Having caught the episode on the Mississippi, I now come to the one on the Nile, and it seems we are back in familiar territory - in every sense, with elephants and crocodiles, hippos and camels to the fore.
And there we have things in a nutshell. In theory, a series with this title could make no reference to animals at all, yet in the main this was "an animal programme" and even at times looking a bit traditional in style, if of course utterly gorgeous on a big-screen TV, in a way we could only have dreamed of 30 or 40 years ago.
In a sense, this is reassuring. I watched nature programmes decades ago showing how the Sudd Swamp in Sudan was threatened, yet somehow here it still is - filmed and still looking pretty remote, as do the Ruwenzori Mountains (which sadly feature for about half a minute, albeit amazingly snow-covered), the Murchison Falls, Lake Victoria and so on. In each case, the impact of humankind we see here is (other than in Cairo) rather limited-looking.
The series innnovates with it's mini-interviews with those who live and work along the rivers and depend on them (full marks for that). Ecological details are not entirely lacking, and that's good too, though there is definitely not enough of this. But sadly, David Oyelowo does not have an especially exciting script to read, and does not make the best of his opportunities even then.
To be honest, I am not sure how best to make a programme entitled "Earth's Great Rivers", but I guess I would have to begin by sugesting that the Nile deserves at least 3 episodes. Where we are reduced to one the overview we get is inevitably limited, and the temptation to make it a series of "sketches" mainly (though not quite only) featuring familiar animals presumably proved too hard to resist. A slight pity that something a bit more subtle could not have been achieved here.
And there we have things in a nutshell. In theory, a series with this title could make no reference to animals at all, yet in the main this was "an animal programme" and even at times looking a bit traditional in style, if of course utterly gorgeous on a big-screen TV, in a way we could only have dreamed of 30 or 40 years ago.
In a sense, this is reassuring. I watched nature programmes decades ago showing how the Sudd Swamp in Sudan was threatened, yet somehow here it still is - filmed and still looking pretty remote, as do the Ruwenzori Mountains (which sadly feature for about half a minute, albeit amazingly snow-covered), the Murchison Falls, Lake Victoria and so on. In each case, the impact of humankind we see here is (other than in Cairo) rather limited-looking.
The series innnovates with it's mini-interviews with those who live and work along the rivers and depend on them (full marks for that). Ecological details are not entirely lacking, and that's good too, though there is definitely not enough of this. But sadly, David Oyelowo does not have an especially exciting script to read, and does not make the best of his opportunities even then.
To be honest, I am not sure how best to make a programme entitled "Earth's Great Rivers", but I guess I would have to begin by sugesting that the Nile deserves at least 3 episodes. Where we are reduced to one the overview we get is inevitably limited, and the temptation to make it a series of "sketches" mainly (though not quite only) featuring familiar animals presumably proved too hard to resist. A slight pity that something a bit more subtle could not have been achieved here.
