Sir David: Nature is a risky business

Sir David Attenborough thought producers were mad when he first heard their idea for new series Dynasties.

The plan was to document the lives of the most endangered animals on the planets.

The tricky part, says Sir David, was selecting the families for these in-depth stories, which crews spent hundreds of days in a single location filming.

“You can’t tell whether anything’s going to happen and you’ve got to be there and available if something does and, at the end of it, nothing may have happened,” says 92-year-old Sir David.

“What are you going to do then? It’s a huge financial investment.”

However, the decision paid off. “Extraordinary, interesting things did happen in all five that they chose,” confirms the much-loved narrator.

First off, there’s a chimpanzee leader battling for his position and his life on the edge of the Sahara, while in the second episode thousands of emperor penguins in Antarctica gather to face the coldest and cruellest winter on earth.

In the African savannah, we meet a powerful lioness.

Then, on the floodplains of Zimbabwe, the focus is on a feud between a mother and daughter painted wolf.

Last but not least, we see a tigress attempting to raise her family in the jungles of India.

Dynasties follows on from the success of Blue Planet II – the most-watched TV show of 2017.

While environmental issues aren’t the focus of Dynasties, Sir David suggests the demise of our world and what we can do about it is “always there these days”.

“Whether it’s population or whether it’s the climate or whether it’s the acidity of the sea, there is always that facet of the crystal that you can take.”

Dynasties, BBC1, today, 8.30pm

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