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00:01Monday, the 16th of January, 1978.
00:06We had been filming mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Africa.
00:15The first sign of trouble is a soldier who tries to flag us down.
00:20And when the driver ignores him and drives past,
00:24he loads his rifle and shoots in the air.
00:32There was a sort of wham!
00:34And I was on feature films, you know, the bullets going by.
00:38And I thought, what's happening?
00:40And we turned round the corner and there was an armed guard.
00:46Then ten minutes later, a Land Rover drives towards us,
00:50blocks the middle of the road, so we must stop.
00:55The driver is enraged that we have no right to be filming.
01:00We have no permit. We didn't check with the park office.
01:03We've been filming with dead gorillas.
01:07Roadblocks by the commandos lie ahead, so we can't escape.
01:24I have been lucky enough to have had a long career making natural history programs.
01:30But there was one series that changed everything.
01:39Life on Earth.
01:50Lake Magadi in the Rift Valley of East Africa is, I think, just about the most hostile environment that I
01:56know.
02:02Life on Earth was just an absolute revelation.
02:06People just had not seen anything like this.
02:09It took you to areas in the natural world which you haven't considered before.
02:14Life on Earth brought creatures and places into people's homes.
02:20For the first time in color, people were amazed.
02:25Life on Earth raised the bar in natural history, filming.
02:30Everything changed after that.
02:34The South American rainforest.
02:36The richest and most varied assemblage of life in the world.
02:41I suppose what we set out to do was tell the greatest story in all the world.
02:49That was a turning point in my life, really.
03:18Life on Earth.
03:23I did, I think, ten years doing expeditions in natural history and directing a film and so on.
03:31By that time, I was getting quite senior amongst the producers.
03:36I'd been on the managerial ladder of BBC television all my life, really, since the early 1950s.
03:44But it wasn't really so much fun.
03:47The question was, how could I get out from the BBC in order to make a series worldwide?
03:58I wanted to do a series which would tell the development of the history of life, of evolution.
04:05Starting from the simplest animals and going right the way through
04:09you deal until you end up with monkeys, apes and humanity.
04:13And in between you deal with birds and insects and so on in the right evolutionary order.
04:19And I just yearned to do that, but I couldn't get away.
04:23I also thought that I would like actually to present it.
04:27I would like to produce it and present it.
04:30But I couldn't do that and run the network, BBC Two.
04:34Well, by this stage, actually, I was running both networks as controller programmers.
04:41The only other job hired was of the director general.
04:45And that was about finance and politicians.
04:48I got home quite late one evening and there was an urgent message to phone Dave.
04:53It was absolutely, the moment I came in, I had to ring him at once.
04:56So I dialed the number and I said, Dave, hang off, he said, I'm coming down.
05:00I thought, my God, there's something absolutely terrible happened.
05:04So he rushed into the house and Dick said, I'm at my wits end, Dick.
05:08I don't know what to do or what to say.
05:10I've been, I'm likely to be asked to be the new director general.
05:15And I said, so?
05:16Well, I can't do that, can I?
05:18I said, um, no, Dave, I don't suppose you can.
05:22My God, of course I can't.
05:23Behind a desk?
05:24There's no way in which I'm going to sit in.
05:26Well, I said, you're absolutely right.
05:27Are you asking my opinion?
05:29Yes, he said, what is your opinion?
05:30I said, you'll be a bloody fool if you accepted it.
05:33You should go on doing what you're marvellous at and what gives you pleasure.
05:37No, I wouldn't have been any good as a director general.
05:39The director general is a hugely demanding job with skills that are not mine.
05:45I don't have political skills.
05:47I don't have political sensitivities.
05:49I may know about Birds of Paradise, but I certainly don't know about Prime Ministers.
05:54Eventually I announced that I was going to resign and then I could say,
05:59the next week, what about a series about the evolution of animals?
06:04And so it was that I set off to do Life on Earth.
06:09And so that was the turning point in my life, really.
06:23The natural history unit in Bristol was the cutting edge of making natural history films for television by a long
06:30way.
06:31BBC Bristol.
06:33I went down to Bristol to say that we got permission to use a 13 part natural history programme.
06:40And of course it was great news.
06:44So what then?
06:45And then to discuss it with the producers concerned.
06:50The chief of whom was Chris Parsons.
06:53And he headed a team of extremely experienced natural history producers.
07:03The essential part about it was that it had to be worldwide.
07:09And therefore we would be able to cover every aspect of animal behaviour.
07:15It was going to take three years to do.
07:18And we would travel all over the world.
07:29Oh wow.
07:31It's completely changed.
07:35I think I sat over there.
07:39My role on Life on Earth was producer's assistant.
07:45Basically secretarial, but it also involved a lot of organisation.
07:49Making sure everything was sorted regarding flights, accommodation, meeting up with experts.
07:57When we were actually on location.
07:59Well in those days of course there was no email, no computers.
08:03I mean, anybody young today would just simply not believe the way we had to organise things in those days.
08:11And we often had to wait weeks for responses to come back.
08:15It took a long time to set things up in those days.
08:20Gosh, it brings back lots of memories.
08:25Everything we had was typed.
08:29Scripts were typed.
08:31Filming schedules were typed.
08:34There was paper, paper, paper everywhere.
08:37Jane and myself, we would be constantly on the phone trying to arrange things.
08:43And it was busy.
08:45Well, a while since I've been in here.
08:52There was a terrific buzz when we heard about this series.
08:58It was obviously going to be a big one.
09:01Working in the initial research for Life on Earth, it was a brilliant opportunity.
09:08It was very exciting really, you know.
09:12The brain was bursting with all this information.
09:16Hmm.
09:18Interesting.
09:20How about that?
09:24Oh.
09:26David had this idea of trying to make a point about how different animals had evolved in different parts of
09:35the world.
09:36But of course, then we had to track down the examples of what he was talking about.
09:42So where can we film this snake that he's mentioned that occurs in both Australia and Nicaragua or somewhere?
09:48And so that was our job in the team in Bristol.
09:53I think it was a risk for the BBC.
09:56I don't think they'd done something, certainly not on this subject, as expensive, as long term.
10:03We were a bit worried because no one had done it before.
10:07David wrote full scripts for all 13 programmes.
10:12But, of course, the producers all had things to argue with David about.
10:18You know, should we include that and why hadn't he included this and so on?
10:22From what I gather, it occasionally got a little bit heated.
10:28Is he watching? Is he listening?
10:31We had our moments.
10:33I mean, you've got to remember who he was.
10:36He was number one, numero uno in the BBC.
10:40Now, he could be very charming.
10:42And he had an element of the Attenborough dynasty in that he had that ability to charm, but he could
10:51be tough.
10:52Morning, gentlemen.
10:54We're waiting for camera, are we?
10:57Oh, there he is.
11:01Yes.
11:05Would you like a pensive one? I'm very good on that.
11:09Considering, yeah, yeah.
11:11Now, sit up straight.
11:14Settle down.
11:16I had to write 13 one-hour programmes before we shot afoot.
11:22You had to work the entire series out so that you know you wanted all those things, and it was
11:28no good going to New Zealand one moment and then going off to, back to Africa or somewhere and say,
11:34Oh, I should have actually filmed that in New Zealand.
11:38And that was a very pleasant thing to do, really, because I know as I sat down with a blank
11:43sheet of paper, I put,
11:45uh, Brazil, the Amazon, I'll go to the Amazon, and Dad got a ticket to the Amazon.
11:53I mean, what a privilege.
12:06The time of the big jet aircraft, passenger aircraft, had only just come.
12:12And for the very first time, it was possible for you to put down and say, I'll be in, uh,
12:18Sydney in November, and then in December I'll be in Tokyo.
12:22You couldn't, you couldn't have done that much earlier.
12:26The first Philbeek trip I went on was to North America, which was fairly terrifying.
12:35It was going to be a trip involving the whole of North America, leapfrogging between producers.
12:40Loving you isn't the right thing to do.
12:47How can I ever change things that I feel?
12:54We had big challenges in actually planning the trip.
12:58Just trying to get a team of people in the right place at the right time was stressful.
13:20In the introductory program I wanted to introduce the notion of fossils.
13:26I wanted to demonstrate that we were going back in time, and the way you go back in time on
13:31this earth is that you go deeper and deeper into the rocks to the earliest, which were the first to
13:38be deposited.
13:38The Colorado River, aided by wind and rain, has cut a gigantic section through the sandstones and limestones of Arizona.
13:47Here we're about 500 feet below the lip of the canyon, and already the rocks are about 200 million years
13:55old.
13:55So the idea was that we would be filmed going down deeper into half a mile or so into the
14:04earth's crust in the Grand Canyon.
14:07And for that we went on donkeys.
14:16But I discovered once we'd started that I was actually allergic to the dust that comes from donkeys' fur.
14:26And by the time we got to the bottom, my eyes were almost closed.
14:33And here I'm about two thirds of the way down, say about 3,500 feet below the rim.
14:40And of Chris Parsons, who was the director, obviously wanted to end it with a piece in which I was
14:46going to say,
14:47well here we are at the bottom of all these rocks, so these are the earliest.
14:53It was going to be a climactic moment.
14:56But by the time we actually got there I could barely see because of an allergic reaction.
15:02The rocks here are getting on for 2,000 million years old.
15:07And so we had to end this great climactic moment.
15:11Couldn't do it in the close-up, so we did it in a rather distant shot,
15:16which any filmmaker would say, why on earth is he going in his toilet?
15:22This is, ever there was a place for a close-up where it was a climax moment, this is it.
15:27For many years it was thought that all rocks of this great age were without any fossils.
15:33Why was this?
15:34Was it because they were so unimaginably old that they had had all traces of life crushed from them?
15:40Or did life really begin with creatures as big as a worm?
15:54One of the aims of our programme, telling the story of the development of life,
16:00was the first backbone animal that moved from the seas, where life had begun, onto the land.
16:07And that had been identified as a strange fish called a coelacanth.
16:15Which were thought to be very important because they had fleshy bases to their fins,
16:21and they were probably the first backbone animal to crawl out onto the land.
16:27And we were very anxious to film that, but a living one had never been filmed.
16:34One of the big sensations in the 50s was that a living coelacanth had been found in the Camorra Islands
16:42off the east coast of Africa.
16:45Well, of course, we had to have that.
16:47So we went off there to try and find them.
16:49These waters out here are the true and only home of this extraordinary and rare fish.
16:55And the people who live in that tiny village down there are the world's greatest experts in catching coelacans.
17:03When we arrived there, there had been a coup.
17:07And the new government then announced to David the filming permissions had been refused.
17:15But David stepped into this diplomatically with terrific verve.
17:21All this BBC2 training, you know.
17:24He was such a smooth talker and so great.
17:27And also speaking in French.
17:29And did a terrific job.
17:31Then we were given permission to do the coelacanth thing.
17:40Fortunately, despite there being a political revolution,
17:43we still have Peter Skoons.
17:45Peter Skoons, he's a very brave, slightly crazy underwater cameraman.
17:51We spent a lot of time trying to film this creature which was,
17:56and we failed.
17:59Well, we got a bit depressed by Skoonsy not being able to find anything.
18:05Because that was the main reason for going there.
18:06And we went to a bar, had a beer.
18:09And over the bar was, you know, sure enough, a glass display case and a big coelacanth.
18:18And I went up and picked it off the ball and so we took it out of the case.
18:24And we did do a shot of Attenborough holding it like that.
18:29From what we know of the habits of the living coelacanth, which is not very much,
18:33it seems that these rear fins are the ones which are used for swimming.
18:38But the front ones are used for manoeuvring and for helping the fish to clamber about along the rocky bottom
18:45on which it lives.
18:46And all the fins have fleshy bases to them.
18:50With no luck finding a live coelacanth, we decided to head off to our next filming location.
18:57And we all left.
18:59But Peter Skoons, the cameraman, stayed on because he had been filming bats, fruit bats.
19:06And on the second day that he was there, someone came on and knocked on his door in the hotel
19:12and said,
19:13there is that fish that you're very interested in.
19:16One has just been brought in by an old fisherman.
19:21And he released it into the harbour waters.
19:26Peter Skoons went down there and there was this poor old thing just struggling across the bottom.
19:33But it was alive and it was a coelacanth.
19:36And it would be a very first in the history of evolutionary history that this important creature had ever been
19:43come to life.
19:45350 million years ago, fish with fins like these were cruising the seas of the world.
19:51Some living in shallow waters produced descendants, which eventually clambered onto the land.
19:56While this creature's ancestors moved down to the unchanging depths, there to remain unchanged themselves.
20:04I think everyone in the unit, possibly even in Bristol, turned out to see the rushes of the coelacanth.
20:14You know, it was a big thing to film.
20:16That was quite a scoop for David.
20:18I think he saw that as one of the key elements, you know, in the story of life on Earth.
20:24It was the first time he'd ever been filmed alive, but it was only just.
20:47From childhood, I have been fascinated by the natural world, and I was lucky enough to make wildlife programs from
20:54early on in my career.
20:59Natural history on television started, I think, pretty well with the sort of stuff, the exploration stuff, which I was
21:07dealing with, which we call ZooQuest.
21:10This was tremendously exciting for us, our first sight of this magnificent monster.
21:16I was educated as a biologist at university. Natural history was what I wanted to do.
21:27The first ZooQuest was a joint enterprise between BBC and the London Zoo.
21:34And there was a chap called Jack Lester, who was a curator of reptiles.
21:40And he and I went off to Africa together.
21:44I was there to direct the film.
21:47Unfortunately, after the very first program, Jack became very ill immediately afterwards.
21:53But it was in the Radio Times. And my boss, the boss of television, said,
21:58Well, Andrew, you're the only other person who was there. You'll go and do it. Staff no fee.
22:03He said, I remember, very quickly.
22:05So I had to appear because nobody else would do that job.
22:09So quite unintentionally, I appeared on television.
22:15But apart from lizards and chameleons, there were many other smaller, fascinating creatures to be seen in that patch of
22:23forest.
22:24ZooQuest was hugely popular and ran annually until 1963.
22:30After that, I spent most of the next decade behind a desk at the BBC.
22:34But I longed to return to filming wildlife.
22:41When I finally embarked on life on Earth, there was one place I was desperate to visit,
22:47which was a key part in the story of evolution.
23:00It was here on these volcanic islands that Darwin's doubts and puzzles
23:04about the creation of species were reawakened.
23:15Yes, it was a challenging shoot, and it is a challenging shoot.
23:18I mean, working in the Galapagos, it's on the equator, and it's quite demanding.
23:22It was hard going, but it was very exciting because, of course, for anybody interested in natural history, Galapagos is
23:32an almost sacred place.
23:33It's where Darwin first saw the elements of the story, which was the story we were trying to tell.
23:43When you land there, it is, of course, a magical place, but it immediately became obvious that this is a
23:48quite different place from anywhere else you've ever been before,
23:50because the animals had no fear of human beings at all.
23:56We tend to think of reptiles as sluggish, cold-blooded creatures, but that's a very mistaken view.
24:04The birds were sitting on their nests, seabirds, and you could go up to them and they would take no
24:10notice whatsoever.
24:11The giant tortoises, which we were very interested in, of course, never showed much reaction to anything at all.
24:19I mean, they just sit about. But that, too, was very exciting.
24:24They make tremendous bellowing noises when they're in the breeding season.
24:30And the alarm was that these huge things, which weigh several hundredweights, I mean, they are that size.
24:40And they weren't familiar with tents, so they were clambering all over the guy ropes, one thing, another, and pulling
24:48the tents on, if you weren't very careful.
24:51But they were marvelous creatures to see.
24:55Monday the 7th February, 1977.
24:59Charles Darwin Research Center, Academy Bay, in the Galapagos.
25:03We get down to the mud wallow, and as we start, it begins to rain. Soon, it's raining very heavily
25:13indeed.
25:14We retreat to our drenched camp. We have nothing to eat or drink.
25:21There then follows a miserable night, cramped, wet, and cold in these tiny tents.
25:27We were kept awake by the sound of copulating tortoises, which was...
25:34..clap, clap.
25:36..clap, clap.
25:37And also, braying donkeys.
25:40And I shared a tent with David.
25:44And I went to sleep, I think, looking at the back of his head on the side of me.
25:50I woke up in the morning, I saw his feet.
25:53And I said, David, what's happened?
25:55He said, you were snoring so much along the tortoises,
25:58I just had to try and get away from as far as I could.
26:13We knew that filming around the world to try and cover every aspect of the story of evolution would certainly
26:20be challenging.
26:22By 5,000 years ago, there were great cities, like this one, Uruk.
26:27And in this very site has been found this, the earliest known piece of writing.
26:35Of course, the history of life, of evolution, would inevitably climax with humanity.
26:43And one of the key things in human behavior was the time when human beings learned to record their own
26:52history.
26:52So that had to be a sequence.
26:55So off we go to Iraq in order to do that.
27:03It was a difficult place to go to.
27:06They didn't like the thought of us going filming.
27:10And John said to me, Mike, I think you need to go out first and just make sure everything goes
27:18all right.
27:18And if you're put in prison, it doesn't matter so much as if David is.
27:23Anyway, my passport was confiscated on arrival.
27:28But once I got the right bits of paper stamped, I eventually got it back.
27:34Then David and the team arrived and their passports were taken too.
27:40But I said, don't worry, it's the process.
27:43It'll be all right.
27:45So I went to the offices in the morning and I said, I need the passports stamped.
27:50And the guy said, oh, just a moment, I've got something to do.
27:54And he went off.
27:56And, you know, half an hour went by and he didn't come back.
27:59So I surreptitiously looked around and I got the stamp.
28:03And stamped one bit, two bits of paper, making sure nobody was looking at the time.
28:09And I was thinking, oh, God, what will happen if they catch me?
28:14Anyway, I stamped them all and off we went.
28:18We then went down to get to a rook in a terrible old minibus that we'd hired with the driver
28:24kept falling asleep.
28:26So we just settled in this quite nice hotel.
28:29And a brigade of Saddam Hussein's army turned up and just said, out, out, everybody out, we're taking over this
28:36hotel.
28:37There was a large battalion of soldiers all fully armed.
28:42It was pretty worrying, to be honest.
28:46We tried to explain that we'd booked to stay there.
28:49But, well, you don't argue with Saddam's army.
28:53So we were sort of turfed out.
28:55They suggested we go to a nearby hotel.
29:00And a sandstorm blew up, a really bad one.
29:09Monday, the 24th of April, 1978.
29:12Uruk.
29:13There's a great dust storm and all the lights go out.
29:19We go to bed choking in the dust by candlelight.
29:29It blew over and the next morning we went to a rook.
29:34And there we did the sequence with the ancient writing tablet.
29:39This tablet was baked over 5,000 years ago.
29:43Now, for the first time, it was possible for an individual to transmit information quite independent of his own existence
29:50or presence.
29:52I did feel very anxious in Iraq the whole time because you just didn't know what was going to happen
29:59next.
30:00And, yeah, very, very glad to be on the plane going home.
30:16We wanted to show the natural world as it had never been seen before.
30:21But the question was, how would we film it?
30:25Every few months there was a new improvement, a new device that enabled you to get better pictures.
30:34We used the latest slow motion cameras.
30:38This particular one here allows us to go up to a frame rate of 10,000 frames a second.
30:45We had the money to develop macro benches, periscopes, this amazing equipment, fast film stock and fast long lenses.
31:00You know, we were at a terrific advantage in getting sequences that you could never have got before.
31:06Hello, Peter.
31:07Hello, Sue.
31:08And all the equipment we're looking at there, what are all those bits and pieces?
31:12Well, a lot of the shiny material there is lighting equipment.
31:16There's a very complicated micro-zoom system.
31:18And the whole thing is on a piece of equipment which weighs 4.5 hundred weight.
31:23And this was one of the problems on this particular trip.
31:26We were travelling with nearly two tons of equipment.
31:30Frogs can be very challenging to work with.
31:34For a long time they do nothing at all.
31:38And then they suddenly do something, like jump out of frame.
31:51So, they're quite frustrating.
31:55And most ambitious of all was filming the rare event of a male frog giving birth.
32:03I mean, frogs have many, many different ways of getting over the problem of how they're going to look after
32:10their young.
32:12Darwin's frog called Rhinoderma, because it's got like a little snout, pointed snout.
32:17What happens is the female lays the eggs, he picks them up, puts them in his mouth, as you do,
32:24and then he broods them.
32:26Each male may take a dozen or so, but he doesn't swallow them.
32:30Instead, they go into his vocal sac that runs down the front of his throat.
32:35And there they develop and wriggle.
32:37And then eventually, and that's the critical moment, he pops out a baby rhinoderma.
32:45So the male frog opens his mouth and this little thing hops out of it.
32:50Well, that's a terrific shot if we could get that.
32:53So we ask a cameraman, a particularly patient cameraman, whether he could get this.
32:58So Roger Chuckman, who I gave this appalling job to, had to be there watching this damn thing just continuously.
33:13I was the new boy that was in town, I was only 21 years old, so I was asked to
33:19film this.
33:21If you're filming something like Darwin's frog, something that's an inch long, it would be inconceivable to film that on
33:30the forest floor, because it would be constantly on the move.
33:33So you have to contain it in some way.
33:36I made a temporary studio in my grandmother's living room.
33:42I then started to wait for the moment.
33:46I had no idea how long it was going to take.
33:51So this poor chap sits looking at the frog and saying, OK, well, I'm here.
33:57Why don't you cough it up?
33:59But it didn't.
34:00And he watched it day after day after day after day after day.
34:06By this time I was getting pretty exhausted, frankly. I was not getting enough sleep.
34:12I asked some friends, got my brother involved, a few other people, people that would do shifts and just keep
34:19an eye on it so that I could get a break.
34:20I think it was the 14th or 15th day. Just randomly, I noticed something slightly different about the frog.
34:31I started filming and I caught just this one moment. It's a second or two of film.
34:42And that was it. It was just woof. There it was in an instant.
34:47And in the end, I got just one shot.
34:51And here is that amazing birth once again in slow motion.
35:04It was a sequence that typified a lot of life on Earth.
35:07It was the immense effort that went into capturing very small moments of animal lives.
35:17Life on Earth was made at a time when big changes were happening in television.
35:23So we had a chance to really impress the audience.
35:39People forget that up to that moment, most people in this country, or anywhere in the world, had black and
35:46white television, and that's all it was.
35:48This is the BBC Television Service.
35:51We now present from Studio A, Alexandra Palace, another programme in our series of experimental transmissions in colour.
36:07BBC Two started in black and white, but it had the responsibility of introducing colour television.
36:14And that was a huge step. And it required really new transmitters, new cameras, new everything.
36:23Which was very exciting. This was the first time you had colour television.
36:28And the sets were enormous. They were sideways for a refrigerator.
36:34And I had the responsibility of trying to persuade the public that colour television was marvellous.
36:41I mean, the sets were quite expensive after all.
36:44But I knew in my heart, really, that the really great scene was going to be the one in natural
36:51history.
36:52I mean, all the loveliest creatures and fascinating behaviours we'd never thought of.
36:58We could cover that, because nothing could compare with the splendours of colour television.
37:08If you wanted to show a beautiful insect, a beautiful bird.
37:17The series took three years to film, travelling to over a hundred locations across the world.
37:25And life on the road was never dull.
37:41Until this time, there was very little footage of lions in the wild.
37:47And no one had ever been able to film a full lion hunt.
37:52So we were very keen to be the first to do so.
38:01Friday the 27th of October 1978, the Ngorogoro Crater, Tanzania.
38:09We go out in the evening to look around, but the lions we film are doing nothing.
38:15The basic phenomenon is the crater and the vast herds of wildebeest, 20,000 or so.
38:24John had sort of put me in charge in a way of saying,
38:28right, we want to get the best lion hunt we can for life on Earth.
38:33Show the corporative hunting and how different lionesses did different jobs in getting their kills.
38:41You know, really how they're doing it.
38:49I was so excited to be involved with it.
38:53Life on Earth had tried twice before to film lion kills and failed.
38:58So, no pressure then.
39:01We were a team of four.
39:03That was John Sparks, the senior producer, driving my Land Rover.
39:07And in the other car was Mike Salisbury with Martin Saunders.
39:21What happened was there was a pride of lions and they were hunting in the same pattern virtually every day.
39:32It was early morning, the sun had just come up and the lions all headed down into the long grass
39:39and started stalking towards the wildebeest and then stopped.
39:45And in the meantime, I'd circled round to the very right.
39:50I said, you know, Martin, if we see her starting a hunt, if I back the Land Rover so that
39:56your camera was facing her, she'll probably be used the Land Rover as a, like, almost like a hide.
40:04And sure enough, one of the females, the lead female came straight towards us and round, circled round and started
40:14stalking towards the wildebeest from the other side.
40:17And the trap was set.
40:19And it was just absolute magic because she did use the Land Rover as cover and she crept forward and
40:27forward.
40:34Martin was drooling. He was saying, Oh my God, this is fantastic. Trying to keep focus as she came closer
40:41and closer.
40:43I mean, Martin just said, Mike, that is the shot of a lifetime. That is just terrific.
40:50And when she felt she got close enough, she charged. The wildebeest panicked and ran straight into the pride of
40:59lions.
40:59And it all hell let loose. It was amazing.
41:11Back and forth, the wildebeest dash in panic and confusion, and the lionesses have time to select their prey.
41:18turn.
41:22And, um, I remember coming back the camper with them fizzing with excitement, saying, we've got it.
41:46They were thrilled to bits.
41:47How many?
41:47As indeed, natural history cameramen can be when they get something which they know is a first.
41:55And they knew that that was the best lion hunt, truest lion hunt, that had been on television until that
42:03date.
42:06After months of planning, we travelled to Rwanda for one of the last shoots of the series.
42:15We had no idea what we were about to witness or how close we would come to losing everything.
42:27There's one ape, however, that spends nearly all its time on the ground.
42:31It lives here, 10,000 feet up, on the flanks of the volcanoes of Central Africa on the borders of
42:37Rwanda and Zaire.
42:40The gorilla.
42:48There's a lookout sitting on that tree, and he's already seen me.
42:57There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging the plants with a gorilla than any other animal I know.
43:11We're so similar.
43:13We see the world in the same way as they do.
43:16I was responsible for the 12th programme in the series, which was about primates.
43:21The story was really about the innovation that primates had with the opposable thumb, which enables a precision grip and
43:30also enables monkeys to hang on to branches.
43:34You know, if you can do, hold that, if you can grip, you can grip a tool.
43:39And if you can grip a tool, you can hold a pen.
43:41So it was one of the key moments in the human development.
43:45And John Sparks, who was the director of the programme, said, we'll do it with gorillas.
43:50And I said, but gorillas are very big, you know.
43:53I mean, how are you going to get close to them?
43:56And he said, I've heard of this remarkable woman called Diane Fossey, who has an extraordinary relationship with gorillas.
44:05They treat her as one of themselves.
44:15It was quite a logistically challenging trip to set up.
44:19We would have to write letters to Diane Fossey and they would take at least three weeks to get to
44:24her.
44:25And then, of course, she would have to reply and we'd have to wait another three weeks for it to
44:28come back.
44:29Diane Fossey was an extraordinary woman who researched gorillas with enormous patience.
44:38I mean, she just sat alongside them over a period of weeks and months until they eventually got accustomed to
44:46her.
44:46We couldn't have got anywhere near them without Diane.
44:52And she introduced us to this group.
44:57And Diane taught us how to behave in their presence.
45:03You don't stare at a gorilla.
45:06That's a challenging thing to do.
45:08So you keep your head down.
45:10And you make these belge vocalisations.
45:14All the time.
45:19And that's a sort of conversational acknowledgement that you're in their presence.
45:27I only had the expectation of filming David with mountain gorillas in the background.
45:35And so, in a sense, the situation there was quite unlike what I expected.
45:41Because far from just getting a shot with mountain gorillas in the background and David in the foreground,
45:49suddenly you could be in a situation where you're surrounded by them.
45:55In a clearing there was this big female having her lunch.
45:59And I told David if he could crawl a little bit closer to her so he could get a nice
46:04two shot.
46:08And it's very, very rare that there is any violence within them.
46:17So it seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolise all that is aggressive and
46:26violent.
46:27When that's the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are.
46:32And John said, go over there and when you get to them, start talking about the thumb and the forefinger
46:42and how it was important to grip things.
46:45Right, Chihuahua told her, I said.
46:47Next thing we know is that her two youngsters come out and actually sit on him.
47:01There was a moment when you barely only saw the top of David's head, literally.
47:08And my jaw dropped. I mean, everyone's jaw dropped.
47:11Didn't expect this at all.
47:18I honestly don't know how long it was.
47:21I suspect it was about ten minutes or even quarter of an hour.
47:25I was simply transported.
47:27I mean, you just didn't encounter time.
47:30There's extraordinary acceptance.
47:42And I was just about to start talking about the opposition of the thumb and the forefinger
47:47when I felt a hand come out on my head.
47:51And it was an adult female.
47:53And she twisted my head so she could look straight in my eyes.
47:59And looked inside my mouth and put a finger in my mouth.
48:03And then made this belch vocalisation.
48:06So I did my best to respond.
48:09And you saw her look into one of his eyes and then into his other arm.
48:14And I thought, my God, his head's going to come off and we haven't finished the series yet.
48:19Which was a very uncharitable thing to think.
48:21And I left, um, crawled back through the undergrowth.
48:27And I said, that was one of the most extraordinary moments of my life.
48:31Was it wonderful?
48:32And he said, yes, I think we got a few moments of it.
48:39I said, but I was there for about ten minutes.
48:42Didn't you get much?
48:45He said, well, we got a bit.
48:48I said, only a bit?
48:49He said, well, yes.
48:50I said, I was waiting for you.
48:51I don't want to write a film when you're in the middle of explaining about the thumb and the forefinger.
48:56It's very difficult to talk about the importance of the opposition of the thumb and forefinger
49:01with a female gorilla with a half-finger in your mouth.
49:11Extraordinary, really.
49:12I mean, it was one of the most privileged moments of our life, really.
49:19Once we'd finished our filming with the gorillas, we headed to the airport with the precious film cans.
49:27But we suddenly found ourselves in a very dangerous situation.
49:33We ran into a bit of trouble when we came off.
49:36When we got onto our vehicles to take us to Visoki, we saw quite a lot of army people out
49:43on the road while we were driving.
49:45And at some point, suddenly there was a crack of rifles.
49:49Turn around and find that actually these soldiers were sort of probably firing over our heads.
49:55I said, what's happening?
49:57And we turned round the corner and there was an armed guard.
50:01The next roadblock we came up against, we had to stop.
50:07This chap said, basically, you know, you're going to be taken into custody.
50:13You know, you want to see what you've been filming.
50:15So we were held up and then taken to the local police headquarters and interrogated as to what we had
50:25been doing and whether we got permission.
50:26We'd got all the permissions they were needed.
50:30So it was absolutely okay.
50:32Martin Saunders, the Cumberman, was realising what was happening and realising too that there was a danger that the film
50:41that we had shot,
50:41with which of course we were absolutely thrilled to death about, was going to be confiscated.
50:47So he changed the labels on the film cannons.
50:52According to the label, they would think they got the film that we had shot and in fact it was
50:57just an unused film.
50:59We were then put in a hotel overnight and basically under this kind of hotel arrest.
51:07So in the morning, David and I were singled out with the equipment and we were taken to this army
51:14compound in the middle of Kigali.
51:18And David and I were told to stand in the middle of this compound in the sun.
51:24We weren't even allowed, I don't think, to go into the shade.
51:26And I thought, well, I don't know.
51:28I wish we could put us up against the wall and shoot us or something.
51:31I don't know what it is.
51:33And at this stage, you couldn't understand what the problem was.
51:37Finally, we were taken into an office.
51:40There was this, whoever the boss was, the commander I suppose.
51:45And he then sat back and said, okay, you're free to go.
51:49Anyway, we got into that aircraft, got all the gear on board and our little plane took off.
51:54And as I saw the runway of Kigali disappear into the distance, heave a sigh of relief.
52:14After four years in the making, Life on Earth was finally broadcast in January 1979.
52:22But we had no idea what the audience would make of it.
52:34When Programme One went out, I remember coming in the next morning and we realised that from what we were
52:42hearing, it had been an outstanding success.
52:45I mean, beyond our wildest expectations.
52:52We were very gratified.
52:54It did attract a very big audience.
52:58And the audience clearly felt that this was something out of the ordinary.
53:08And it was watched by 15 million people, you know, which is a huge audience.
53:16You had a wonderful feeling that when you saw those programmes, everybody in the country who had colour television sets
53:24would be doing it as well.
53:27One of the most remarkable television series ever produced, the story of Life on Earth, written and presented by David
53:34Attenborough.
53:39Well, like millions of other viewers, I myself have been glued to the television every Tuesday night the past few
53:45weeks to watch your marvellous Life on Earth series.
53:48Oh, wonderful. David Attenborough.
53:54Thank you very much indeed. I don't think I've received such a nice compliment since I was sat on by
54:01a mountain gorilla.
54:04We had messages to say that pubs were quieter than they normally were because people were staying at home to
54:12watch it, sometimes twice a week.
54:16Life on Earth was just an absolute revelation.
54:20It was an eye-opening experience.
54:25People were learning things they couldn't have even imagined.
54:28And you have to remember at that time, the late 70s, that people just had not seen anything like this.
54:36I think Life on Earth really gave a big boost to conservation efforts.
54:42I mean, it started, for instance, the very big gorilla conservation because of David's sequence with the gorillas, which became,
54:51you know, world famous.
54:56When we came to say goodbye, I promised Diane that I would do what I could to get funds to
55:04support her and what she was doing.
55:12Well, what I'm seeing now, can I say goodbye?
55:19Bye.
55:30Bye Rose.
55:35Spieler ê°„
55:36See what happens now.
55:42And his sole object in life at the moment is to make quite sure that he and he alone
55:48mates with every single one of them, and to that he must fight.
55:53There!
55:55The blue whale is a hundred feet long.
56:00This little chap was born blind.
56:07You're a chanting creature.
56:13It was a total privilege to work with David.
56:17He's great fun, he's got a great sense of humor.
56:22The volcanoes of today are mere feeble flicks...
56:35Well, it was, you know, absolutely and utterly life-changing.
56:41And life-affirming, actually.
56:43I've always likened it.
56:45It was like being a surfer and you caught a wave, and that wave just didn't stop for
56:49thirty years.
56:50It just kept on rolling.
56:52And it was, uh...
56:56Yeah.
57:14Natural History Television has produced an understanding in the audience about the importance of the
57:23natural world.
57:29It's an understanding of the part that humanity plays in the way the world operates, and the
57:38way in which we are totally dependent upon the natural world.
57:42For every breath of air we take, and every mouthful of food that we eat comes from the natural
57:48world.
57:49And that if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.
57:56And I think television can claim to have played the part in spreading that kind of awareness.
58:11I mean, uh, what a fantastic privilege.
58:17I dream about it.
58:19I mean, it was a breathtaking experience that anybody could possibly want who was interested
58:25in the natural world.