There will come a time when someone will have to take over from David Attenborough and become the nation’s new nature narrator and, at times, The Secret Lives of Animals feels as if it could be Hugh Bonneville’s audition tape for the job. There is certainly pleasure to be found in hearing Paddington’s stepdad – if it is OK to call him that – describing how a clever female bear weaves herself a bed out of branches, then piles leaves on top to make an extra-comfortable forest mattress. You half expect a jar of marmalade to pop up to finish off the scene.
This 10-part docuseries, made up of 30-minute episodes, sadly, is not an animal instalment of Channel 4’s Secret Life of … franchise, in which hidden cameras expose the chillingly ruthless bargains that toddlers can strike when left alone and unsupervised. Instead, this is another collaboration between Apple and BBC Studios Natural History Unit, which also made Frozen Planet and Planet Earth. This is a nature documentary skewed towards a slightly younger audience, I suspect. It is glossy, clean and heartwarming. If animals are ever in danger of coming to harm, then it is only for a moment. The seal pup and the teenage elephant may appear to be in peril, but it never lasts long. The brutality of the animal world, with its predators and prey, is somewhere in the distance.
