The quiet wonders of life on the river Shannon
Oh to be a kingfisher. With their shimmering, iridescent plumage, agile flight and ability to eat their own body weight every day, they are the quiet marvels of the waterways. And they’ve never looked better than
in Ireland’s Wild River: the Mighty
Shannon (BBC Two), in which the slow-motion footage of kingfishers darting along the water’s surface and dive-bombing to catch their prey is perhaps the best we’ve ever seen on television.
For this Natural World documentary, Dublin-born wildlife cameraman Colin Stafford-Johnson spent a year living on Ireland’s longest river, filming the splendour of its teeming wildlife from dawn to dusk through the seasons. The result was a wonderful meditation on the pace of life, superbly filmed with the same cutting-edge camera technology used in the Hollywood blockbuster Inception.
From the opening sequence, with mist rising from the surface of the river beneath an orange dawn, its mellow tone was set. Drifting along in his canoe enabled Stafford-Johnson to get closer to his subjects. “It’s like being in another world,” he said, as he paddled the backwaters and disappeared into a swamp of reeds, only his strokes breaking the delicious silence.
Stafford-Johnson’s background is in cinematography (he made the Emmynominated Tiger’s Fortress and has worked on David Attenborough’s
Planet Earth) and his expertise showed. As well as the majestic kingfisher footage, there was a stunning wideangle shot of a starling murmuration, the aerial dance of hundreds of birds in ribbon-like movements, as well as amusing close-ups of frogs during their alarming mating rituals.
But for this project, Stafford-Johnson turned presenter too. His poetic lilt and thought-provoking narration complemented the meandering pace, and his ability to relate the routines of the creatures he encountered to our own lives added depth. The natural sounds of the river and the Celtic soundtrack acted like a soothing balm as this reverential guide made his case about the need to protect and save the Shannon from human intervention. But while noting the role of climate change – the influx of new species along the river is a result of rising temperatures, while birds such as the lapwing, curlew and redshank have almost disappeared – he did so sparingly and without polemics.
Ireland’s Wild River was a mesmeric hour of television; the mystery and wonder of its subject lingering long after the credits rolled.
Move over Cilla Black, there is a new matchmaker in town. But
Married at First Sight (C4), in which a group of thirtysomethings each agrees to marry a stranger based on scientific compatibility, is distinctly lacking in chemistry. The second episode saw the couples tie the knot.
Emma, a 32-year-old events organiser married 33-year-old administrator James. On paper they were a 100 per cent match. “That means their similarities are as high as have been measured,” said psychologist Dr Mark Coulson. “It’s quite extraordinary and very unusual.” And extremely awkward, as Emma constantly reminded us.
“I don’t want him to be exactly like me because that would be weird,” she said, as she nervously prepared for the big day, slipping into a pair of blue suede shoes. Indeed, being the perfect match didn’t work for Burton and Taylor, so similar in their fiery tempers, nor for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, who seemed so well suited that at one stage they even began to look alike. Emma giggled all the way down the aisle, fumbled her words during the vows and used humour to deflect every situation: her Romeo certainly didn’t seem smitten at first glance. In fact, Emma’s family seemed more taken with James than she did. The scientists suddenly had little to say about what looked a very awkward situation. Evolutionary anthropologist Anna Machin warbled on about oxytocin, the “love hormone”, but never in relation to the interactions that we were seeing on screen.
There was a definite spark with the second couple, however. Jason and Kate, who both possessed “symmetrical faces”, kissed not once but twice as they were pronounced man and wife. “I’m happy,” he said. “I’m really happy,” she said as they skipped off arm in arm to the bar.
As high-stakes reality TV, the show is compelling, but as “social experiment” it fails to delve into the science that it spins.