It is, scarily, 20 years since Bruce Parry first brought Tribe to the BBC. The diffident but determined former Royal Marine visited Indigenous people in the world’s most remote places and, by living as one of them, earned a level of trust that previous documentary-makers had struggled to achieve. Parry was more patient, more respectful and more physically courageous than other white interlopers had been. He gained valuable insights into tribal life and the threats to it posed by modernity. Tribe itself was simply cracking entertainment, as involving as it was educational.
Television’s sausage machine has a way of turning the most exotic ingredients into familiar comfort food and, although it took us to the farthest corners of the planet, Tribe soon established a reliable format. Parry’s return follows the winning formula as he travels to meet the 600-strong Waimaha people, deep in the Colombian Amazon rainforest.
