There will come a time when someone will have to take over from David Attenborough and become the nation’s new nature narrator and, at times, The Secret Lives of Animals feels as if it could be Hugh Bonneville’s audition tape for the job. There is certainly pleasure to be found in hearing Paddington’s stepdad – if it is OK to call him that – describing how a clever female bear weaves herself a bed out of branches, then piles leaves on top to make an extra-comfortable forest mattress. You half expect a jar of marmalade to pop up to finish off the scene.
This 10-part docuseries, made up of 30-minute episodes, sadly, is not an animal instalment of Channel 4’s Secret Life of … franchise, in which hidden cameras expose the chillingly ruthless bargains that toddlers can strike when left alone and unsupervised. Instead, this is another collaboration between Apple and BBC Studios Natural History Unit, which also made Frozen Planet and Planet Earth. This is a nature documentary skewed towards a slightly younger audience, I suspect. It is glossy, clean and heartwarming. If animals are ever in danger of coming to harm, then it is only for a moment. The seal pup and the teenage elephant may appear to be in peril, but it never lasts long. The brutality of the animal world, with its predators and prey, is somewhere in the distance.
This is a sort of animal kingdom fairytale. Each of the 10 parts is themed, collected and categorised by what the makers describe as pivotal life moments. There are episodes about leaving home, raising a family, finding a place to live and getting older. Either you love an anthropomorphic nature documentary, the sort that transposes human psychology and behaviour on to animals even though they could not possibly share our species-specific perception of the world, or you don’t. I am less keen on rose-tinted documentaries such as this one, because I don’t buy the idea that we can think about humans and every other living creature on the planet as having comparable experiences. Every time Bonneville describes an animal’s thought process, I think, how do you know what that seal pup has on its mind? How does it know? “Owning your first home is one of life’s great landmarks,” says Bonneville, as the bear makes her bed. Can a bear own a tree? Is home ownership really such a landmark in the current economic climate, and where, and for whom?
This is cantankerous and I am overthinking it, I know. I am too cynical to be the ideal target audience for this slick documentary. I suspect that children will love it, and they should. It is visually stunning, and offers spectacle after spectacle, made even more digestible by the cutesy stories. My favourite of the ample tales is the one in which owlets are hunted by an American badger that looks like a British badger drawn from memory for a GCSE art project. This is from the episode entitled The Art of Deception, which also features a caterpillar that resembles bird poo, to put birds off eating it, and to top that display is no mean feat. But the American badger digs a hole, advancing towards the tiny, impossibly adorable owlets, who press themselves against the wall of their hideout, as if they know what is coming. Then one of them remembers that they have a special skill: they are great at doing an impression of a rattlesnake. It is mesmerising, and thrilling, as the badger skulks away in fear.
I also have a soft spot for the leaping killifish, which can survive out of water for 15 hours, and makes its way along the river using its clever, oxygen-absorbing tail to breathe and jump. What with this, and the dusky-gilled mudskipper that stole the show in BBC One’s Asia, the fish are the ones we need to watch, because they are telling us that they are more than ready to walk, and they are doing it in plain sight.
Wildlife documentaries have advanced at such an astonishing rate that I sometimes think we take for granted the access we now have to the natural world. This is undeniably impressive documentary-making, and some of the behaviour shown, such as the wood mouse creating a satnav out of organic matter to help it navigate a field, has never been seen before. It is amazing. The natural world is amazing. But I wonder if this also does it a disservice by shoving it into human categories of understanding, as if the only way viewers can admire the intricate lives animals live is by saddling the creatures with the dreary structures of human existence.
• The Secret Lives of Animals is on Apple TV+ now.
