Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Ian Hyland
Next time you hear Chris Rea moaning about being top to toe in tailbacks, tell him to take a look at this documentary.
There’s a female wolf in France who could teach him a thing or two about making arduous wintry journeys for the sake of family.
After an unfortunate incident involving her partner and a giant brown bear, the she-wolf was widowed and, consequently, exiled (it’s a wolf thing) from her pack.
That meant she needed to find a new home for herself and the litter of six cubs she was carrying.
In the wolf kingdom you can’t just move to the next forest.
The she-wolf was forced to trek over 800 miles across the Italian Dolomites and the French Alps, battling with 80mph winds and a chill factor of -30C.
Tough for the she-wolf. Great for us. Thanks to a hardy French film crew we witnessed the highs and lows of her journey.
There was a catch, though. As narrator Emilia Fox explained, this was dramatised natural history.
In other words, what we were watching may not have happened the way it was shown on screen.
Thankfully, that didn’t spoil the enjoyment. I could have easily lost myself in another hour or two of this beautifully shot film.
The only thing that let it down was what happened when the she-wolf ran out of food for her starving cubs. She just borrowed the camera guy’s phone and called up Deliverwooooooo!
NB – OK, you got me. That last bit was dramatised TV reviewing.