Background
The BBC Natural History Unit originally wanted to film in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, but when this proved too expensive, they switched to Kenya. Filming is timed to coincide with the arrival of the annual wildebeest migration in the Mara, which is when the most predators gather to take advantage of abundant prey.
Each series has followed the daily lives of a lion pride, a cheetah family and a leopard family. The crew, which can number up to 60 people, use specially modified 4WD vehicles to travel around the Mara, tracking, spotting and filming the cats. The presenters also travel in the vehicles, addressing the camera as the action unfolds in front of them. They use names and develop personalities for particular cats to draw the audience into a relationship with them, creating empathy for the characters. The similarity to soap operas has led to Big Cat Diary being called "the original wildlife soap opera". Notwithstanding the popularity of the show, this technique has drawn criticism from some quarters for trivialising and sanitising the natural world.
Originally intended to be a one-off series, Big Cat Diary proved so popular that a further eight series have been broadcast to date, plus occasional specials. Recent series have drawn audiences of over 7 million viewers to BBC One, and spawned a number of other programmes using the same 'Wildlife Diary' format, including Elephant Diaries (2005–2008), Chimp Week (2006), Big Bear Week (2006) and Orangutan Diary (2007–2009). For the first few series, the episodes were broadcast weekly, but since 2004, they have been shown on consecutive nights over the course of a single week. The 2004, 2005 and 2006 series were called Big Cat Week. Since 2005, the Big Cat Diary website has carried additional video footage from the field and in 2006, a spin-off series called Big Cat Uncut was broadcast on BBC Three immediately after the BBC One episodes.
On 5 October 2008, the series returned to British television screens as Big Cat Live, the BBC Natural History Unit's most ambitious live international broadcast. Host Kate Silverton and local Maasai guide Jackson Looseyia joined regular presenters King and Scott for two weeks of nightly live programmes on BBC One. Additional broadcast content included Little Big Cat on CBeebies and Big Cat Raw, a webcast hosted on BBC Online. An update programme with highlights was shown at Christmas 2008.
The BBC have yet to announce whether the series will be recommissioned.
Read more about this topic: Big Cat Diary
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)