Natural History

Filmed over a stretch of nearly four years, the programme features footage from Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Borneo, Thailand and Siberia.

The first episode – entitled “Beneath The Waves” – takes viewers on a journey around Asia’s oceans. “Above The Clouds” will showcase elephants living in high-altitude tea plantations and red panda hiding in the Himalaya, among others. Polar bears, Himalayan wolves and sea eagles all fight for survival in “The Frozen North”, before viewers enter the jungle in the fourth episode, “Tangled Worlds”.

“None of us could believe it hadn’t been done before,” recalled Chloe Sarosh, discussing Wildstar Films’ natural history series about female-led societies. As the series producer and writer of Queens, she was there from the start.

Five years, 12 countries and more than 1,700 days in the field later, seven engrossing episodes have come to National Geographic and Disney+.

Wildlife film-maker Justine Evans recently had a friend visit her home near the Forest of Dean. As night fell, Evans took them mountain biking through the forest trails, which she regularly does with her wolfdog for no other reason than “it’s quite fun doing it in the dark”.

While they were out night riding, Evans recalls her friend turning to her and saying, “Oh, it’s not all that spooky, is it?”

The one-off episode will follow the excavation of the skull of a Pliosaur, one of the most fearsome predators of prehistoric Britain. Pliosaurs were enormous creatures who inhabited the seas when dinosaurs ruled the earth 150 million years ago.

What does the job involve?

It runs all the way from the first spark of an idea, through to developing that idea, bringing in funding, to shooting the programme. I spend more time overseeing projects now, but I still get out of the office – I spent six weeks in Africa filming two shark shows for Discovery and National Geographic at the end of last year, which was a lot of fun.

What was your route into natural history filming?

The irony of natural history enjoying a TV golden age while the wildlife it features enters a dark age was not lost on the panel at an RTS event on sustainable film-­making in early December.

Natural history is “making huge amounts of money while its subject matter goes extinct” was the succinct summary of Tom Mustill, a producer/director and owner of Gripping Films, which makes campaigning, low-­carbon films about the environment.

Seven years ago, documentary producer Tom Mustill was kayaking with a friend in Monterey Bay, California, when an adult humpback whale breached beside them, landing on their kayak. They were forced underwater and narrowly avoided being crushed by the whale. Fortunately, he and his friend escaped uninjured. 

The BBC said that it “aims to do for the wildlife of Britain and Ireland what the Planet series has done for the wildlife of the world.”

The Open University, the RSPB and WWF co-produced the series over three years, while Silverback Films used cutting-edge technology to capture the natural drama. From battling butterflies to killer whales, the series reveals a previously unseen wild side of the British Isles.

By his own admission, Plimsoll Productions founder Grant Mansfield is an obsessive jogger. When we speak over Zoom at 9:00am, he has just returned from a run – one of four that he tries to fit in each week. “It has certainly helped keep me sane during the past eight months of this process,” he explains, referring to the recent sale of Plimsoll to ITV.