Anyone else a complete BBC Wildlife / Attenbrough nut?

Richdog · 29 Nov 2015 at 16:00

BBC wildlife series are getting increasingly ridiculous. Ridiculously good. i am just now starting The Hunt and it never ceases to genuinely amaze and astound me how the hell they get the footage that they do. While I of course realise that it involves a huge of time planning and waiting around just to get a decent shot, sometimes it's like they have an intelligent animal actor that is just doing what is needed to perfectly portray whatever it is they do or whatever topic the episode is about. It's eerie. The music is also always picked to perfection, always relevant and matching the pace and mood on-screen, and sometimes it's like watching a dramatic opera where I sit there spellbound from the moment it starts until the moment it finishes. I remember the first time I saw Planet Earth, the first BBC wildlife documentary filmed in HD, and I was just flabbergasted.

And then there's Attenbrough. Never has there been someone who epitomises everything I want and expect in a broadcaster and naturalist. His distinctively soothing voice, that encapsulates emotion and wisdom without ever being raised, is one of the earliest voices I can remember hearing ever since my grandfather started playing wildlife videos for me. It is so much a part of my childhood and adult life that it is actually kind of weird, almost like he is some distant relative, and it genuinely saddens me when I think that due to his age he will not be presenting for too much longer. God knows how I will react when he passes, I think I will be in bits. He is simply irreplaceable, and none of the alternative presenters we have in the UK come close to matching his sincerity or gravitas.

Truly the BBC represents the absolute pinnacle of wildlife documentary film-making worldwide, and we are so lucky that we have it.

So, with all that said, anyone else here on the forum love watching it as much as me?

Liquiduk · 29 Nov 2015 at 16:06

He's a national treasure and the series themselves are mustard

Westie · 29 Nov 2015 at 16:21

Ocean episode of the hunt is some of the best TV ever created.

Werewolf · 29 Nov 2015 at 16:38

Some of the work they do is absolutely stunning, and the patience of the camera people, and the skills and technology they use is amazing (IIRC it was the BBC natural history department that developed a lot of the early versions of tech that is now commonly used for that sort of work).

When you realise that they've in some cases spent weeks or months first finding a good spot to try and get the shot, then sitting there for days waiting for the chance that might only happen once a week or a couple of times a year.
The sheer dedication and love for the work and the subject matter really shows up in the final product.

philstanbridge · 29 Nov 2015 at 21:20

Tell me, I'm having a discussion with a mate. I started to watch an episode of this and I absolutely swear I have seen 'parts' of it before. Could it be that they have intersected fresh material with segments from old shows and used new dialogue? I also swear I have seen this before with his shows.

Richdog · 29 Nov 2015 at 21:28

philstanbridge said:
Tell me, I'm having a discussion with a mate. I started to watch an episode of this and I absolutely swear I have seen 'parts' of it before. Could it be that they have intersected fresh material with segments from old shows and used new dialogue? I also swear I have seen this before with his shows.

Without knowing which episode you are talking about it's a bit hard to know what you are talking about.

MissChief · 29 Nov 2015 at 22:45

Pigeon_Killer · 29 Nov 2015 at 22:54

Absolutely love these programmes but I'm not sure why this series is on so late. They usually have far more graphic footage of kills pre-watershed but this series is on later and has shown us less. Not something that really needs to be shown but thought it was weird.

Edit: Attenborough + Wildlife > Clarkson, May and Hammond + Cars

beachBOYken · 29 Nov 2015 at 23:45

The episode a week or so ago in the jungle was good, liked all the insect stuff, Ants are quite amazing :cool:

And flying fish!!

Ayahuasca · 30 Nov 2015 at 11:31

Well Attenborough is the GOAT.

Cosimo · 30 Nov 2015 at 12:08

Pigeon_Killer said:
Attenborough + Wildlife > Clarkson, May and Hammond + Cars

Very true...

melmac · 30 Nov 2015 at 12:18

Any of the BBC documentaries are great. They really do an amazing job of filming and narrating stuff. And not treating you like an idiot.

Most of the American documentaries that I see on the Geography channel are muck.

Mr Jones · 30 Nov 2015 at 15:17

philstanbridge said:
Tell me, I'm having a discussion with a mate. I started to watch an episode of this and I absolutely swear I have seen 'parts' of it before. Could it be that they have intersected fresh material with segments from old shows and used new dialogue? I also swear I have seen this before with his shows.

I know what you mean, there are definitely some of the old stuff mixed into it for those little snippets. I just can't pin point which other BBC Documentary had it!

MissChief said:

True but David Tannent's stuff isn't all bad either. Might be his Scottish accent, but I felt he's talking to me rather than narrating a script.

melmac said:
Any of the BBC documentaries are great. They really do an amazing job of filming and narrating stuff. And not treating you like an idiot.

Most of the American documentaries that I see on the Geography channel are muck.

Agree on the American muck. They were something I ook forward to in the past, now they've gone down the reality route, especially "Discovery".

That said, BBC don't always give out gems. One recent nugget of meh was the heavily CGI / setup green screen documentary: Hidden Kingdom

Unbelievably fake because, to paraphrase the producer, it's a story, not a documentary. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25347868

I really want Attenbrough to live forever, but there will be a point when the nation will mourn. Just hope it's a long while away yet.

MaX_PoWah · 30 Nov 2015 at 16:06

The bit with the Porscha spider was amazing.

I also love how they edit little shots of other animals in when they are explaining something. Like a bird turning his head or the ones this week with the giraffe haha. Cracks me up.

philstanbridge · 2 Dec 2015 at 08:04

The thing with these shows - there have been a lot of them. I do love them also, but it just sits uncomfortably with me. I can't specifically point out which shows I think have been used again, because a lot of them seem to overlap. But I absolutely swear that segments have been used before in his other programmes.

I do know that the BBC have been cutting costs, and I also know that D.A. 'jumped ship' recently and appeared on a different channel. There were articles suggesting that these type of natural history programmes were outdated and too expensive, and there was a lot of speculation that D.A. wouldn't be appearing on the BBC again. It makes me wonder if this 'new' show was filmed with this in mind, hence the duplication of old segments and ideas, to keep the costs as low as possible.

Maybe I'm just sceptical..

Smeghead · 9 Dec 2015 at 22:33

I've been catching up with this all last week and it's amazing. The music is so effective in this series. Every encounter seriously feels like something out of a movie. The scene with the pride of lions vs. that single bull on the Plains episode was amazing.

Sliver · 10 Dec 2015 at 08:51

Attenborough's programs alone are worth the licence fee imo. Simply in a class of their own when it comes to nature documentaries. He's a national treasure for sure.

Blackjack Davy · 15 Dec 2015 at 16:27

Richdog said:
And then there's Attenbrough. Never has there been someone who epitomises everything I want and expect in a broadcaster and naturalist. His distinctively soothing voice, that encapsulates emotion and wisdom without ever being raised,

He's pretty much reduced to a voiceover these days I miss his input on documentaries which is not suprising due to his age, but still.

Werewolf said:
Some of the work they do is absolutely stunning, and the patience of the camera people, and the skills and technology they use is amazing (IIRC it was the BBC natural history department that developed a lot of the early versions of tech that is now commonly used for that sort of work).

Its stunning camera work no doubt about that, but I miss the more substantial input of previous work. Its little more than a picture show these day. No science just "ooh look at that!"

SexyGreyFox · 15 Dec 2015 at 16:59

I'm a massive Attenborough fan, I collected video boxsets and now have most of the DVD boxsets.

Amp34 · 18 Dec 2015 at 07:10

philstanbridge said:
The thing with these shows - there have been a lot of them. I do love them also, but it just sits uncomfortably with me. I can't specifically point out which shows I think have been used again, because a lot of them seem to overlap. But I absolutely swear that segments have been used before in his other programmes.

I do know that the BBC have been cutting costs, and I also know that D.A. 'jumped ship' recently and appeared on a different channel. There were articles suggesting that these type of natural history programmes were outdated and too expensive, and there was a lot of speculation that D.A. wouldn't be appearing on the BBC again. It makes me wonder if this 'new' show was filmed with this in mind, hence the duplication of old segments and ideas, to keep the costs as low as possible.

Maybe I'm just sceptical..

It's not necessarily the same broadcasted stuff (although I agree, it could be and I've recognized stuff I'm sure was in other programs), a lot of it could be cute from events that have been broadcast in other programs, but not actually the same footage. The BBC have gone on the record saying that they use footage filmed for other shows but that didn't quite fit in those episodes. Looks the same but not actually the same.

It's probably a little bit of both tbh.