You wait for months and then at last one of your favourite TV shows is back. The best shows have us gripped with drama, action and are often thought provoking as well as working on a base level.
Big Cat Week has all of this. I've watched the show for over 10 years now and the constant delays from the Beeb on broadcasting the latest series have been very frustrating, made worse by the fact that the show has been all over the schedule this week. Previously this was BBC1 7pm material; now it's relegated to one of the strangest TV weeks of the year at about 5ish depending on the weather.
When it comes to drama it doesn't get much better than this though. Big Cat Week keeps on breaking the cardinal rule of observing and showing nature impartially and instead it is shot presented and edited like a soap. You get to know the cats, see them as characters and root for them during their life and death struggles in the Masai Mara. It's such a well made programme it looks effortless. And yet it must take many months to make the 5 half hour shows.
And what drama - 1 cheetah cub and three lion cubs down already in very violent deaths, the show has highlighted how fragile these great predators are as their lives are played out for our entertainment. Living the drama vicariously through the three presenters as they reconcile their professionalism and their consciences is what makes the show unique in the world of nature programming.
And when it comes to working on a base level of course there's Saba Douglas-Hamilton to watch. She's like a naturalist version of Romana - so posh, intelligent and yet feral. All women should be like her and yet...
What a fantastic programme.
The Undefinable Magic of Dr Who
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