Show-stopping visuals prove our most prolific naturalist isn’t resting on his many laurels
Television
Mammals
BBC One
★★★★★
HAVE you noticed how David Attenborough is becoming more prolific with age? The naturalist is about to turn 98, but he’s already clocked up his third programme of 2024. Once upon a time, we had to wait several years for a fresh Attenborough series. This late career spurt perhaps points to a man who wants to savour the world’s wonders while he can.
Mammals was his latest blockbuster and had all the expected hallmarks – Hollywood-worthy visuals; swelling orchestral score; soothing narration. The only thing missing from the opening episode was a digression into environmental finger-wagging. He began his opus with a look at nocturnal behaviour. Two-thirds of mammals are now creatures of the night, mainly to avoid humans. Our host marvelled at how their keen senses mean they thrive in darkness.
The first show-stopping sequence came in Zambia, where a leopard climbed a tree to hunt baboons. Cameras got so close, we saw a droplet of drool fall from her jaws at the prospect of a meal. Captured in night vision, the big cat’s rippling power and glowing eyes looked other-worldly. Meanwhile, a clinical demonstration of teamwork came in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater, where a clan of spotted hyenas combined forces to overpower a Cape buffalo.
Yet apex predators didn’t hog all the headlines. A huge-eared fennec fox, a frisky armadillo and a dinky Etruscan shrew got their moment in the moonlight. Even more impressive in slo-mo were bulldog bats off the Trinidad coast. They used pinpoint echolocation and precision flight skills to go fishing, snatching unsuspecting prey from the sea in spectacular style.
A hypnotic hour closed with two vivid examples of the animal world intruding on urban life – sights so incongruous, they almost looked computer-generated. Crowds gathered to watch 1.5 million bats emerge from the underside of a bridge in the heart of Austin, Texas. A thousand miles north, Chicago is home to 9 million people and 4,000 coyotes. Rather than scavenging for food waste like our own urban foxes, these wily coyotes hunt wild prey. Rabbits rather than roadrunners, disappointingly.
Viewers with long memories will remember that Attenborough and the Natural History Unit have covered similar territory before. His 2002 series The Life of Mammals, famous for its footage of grizzly bears at close quarters, was a game-changer, making us think about wildlife in a different way, and was among the first homegrown productions to benefit from digitalisation. Yet the veteran broadcaster has never been one to rest on his laurels. This latest series proves that while his subject matter often circles back to the same themes, his stories are always very different. No one appreciates the multifarious nature of the animal kingdom more than Attenborough.
This was breathtaking TV, crafted by the best mammals in the business: us humans, led by a certain tireless nonagenarian.
Mammals airs on BBC One and is available on BBC iplayer
‘This late career spurt perhaps points to a man who wants to savour the world’s wonders while he can’