of some of the crop circles in Wiltshire or where they have come from.

He added: “Crop circles hinge around magic and mystery and wonder. Nobody wants to think their crop circle was made by a plumber from Devizes.”

Charlie also made his own crop circle after asking for Tim’s permission to use his land and phones his dad to tell him about all he has learned, to which his dad says the markings look like “alien graffiti.”