"As I watch a leopard hunt in Kingdom, the BBC's latest David Attenborough-narrated documentary, I find myself thinking about a YouGov survey from a few years ago that found that half of Britons wouldn't take a free trip to the moon, with 11% turning it down because there isn't enough to see and do. As well as it providing a fantastic insight into the great British public's psyche (would outer space be better if it had Alton Towers?), I can't help but wonder if it also explains the pressure that TV commissioners feel under to find new ways to interest the pesky human race in sights that would previously have been greeted with wonder."
"Back in 2017, Blue Planet II was the most-watched programme of the year, with 14.1 million viewers tuning in to see dolphins surf on prime time. Today, the six-part Kingdom has been bumped to the teatime slot, and finding out which Strictly celeb's rumba has been voted the most mediocre is deemed more important to the schedule. Still, it is not as if Attenborough, and the enormous team behind him, have stopped trying."
"Billed by the BBC as one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by its Natural History Unit, Kingdom was filmed over the course of five years and has an impressive scope. But it focuses on the lives of four African animal families leopards, hyenas, wild dogs and lions as they jostle for dominance in a fertile river valley in Zambia. It is essentially Game of Thrones if Cersei was a hyena and everyone was competing for some dinner."
Kingdom is a BBC natural history series narrated by David Attenborough and filmed over five years by the Natural History Unit. The six-part series follows leopards, hyenas, wild dogs and lions as they compete for dominance in a fertile Zambian river valley. The programme combines cinematic scope and character-driven storytelling, presenting animal families and individual personalities such as Olimba, Moyo and Mutima. The series faces challenges in attracting prime-time audiences amid changing viewer tastes and competing entertainment like celebrity reality shows, despite the production's ambition and the team's continued efforts to engage viewers.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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