Nature in close-up, but it looked like an invasion of privacy
Stormborn
BBC1, ***
THERE is no vacancy for the job of being Sir David Attenborough – the man himself is still making a decent fist of it – but that has hardly stopped many a Tom, Dick, or Prince William unofficially auditioning. The latest to fancy himself as a creature whisperer is Ewan Mcgregor, narrator of a new three-part series, Stormborn, starting Monday.
In fairness to the Trainspotting star, he is no Sir Davie come lately, having several wildlife films and travel documentaries on his cv already. In Stormborn his patch covered Scotland, Norway and Iceland, the lands where Arctic foxes roam, otters, grey seals and Orca swim, and puffins fly.
The film opened with an aerial shot of a dot racing across the snow. It turned out to be an Arctic fox. “In the lands of the north it is said that the journey matters much more than the destination,” said Mcgregor in that part sage/part geography teacher tone beloved of the wildlife doc narrator.
Have you, resident of these lands of the north, ever heard anyone say that? Me neither. But there was no stopping our boy as he talked of “bloodlines” and “the stormborn – life that has mastered these hostile lands”. It was all very Game Of Thrones, except we had been promised that spring was coming at one point.
For now there were places to go, things to see and the Arctic fox of the opening shot to meet. He was tearing along to meet up with his mate, or so he hoped. Had she made it through the winter, or as Mcgregor had it,
“the great darkness”?
If you could stick a script so purple it could have been written by Prince, there was a lot to recommend these films from Maramedia, Glasgow-based
producers of Highlands: Scotland’s Wild Heart, Wild Shetland, and other docs. In a crowded international market, they are rapidly making Scotland their own patch.
After many a shot of wild Atlantic waves crashing against cliffs, the film homed in on several stories. Besides the fox in search of his mate in Iceland, there was a female otter in Shetland teaching her young cubs how to survive, a pod of Orca hunting for porpoises, and a herd of pregnant reindeer on the march in Norway.
As is the way with many wildlife docs, every scratch, sniff and lunge was whipped up into a drama. It is not enough to simply see these magnificent animals just being; their lives must be the stuff of Darwinian soap opera. So we watched a porpoise being chased by an orca. Would it make it to safety? Our Arctic fox saw a movement in the bushes. Was it his long lost partner? A dog otter came after the female. He could kill her son, but did he? After a while the ebb and flow of adrenaline
became exhausting. Can’t everyone in a wildlife film just get on for once?
The photography was magnificent though, the pictures scalpel sharp.
This was getting up close and personal on a grand scale. Where the Arctic foxes were concerned, things quickly turned very personal indeed. It may have been strictly necessary, biologically speaking, to follow the pair from first nuzzle to post-coital glow
(or as much glow as you can muster in a raging sleet storm), but I felt I ought to apologise on behalf of Scotland for such a gross invasion of privacy.
Sorry, chaps.
At the end there was the usual “making of” segment as we saw the crew arriving from Glasgow and setting up shop. My vision might have been impaired by all that snow, but I could not see our Ewan among the swaddled gang. Maybe he was off interviewing a porpoise.
BBC1 Scotland, Monday, 9pm, repeated BBC Scotland, Tuesday, 8pm.