Wildlife filming brings stunning results especially in the last few years with new technology such as HD, endoscope cameras and, as we saw recently on TV elephant cams! But it is very expensive and time-consuming from a broadcaster's point of view, so you need to exploit the footage as much as possible.
Hence we get Wild Tales which is effectively wildlife footage shot for other shows and recognisable to devotees, edited together and given a narrative for kids. So we follow the lives of three animals from around the world as if they are a soap opera. Has Yogi the bear cub been swept down river? Can Rooney the meerkat escape the snake? Will the leopard cub manage to climb the cliff? Tune in next time.
The animals are given names but not silly voices and certainly not put into model boats like Tales from the Riverbank. But nor can the editors go the whole hog and show the animals being eaten or killed. Animals disappear and their passing is given a sentence in the over-dramatic, slightly annoying, voice-over before it is back to some very weak puns.
So if your child is already a fan of Attenborough they might find this a little patronising or maybe that's just an adult's take on it! Wild Tales also jumps from animal to animal far too much as if they assume your child has a 120 second attention span. A self-fulfilling prophecy of course. And it would have been more interesting if they had picked lesser-known, more interesting and less cuddly animals than meerkats, bears and leopards, which also adds to the feeling of having seen all this before.
But if your children are aged four to ten they may find this engaging [as Harvey's children did] and as usual the photography is stunning.
To order a copy of Wild Tales from Amazon, click the link below:
