A peek into the real world of meerkats
BBC1, 7.30pm
IF all you know about these furry creatures comes from watching Oleg and co on the Compare the Meerkat adverts or Corrie trailers, then this new special will be pretty enlightening.
Voiced by David Attenborough (aah, so nice to hear), it follows the dramatic story of young meerkat queen Maghogho, who’s on a mission to establish her dynasty in one of the harshest places on earth.
She lives in the Makgadikgadi salt pan in Botswana, a hostile area where temperatures can reach 50 degrees, droughts last months, food can be impossible to come by and they have to deal with predators, rivals and storms. So somewhat unsurprisingly, this isn’t all cute and cuddly, like watching a little meerkat family going for a curry on
Coronation Street.
We feel it only right to issue a warning that we’re barely 10 minutes in before something happens that’ll have the Gogglebox watchers in tears. And the brutal devastation only continues throughout the show, with Maghogho facing tough challenge after tough challenge.
I mean, we know this is what happens in nature, but come on,
it’s Christmas 2020, give us a bit of a happy ending please!
Maghogho is the queen of her pack (meerkats are always led by females), but her and her family’s inexperience leads to some pretty shocking scenarios.
At least there’s serious cute factor in the ‘behind the scenes’ segments, as the tiny meerkats use the cameras (and camera operators) as convenient shady spots, or look-out points.