Inside the BBC's Asia with David Attenborough: The epic moments you can't miss
"Having David there just felt right," said producer Matthew Wright.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
"Of all the wonderful places in the world, one continent holds more riches than any other," says David Attenborough as he introduces his landmark natural history series on Asia.
"It covers almost a third of the land on Earth; in the south stand vast forests, and to the north lies an immense frozen wilderness.
"Much of the centre is dominated by deserts and, at its heart, are the world’s highest mountains. Off the coast of this continent stretch the richest seas on earth. And this is the most populous place on the planet; here animals live alongside humans in the most remarkable ways."
While much of 98-year-old Attenborough’s contribution was recorded at his home, "For his introduction, we filmed David in the Natural History Museum," says series producer Matthew Wright.
"Which of course is a cathedral to natural history. Having David there just felt right."
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Wright adds: "These days, while David is passionate about Asia and has been going there since Zoo Quest in the 1950s, he does his commentary at home, where he has a room set aside.
"When we are doing recording sessions, no matter who the narrator is, we prepare a pronunciation guide. But David will politely say he doesn’t need it because he’s been to most places and met most of the animals we cover – so you hear his great voice pronouncing all these words correctly straight off the bat."
And there is no better guide. "If you think you’ve seen the best the natural word has to offer," Attenborough promises, "think again. There’s nowhere else on Earth with so many untold stories."
Series producer Matthew Wright selects his favourite moments from Asia
1 Beneath the Waves
Moorish idols, Philippines
Moorish idols are beautiful little fish with yellow and black stripes and strange, pouting lips. At the start of the year, they congregate on reefs near the Philippines before they swim off in a big group into the deep blue sea and spawn. Grey reef sharks have learnt that this happens, and they gather at the same time, ready to chase the Moorish idols when they swim away from the reef. Our crew followed them for two hours and we have great shots of this dramatic spectacle unfolding. By the end there are just a handful of Moorish Idols, but the sharks are so fat and full that they give up.
2 Above the Clouds
Markhor goats, Pakistan
The markhor goat lives in the Hindu Kush mountains. That might not sound sexy, but this is a monster goat, the world’s biggest. A markhor can weigh more than 100kg and be over a metre tall at the shoulder. We were in the north near the Afghanistan border. It’s a difficult place to film in and we worked with a fantastic Pakistani team embedded in the mountains using long lenses and drones. There are vertiginous scree slopes, which is where we caught these big male goats, who are armed with preposterously large spiral horns, smacking into each other to try and win females to mate with.
3 The Frozen North
Long-tailed tits, Japan
There are a lot of big animals in this episode — polar bears, brown bears, wolves — but my favourite sequence is probably the most beautiful sequence in the series. Long-tailed tits weigh less than a £1 coin and when we filmed on Japan’s Hokkaido island in February and March there was three metres of snow on the ground and food was scarce. When the conditions are right, maple trees exude a sweet sap that forms sugary icicles. The long-tailed tits fly in and lick at the icicles like kids with lollipops. We used super slow-motion cameras to catch them.
4 Tangled Worlds
Tigers, Nepal
We used the new generation of drone cameras to film tigers in Nepal’s Bardiya National Park, a monsoon forest environment in the shadow of the Himalayas. These very quiet and very small drones with a long zoom lens mean we don’t disturb the animals. That allows us to catch the tigers behaving normally, observing things like siblings playing with each other. We filmed tigers hunting and even mating — which sounds a bit voyeuristic but is remarkable to see.
I’ve seen lots of tiger hunts from the ground and its terrifying because you can see the tiger hunkered down in the grass. But from above you can see their strategy — see what the prey can’t. There’ll be a deer with its fawn walking past and you think, “There’s a massive tiger right there!”
5 Crowded Continent
Elephants, Sri Lanka
We followed Asian elephants along a busy road that pilgrims use to reach temples. Elephants along the way use various techniques to extricate food from the people in buses. Some go in strong and try to charge the vehicles, which doesn’t work too well as the buses swerve around them. However, there are a few specific elephants — and these are very smart individuals — who have worked out how to become highwaymen. They just stand there gently in the middle of the road and stop the bus. They don’t move out of the way until someone gives them some food.
That was a challenge to film because we couldn’t interfere in that process at all, we just had to wait (and take several trips on buses) until it happened. I think it’s a triumph of filming. The crew had to ride on around 40 buses to get the shots of the encounter happening at the right angle. Also, an awful lot of bananas and sugar cane went into each elephant — they’re like bottomless pits.
6 The Arid Heart
Gobi bears, Mongolia
The Gobi bear is a remarkable large brown bear that lives in the Gobi Desert — half a million square miles where there’s not a great deal of vegetation or water. The bear is very good at finding buried food such as roots and tubers. They also carry mental maps and can use them to move between oases. But we know from DNA studies of hair they have shed that there are fewer than 40 individual bears left. This is by far the world’s rarest bear. So how to capture it on film? We worked with Mongolian bear scientists who advised where to leave our small cameras. It took 18 months, and we got a sequence of bears walking in the desert and coming to an oasis. It’s very precious footage and very moving because of the rarity of what you are watching.
7 Saving Asia
Javan green magpie
The series ends with a film looking at remarkable Asian people who are working in different ways to try to improve conservation. My favourite story is an Indonesian man called Mr Panji, who lives in central Java where there is a tradition of collecting songbirds and entering them in competitions. Mr Panji is passionate about the Javan green magpie, a stunning bright green bird with an orangey-red beak. Unfortunately, it’s highly endangered and there are fewer than 250 birds left in the wild.
Mr Panji has dedicated himself to trying to win the hearts and minds of his fellow Javans, educating them about not collecting birds from the wild. He recognises you can’t bulldoze centuries of tradition, but we visit a village that used to be a poaching hotspot; it’s been turned into a hotspot for birdwatching.
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