During his decades-long career the authoritative yet reassuring face of Sir David Attenborough has appeared on screen from everywhere from Papua New Guinea to Chernobyl and Kenya.
Next week, when the 96-year-old returns to front a new series on home ground, it will be not only his first landmark series on the natural history of Britain and Ireland, but it is likely, the Observer understands, to be viewers’ final time seeing him in a series filmed on location.
The five-part BBC One series, Wild Isles, will signal a landmark moment for natural history documentary making in Britain and Ireland when it begins next Sunday. From orca hunting seal off the Shetlands to Attenborough himself in a London park, for the first time the Britian and Ireland are being given the blue-chip treatment of its globally focused predecessors Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.
It will also mark his first time in front of the camera on location since Green Planet, which was filmed four years ago. Although his family and insiders say he is not retiring, he is understood to have stopped travelling internationally. A spokesperson for Attenborough said he had plenty of things in the pipeline and he was definitely not stepping down.
The show’s producers, who affectionately refer to Attenborough as “SDA”, said he agreed to narrate Wild Isles from the start and was later approached about presenting it. “We felt he had a unique perspective because of his age, on how the British countryside has changed in his lifetime,” series producer Alastair Fothergill, who has been working with Attenborough for 35 years, told the Observer.
“He introduces every episode and closes the opening and last episode with very powerful pieces about the fact that, as this is our home, it is our responsibility to try to restore nature.”
Attenborough particularly enjoyed travelling twice to the island of Skomer, off the west coast of Wales, last summer, said Fothergill, co-founder and director of Silverback Films, in Bristol. It was there the presenter filmed with puffins in June, and viewed Manx shearwater chicks leaving their nest for the first time in August. “There are around 67 steep steps from where you get off the boat to when you reach the first path at the top of the island,” said Fothergill. “For all of us, especially with all our very heavy camera kit, those steps were something of a challenge. But David managed them amazingly despite his 96 years.”
Other locations he visited last year during filming included a hay meadow in Dorset, and Richmond Park, near his home in south-west London. As well as appearing on screen, he was very involved in the script. He was sent it two weeks before recording and analysed every line, Fothergill said. “He is an absolutely extraordinary writer and always makes very significant improvements.”
He also enjoyed the new discoveries they made in the series using technology – particularly what they found filming a roost of one million starlings at night using thermal cameras for the woodland episode.
“Starlings are famous for their murmurations as they prepare to roost for the night, but nobody knew exactly what happens when they settle down,” said Fothergill. To their huge surprise, they saw barn owls hunting the roosting starlings.
They also used drones and slow-motion cameras to film inside a gannet colony at Bass Rock in Scotland as they came in off the sea to feed.
And they used an electric filming buggy with a gyro stabilised camera to film red deer and fallow deer rut and fighting grey seals and the best available drones to capture the landscape.
Nick Gates, a producer on the series, said Attenborough’s presence is particularly powerful because he is a “phenomenal barometer of change”. “If you look at the natural history of Britain and Ireland, it has changed enormously over his lifetime and so it’s very powerful when he talks about that.”
While Attenborough loves being in the field, they had to be “very careful” filming on location and choose places that were accessible to him, he said. “But he approached everything with a smile and he still thrives on being out there in the field. He’s a joy to work with.”
Gates was already editing the grassland episode when Attenborough was on location shooting his piece to camera. “We film as much as we can over the years, there are always things that you leave until the end, the cherries on the cake, and obviously having his involvement in this series is the ultimate cherry on the cake.”
With such easy accessibility – compared with filming on location internationally – one of the biggest challenges of filming was learning when to stop, said Gates.
“Because many of these stories were on our doorstep, within a day’s drive, we knew we could keep going back and improving those sequences. And so the bar just kept being raised. Each time we’d go away on location we’d think ‘OK, what would we do to improve it?’”
They spent 1,631 days filming across 200 shoots – including 71 days filming salmon, 65 days filming geese and 57 days filming tuna.
Viewers, Gates predicts, will be “blown away” by the programme, co-produced by the Open University, the RSPB and WWF, which he also hopes will be a “springboard for change” and show the public the global importance of Britain and Ireland to nature.
With 50% of the world’s bluebells, 85% of the world’s chalk streams and 60% of the world’s northern gannet population, the British Isles is “globally important for wildlife”, he said.
He also believes the series will help increase interest in domestic nature tourism.
“The nature that we have here in Britain and Ireland may be rare in places, it may be threatened in places, but we still have it and we should cherish it. And the more people engage with that and the more people make an effort to seek it out, the more likely it is to be protected for future generations.”
At the end of the series, a companion programme will be aired on iPlayer, Saving Our Wild Isles, to focus on the people working on the ground to save nature and expand access.
There is, it is hoped, a particular power to Attenborough telling audiences about the crisis on their doorstep. As he approaches 100, the series could even be his most significant programme to date.
“Some of the most powerful natural history content has got his name on it. But there’s something very special about having David Attenborough present a series about the wildlife of Britain and Ireland. Because it is personal. It has to be personal. It’s his home. It’s our home,” said Gates. “If David Attenborough tells us to protect it, it’s very powerful.”
• This headline and article was amended on 6 March 2023 to make clear that the series covers the UK and Ireland.
