Unearthed print shows wild history of nature TV
How did footage from David Attenborough’s first major nature documentary series come to be on Prime on Sunday night in brilliant colour, more than 60 years after it was first broadcast in black and white by the BBC? It’s a funny story. The first few series of Zoo Quest were shot on colour negatives after “a bit of a row” between Attenborough and his employer.
“I was insistent that we had to use 16mm film [because] we couldn’t take the very big [35mm] cameras into the bush in Africa,” he explained in the first half of the two-part special.
“But the head of films at the BBC thought 16mm was beneath contempt.”
Eventually a compromise was reached: “The film department said all right, but if you use 16mm you have to shoot it on colour negative because that will give you better definition.”
This saga was seemingly forgotten about until 2015, when an archivist at the BBC’s Natural History Unit was looking at the original film reels and noticed they were, in fact, colour. Like a lot of great Attenborough moments, there was a touch of serendipity about the discovery and the film’s subsequent restoration.
The newly restored footage that made it into the 2016 special was spectacular, thanks in no small part to the original cameraman, Charles Lagus.
“When it went out it was only in black and white and it looked pretty miserable,” he laughed.
Now it looked deep, bright and vivid, at last doing justice to his