If there's one thing the BBC excel at, it's wildlife documentary. While David Attenborough has introduced us to all manner of extraordinary landscapes and creatures around the globe, the Natural History Unit have iced the cake with Wild Burma: Nature's Lost Kingdom (BBC Two, Friday) and its unknown presenters.
This unique journey, in partnership with scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, explores a fascinating land that is totally outside our human experience as armchair watchers of the world.
For a start, no broadcasters had been allowed into Burma to film during its 50 years of oppressive military rule.
A quick potted history of its people's fortunes since earlier British occupation as a trading outpost was useful to set things in context.
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Furthermore, the jungles the team are trawling for evidence of the indigenous animal life have become impenetrable through decades of neglect, but could soon be plundered for their natural resources. We are riding shotgun on what is clearly a challenging, dangerous and very important expedition to chart the wealth of wild species there – bears, snakes, elephant, tigers and other rare wild cats – and protect their future.
Since 2011 Burma, or Myanmar, has slowly been establishing itself as a democracy and is becoming much more accessible to tourists.
As this documentary demonstrated, it's a very beautiful country and it's high on my list of far-flung lands I want to visit before they become over-absorbed by Western culture and exploited for its natural riches.
But I am pretty certain I will never be able to witness the fantastic sight brought to us in this first episode of three – a birds-eye view of a close-knit family of Asian elephants wallowing in a western Burma river. And then a tiny baby calf – evidence that could prove critical to the survival of the species. "That was just magical," said camera woman Justine Evans.
Yes, Justine, it was.
Mildly absorbing is the description I'd be inclined to use for the one-off spy drama Legacy (BBC Two, Thursday), not least for the 1970s period detail and atmosphere.
For me it was spot on, from our trainee MI6 agent hero Charlie's kipper tie and trench mac to the Ford Cortinas and red phone boxes on the gloomy grey streets of London, the transistor radios, untipped cigarettes and Watneys pale ale – although I'm sure some clever clogs will be able to dig up an inaccuracy somewhere.
Writer Paula Milne (The Politician's Husband, Endgame) based her story on a novel by Alan Judd, set in 1974 in the heart of the Cold War in a climate of double-dealing where no one knows who to trust, with an added blast of three-day week and power cuts thrown in.
Cue dark encounters, creepy alleyways, spooky empty warehouses with lots of pillars to hide behind, and long candid shots indicating that Charles was under constant surveillance from more than one direction. Neither plot nor characters were as sophisticated as the likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I enjoyed its bleak, glamour-free simplicity and Charlie Thoroughgood's portrayal of an emotion-starved middle-class young man and his tortuous buttoned-up reactions on learning disturbing secrets about the dead father he thought he had known.
I was less convinced by Andrew Scott's performance as the Russian diplomat Viktor Koslov, a former university colleague who Charles was asked to befriend with a view to turning him into a British informer; the accent was certainly over-egged.
There was a fair portion of cliche too, including the obligatory murdered prostitute and Romola Garai in a thinly drawn role as Anna, married to a fellow agent and seduced into an affair with Charles.
But it still beats an overdose of "celebrity" reality.
Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2013/11/30/joining-in-the-joy-of-a-vital-elephant-encounter/
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