Film star Ewan McGregor goes wild again for BBC Scotland nature series
The new four-part series for BBC Scotland, Highlands - Scotland’s Wild Heart, is produced by Maramedia, which made the acclaimed Hebrides - Islands On The Edge, also narrated by Ewan McGregor.
Published: 29 February 2016
Just finished 2 day recording of the narration for Highlands - Scotland’s Wild Heart. It’s incredibly beautiful and made me incredibly homesick.
The Crieff-born actor recorded the narration of Highlands - Scotland’s Wild Heart at the weekend. He then noted on social media: “I just finished 2 day recording of the narration for Highlands - Scotland’s Wild Heart. It’s incredibly beautiful and made me incredibly homesick.”
Since its screening in 2013, Hebrides - Islands On The Edge has been sold onto 100 territories across the world including France, Australia, Canada and the USA.
This new project has been three years in the making. A team from production company Maramedia filmed for more than 300 days across the full gamut of Scottish weather. The series follows the course of the seasons over a wild year in the Highlands, revealing how the animals and people of this stunning part of the world manage to turn adversity to their advantage and make a real success living here.
Filming for the series ranged right across the Highlands, north of the faultline from Arran, up and eastwards through the Cairngorms, and also includes the dramatic northern seascapes. Filming challenges included a night when 15,000 lightning strikes hit across Scotland, as well as one of the autumn’s biggest storms, with gale force winds during filming of seal pupping.
Like Hebrides, it will follow the seasons over the first three parts with a fourth episode looking at the people who work and live alongside the animals and amid the amazing landscape; the scientists, conservationists and local people working to rebuild wild landscape and habitats. As narrator Ewan McGregor says in the series, it is a land “scoured by ice and weathered by storm, 20,000 square miles of rugged cost, bare mountains and shining water.”
Owing to other commitments, Ewan recorded the narration over the course of the weekend at studios near his home in LA. His mother Carol says this new series will be special for Ewan not only because the Highlands were ‘on the doorstep’ of their Perthshire home but because they had many holidays in the region during his childhood years.
Says Carol McGregor: “I have always loved the Highlands and had many great family holidays in summer, camping, and in winter, skiing. It will be lovely to hear Ewan narrating this new series on the Highlands. The last one on the Hebrides was just great.“
The team on the Highlands project include up-and-coming wildlife cameramen Lindsay McCrae and Raymond Besant, who have cut their teeth on a range of projects, including the recent Winterwatch, the previous Springwatch and The Great British Year series in 2013.
Nigel Pope, Managing Director of Maramedia, says: “All the favourite Highland animals make show-stopping appearances: Otters Red and roe deer, seals, dolphins, red squirrels, golden eagles, ospreys, pine martens, seabirds, capercaillies and mountain hares. But many strange and unfamiliar plants and animals also put in an appearance: the bizarre timberman beetle with antennae five times the length of its body; the insect-devouring sundew plant and the spectacularly-coloured Slavonian Grebe - Scotland’s rarest breeding bird.
“We have macro-photography illuminating some of the smallest but incredibly fascinating wildlife and slow motion capturing some of the grandest flights and hunts, while aerials shots, using a state of the art system, reveal the Highlands in all its glory.”
Craig Hunter, Commissioning Editor for the BBC, says: “Viewers will be treated to a beautiful portrait of life, in the Highlands, for the animals and people that live there. Some of the animal behaviour captured for this series has never been filmed before and it's great to have Ewan back narrating this blue chip series, set in his back garden.”
Pictured: Ewan as a child on holiday in the Highlands.
HM
