Natural World

This new two-hour documentary is the centrepiece in a dazzling wildlife season on BBC Four. Bill Oddie highlights the passionate, eccentric and pioneering individuals who have often risked life and limb to break new boundaries in wildlife films. He charts the extraordinary changes in technology that have driven the industry forward, and reveals how the last hundred years of wildlife films has as much to do with our social attitudes as it has to do with the animals themselves. With stunning, exciting and sometimes shocking footage, the documentary explores the changing trends throughout the last century, from shooting animals for fun in the 1930s to campaigning to save them from extinction today. This first part focuses on techniques and on the early works of film makers, up to about 1940, when television just became available, but was put on hold because of the war.