Must Watch reviews Wild Isles

Tuesday 14 March 2023, 16:33

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Wild Isles.

BBC One returns with David Attenborough's celebration of British wildlife. Extraordinary, dramatic and beautiful.

Hayley says "What I love about this series especially is that it is a celebration of places near to us"

I don’t think the day will come when I say a David Attenborough documentary is not a Must Watch. I (very predictably) love all of them. My only criticism is that it starts with Attenborough standing on something high and dangerous to open the show again. Previously we have seen him on snowy mountains in his big jacket, talking to camera on a drone. In this one he’s up on a high windy cliff. Please can we keep Attenbourgh on level, low ground, just for the sake of my blood pressure? He is precious cargo.

From there it goes straight to an amazing, brutal hunt scene. We get to watch a pod of orca trying to catch a seal, as they swim sideways in shallow water to ensure their dorsal fin doesn’t poke up and alert the seals to their arrival. There are also incredible mid-air fights between geese and eagles that my cat loved so much he started batting the screen. This show has cross-species appeal.

What I love about this series especially is that it is a celebration of places near to us. When you live somewhere, the beautiful, weird stuff can become invisible to you. You think of the exotic places as being more interesting. You forget to look, or forget we also live somewhere special. I love the fact that this series is presenting dramas on the flower meadows in England with the same sense of scale as exotic animals in Africa – it makes you fall in love with the place.

The environmental message is all the way through it. I’ve always loved the line by the poet Mary Oliver, where she said that ‘attention is the beginning of devotion’. It is in documentaries like this that you see what’s at stake if you don’t take action, and can help you make a difference. 'Saving the world' is such a broad, huge ask that you can feel helpless at the thought of it, but this series shows you how your own personal actions affect animals that live in your own town.

I was also glad to see that the last ten minutes of the episodes are devoted to showing us how it was filmed. So much time and work was put into capturing single shots, and so many years put into a story that ends up taking up five minutes of screen time. The first attempt to photograph the orcas was a failure and they had to come back next year. It shows how much work goes into it, and it makes for a much weightier documentary. This amount of time and attention would never be given to something that wasn’t hugely important or meaningful.

Scott says "It always comes down to storytelling and showing us aspects from nature that we just did not know about before"

Of course it is a Must Watch. It is David Attenborough!

It always comes down to storytelling and showing us aspects from nature that we just did not know about before.

In the first episode we saw Orca Whales and their taste for seals. There's also a mesmerising film about golden eagles and a story about dormice, who can stay still for more than an hour to avoid detection.

But I think what is interesting is that there is a real environmental message behind this entire series. And there’s so many stats that stopped me in my tracks. We’ve lost a staggering amount of flying insects within the last twenty years – a staggering amount. We’ve also lost 97% of our hay meadows and there’s this quote that Attenborough says at the very end of the episode. He said: 'Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.'

There’s been a lot of talk saying this show has not got as such of an environmental message. What show are you watching? Because trust me – it’s evident that this programme makes clear the necessity to to protect it. I also think for the people who make this show – it’s a nice change for them because naturally they stay in a tent for months on end and be away from their family and friends. As it is filmed in the UK so they could just stay in a Travelodge. All in all it’s a Must Watch for me!