David Cobham
Conservationist and film and television director whose adaptation of Tarka the Otter became a classic
DAVID COBHAM, who has died aged 87, was a film producer and director, writer and conservationist whose output ranged from dramas such as an film adaptation of TH White’s The Goshawk to The
Vanishing Hedgerows, the first conservation film made by the BBC, a drama-documentary about Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, which won him a Bafta award in 1976, and children’s television serials.
From the 1970s Cobham, an active wildlife campaigner, was the brains behind numerous television nature films and for many years worked closely with David Attenborough for the BBC’S natural history unit. His approach influenced younger conservationists and film-makers, including the Springwatch presenter Chris Packham, who described Cobham as his “hero”.
For his 1976 BBC short The Secret
Life of the Barn Owl, narrated by Attenborough, Cobham pioneered the use of hand-held night vision devices to show birds at night which have become standard in the wildlife film repertoire.
In a 2010 interview with wildfilmhistory.org, he recalled that it was after seeing the documentary that the teenage Packham had first contacted him to ask whether there might be a pair of surplus barn owls he could have. Cobham sent the budding naturalist a pair of young birds which he and his biology teacher reared and released into the wild.
Cobham was best known for directing, producing and co-writing (with Gerald Durrell), a feature length adaptation of Henry Williamson’s classic 1927 novel Tarka the Otter, a coming of age drama about a young otter that survives a number of adventures and brushes with death before finally confronting his enemy – an otter hound called Deadlock.
Set in 1920s England and filmed over two years, it earned critical praise for capturing the essence of the English countryside, with stunning footage of flora and fauna, while avoiding cloying sentiment, the climactic confrontation between Tarka and his canine enemy being particularly well handled.
Released in 1979, with a narration by Peter Ustinov, it went on to make it on to lists of the top 100 children’s films.
David Cobham was born on May 11 1930 in North Yorkshire. His mother, a keen amateur naturalist, inspired him with her love of wildlife, and at school he ran the natural history society.
He went on to read Natural Sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. At first he wanted to be a bird artist, even holding an exhibition at the Cambridge department store Eaden Lilley, but soon concluded that he was not good enough. Instead, inspired by Arne Sucksdorff ’s 1953 wildlife drama
The Great Adventure, he set his sights on becoming a film-maker.
With a friend, John Buxton (later a cameraman with Anglia’s Survival series), he set to work to make a wildlife drama about a family of foxes, building a large enclosure to film them in at Horsey in Norfolk: “Unfortunately it blew down and the foxes escaped. There had been no foxes at Horsey and suddenly there were foxes at Horsey which was not at all popular.”
Cobham had better luck with his second effort, Bells on Her Toes, a 20-minute short about training a hawk, made with Noel Cunninghamreid, which was accepted by Exclusive Films and screened at cinemas as a filler. The BBC, however, was not interested. Instead, after graduation Cobham worked at Pearl & Dean making commercials before setting out as a freelance documentary maker.
In 1968 a film about Donald Campbell trying to break the land speed record brought him an invitation to meet the BBC producer Richard Cawston. When Cobham said that he would like to make a film of TH White’s book The Goshawk, Cawston sent him to see David Attenborough, the controller of BBC Two who gave him the go-ahead.
The film, about the relationship between a falconer and his hawk marked the beginning of Cobham’s long association with the BBC. First shown on BBC Two in 1969, it was nominated for a Bafta award.
Cobham first got to know the author Henry Williamson after reading an article he had written in the Sunday
Telegraph bemoaning the impact of modern farming methods on the countryside. They agreed to make a film about vanishing hedgerows for the BBC which won a glowing review from Clive James in The Observer and a clutch of awards at the 1973 Monte Carlo International Television Festival.
On the last day of filming Williamson, who provided the narration, suggested that Cobham might think of filming Tarka the Otter, though by the time the project got off the ground the author had gone into a retirement home. Coincidentally he died on the last day of filming – at the precise moment when Cobham and his film crew were on the banks of the River Torridge filming the death of Tarka, symbolised by three large bubbles breaking the surface and floating downstream to the sea: “It made the hair on my back stand on end because it was a very spooky thing to happen but absolutely true,” Cobham recalled.
Cobham’s other projects for the BBC included To Build a Fire (1969), narrated by Orson Welles, based on Jack London’s story about a man and a dog trying to survive during the gold rush; a film in the One Pair of
Eyes series (1970) about the sculptor John Skeaping, and a series about Japan, In the Shadow of Fujisan
(BBC One, 1987).
He also directed and produced the ITV children’s television series
Brendon Chase (1980–81), a wildlife adventure based on the classic children’s novel by “BB”; Woof ! (1989-97) based on the book by Allan Ahlberg about the adventures of a boy who shape-shifts into a dog; Out of
Sight (1996-98) and Bernard’s Watch (1997-2005) about a boy who can stop time with a magical pocket watch.
As a founder member, later vicepresident, of the Hawk and Owl Trust, Cobham, who lived in Norfolk, played a huge part in the creation of the Sculthorpe Moor nature reserve near Fakenham.
After a pair of peregrine falcons took up residence on the 250ft spire of Norwich Cathedral in 2009, he was largely responsible for securing the agreement of the authorities to the installation of a nesting platform on the spire, along with two webcams. The birds have successfully fledged chicks every summer since 2012. He also published two books. In A
Sparrowhawk’s Lament (2014), he reviewed the contrasting fortunes of all 15 species of Britain’s breeding birds of prey, charting their comeback following the banning of DDT and the threats they still face.
Bowland Beth (2017) detailed the life and death of a female hen harrier whose short life from hatching in Bowland Forest in Lancashire to her death on a Yorkshire grouse moor, brought to the fore the conflict between gameshoot management and harrier conservation.
In 1972 David Cobham married, first, Janet Wallace, who would go on to produce Tarka the Otter. The marriage was dissolved and in 1995 he married, secondly, the actress Liza Goddard, whom he first met when she was cast in Brendon Chase. She survives him.