100 Years of Wildlife Films

This new two-hour documentary is the centrepiece in a dazzling wildlife season on BBC Four. Bill Oddie highlights the passionate, eccentric and pioneering individuals who have often risked life and limb to break new boundaries in wildlife films. He charts the extraordinary changes in technology that have driven the industry forward, and reveals how the last hundred years of wildlife films has as much to do with our social attitudes as it has to do with the animals themselves. With stunning, exciting and sometimes shocking footage, the documentary explores the changing trends throughout the last century, from shooting animals for fun in the 1930s to campaigning to save them from extinction today. As Oddie says: "To me the ultimate aim, the hope, the prayer behind every wildlife film... it's to make us care about the natural world and say 'here's something we love - we don't want to lose it'." Plus, film-makers explain the challenges that filming animals can pose, we find out more about the pioneers, discover who was first to film underwater - and who narrowly escaped death to get the shots they wanted.