Their story is true, it’s why it touches your heart... you can’t edit out the painful bits

Stunning television series Dynasties is pulling no punches in showing us life in the roar – and none more so than last night’s heartbreaking study of a pride of lions.

Seeing a young lion and his aunt die after eating a carcass, which had been poisoned by farmers to protect their illegally grazing herds, was devastating.

It was really difficult to watch and just as tough to film. Camerawoman Sophie Darlington, knows many viewers will have felt bleak after last night’s episode.

But she said: “It’s a true story, that’s why it touches your heart. So you can’t edit out the painful bits.”

Sophie found the loss of Sienna and, particularly, three-year-old nephew Alan really hard to take. She spent two years filming the 10-strong pride and believes the episode, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, is the truest representation of the king of the jungle.

She said: “Lions are an animal that everybody really thinks they know. But I know, because I keep filming them, that we don’t know them at all.”

Alan was the son of ultimate survivor and Marsh Pride matriarch Charm, who was at the heart of the episode. Sophie said: “He was my favourite but he was a young greedy male – and it was his greed that got him. He was always first to the kill, he’d bounce over and get stuck in.

“He was like my teenage son – we all know what they’re like, they inhale food.

“He absolutely stole my heart. He was Charm’s boy, the two of them I could have watched them all day. They were so tender and sweet together.”

Sienna, who had overcome horrendous injuries to make her way back to the pride, limped off alone to die after succumbing to what was probably the illegal pesticide carbofuran.

Her remains were discovered several days later, having been scavenged by hyenas and vultures.

Sophie said: “When Sienna was poisoned I wasn’t actually there, thank goodness.”

But tragically, what viewers did not see, was that toxic meat left out by humans also killed 17-year-old Bibi, a star of the BBC’s Big Cat Diaries between 1996 and 2008 and the oldest surviving lioness in Kenya’s Masai Mara.

Three arrests were made over the deaths, which Paula Kuhumbu, of Kenya’s Wildlife Direct charity, called “a disgrace to all Kenyans.”

There were plenty of other near-death moments. Sophie filmed young male, Red, when he took on a pack of 40 hyenas and only lived because his cousin Tatu charged in. She said: “His skin after-