It’s not surprising that Serengeti is such a great watch... it’s been made by John Downer, who’s spent 30 years making wildlife films, with recent hits including his Spy series, featuring clever creations like boulder cams.
For this BBC series he teamed up with Simon Fuller, who managed the Spice Girls and created Pop Idol but decided he wanted to make a wildlife series after spending time on safari in Tanzania.
There’s haunting music from the man behind Goldfrapp and, possibly more than ever before, we get to know the animals as personalities.
They all have names and, over the course of the series, we see them encounter many of the same issues as the rest of us, like making friends in a new community, parenting problems and unrequited love.
‘What we were interested in was those relationships,’ explains John.
‘Getting inside their world and understanding their families as we understand humans.
‘There are no goodies or baddies.
'It’s about these multiple perspectives but also these interconnected lives.
‘When one animal does one thing it has ramifications for so many other animals.’
The series took two years to make, but follows a year in the lives of our stars, who include lions, elephants, hyenas and baboons.
And thanks to an innovation that meant crews could film from a moving vehicle, they captured footage they once would have missed.
‘We didn’t have the thing that has been the bane of my life in natural history film-making: you see something interesting, you drive to get there and then you set up the camera and it stops!’ says John.
‘I used to say we only managed to get 10 per cent of what we saw.
'Now we only miss 10 per cent - that’s a huge difference.’
- Serengeti, Thursday, 8pm, BBC One
