Think about lions, and you’re probably thinking about the Marsh Pride. These cats live on the Maasai Mara game reserve in western Kenya and were turned into celebrities in the 2000s by natural history TV programmes, led by the BBC’s Big Cat Diary. Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride (BBC Two) serves as a best-of summary of those films, charting the history of the pride via archive clips and the first-hand observations partly of Maasai tribesmen and other Kenyans, but mostly of Big Cat Diary presenters Simon King and Jonathan Scott.
King and Scott personify that strange relationship humans develop with the animal kingdom when they monitor it in detail. We instinctively want to impose human narratives on what we see, and so Big Cat Diary gave the Marsh Pride names. The two men affectionately recall how Scar and Scruffy used to be in charge, with Scruffy’s incomplete mane belying his greater fighting spirit. Fans subsequently got to know Simba, Blondie, Sienna and resourceful single mother, Bibi.
