Expedition to PNG "Lost Land of the Volcano" BBC2

It was great!!!

The entemologist guy is a real nutter! But hes brilliant too!

Don't fancy any of that caving though.....
 
It's all a bit fluffy, but some wonderful animals and places to see nontheless!

The Entomologist is the best of the on screen "scientists/experts" Steve Backshall and the bloke who let the pygmy parrot escape are a bit plonkerish! You see the real scientists silently working in the background or almost silently holding an animal for one of the presenters to go mad over.

The blind cave crab! wow, those mating longhorn beetles, awesome! The frog that we saw for 3 seconds and said nothing about, brilliant!

:D
 
JerseyLotte said:
The frog that we saw for 3 seconds and said nothing about, brilliant!
:D
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Yes, this is the problem for those viewers with a serious interest: rare and unusual species are shown for a couple of seconds with no attempt (by the programme's producers) to identify them. Highly frustrating! I assume the viewing public are regarded as too stupid to be exposed to such notions as scientific names.....
 
I didn't manage to see much of this weeks episode, due to music engagements.
Time to get on the old IPlayer i think....
 
JerseyLotte said:
It's all a bit fluffy, but some wonderful animals and places to see nontheless!

The Entomologist is the best of the on screen "scientists/experts" Steve Backshall and the bloke who let the pygmy parrot escape are a bit plonkerish! You see the real scientists silently working in the background or almost silently holding an animal for one of the presenters to go mad over.

The blind cave crab! wow, those mating longhorn beetles, awesome! The frog that we saw for 3 seconds and said nothing about, brilliant!

:D
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I admit to that much ...

Great re. birds of paradise mating and watch out for next week's inside volcano glimpse of a tree kangaroo haphazardly jumping along next to the camera man *****

What I did miss was the noise of the jungle .... it is sad that the programme cannot convey this .... that is if everybody shuts up for a few moments and you just listen in ....

Makes me want to go back to Heart of Kalimantan (I did the E-W trek sometime)
 
JerseyLotte said:
Steve Backshall and the bloke who let the pygmy parrot escape are a bit plonkerish! You see the real scientists silently working in the background or almost silently holding an animal for one of the presenters to go mad over.
the 'escape' of the Pygmy parrot was almost certainly engineered for the camera- once they were ready to let it go anyway.

Despite the shortcomings as mentioned above, I have been enjoying this series more than usual because of both the location and the style of programming.
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It's easy to get snobbish about programmes such as these, but if you start including scientific names of every animal flashed up on the screen half the audience would soon switch over. Sure, the presenters play up to the cameras and inject drama into every situation, but it makes for a fast-paced and very watchable programme. Even David Attenborough has his own theatrical style. I applaud every attempt to get conservation issues on to prime time TV, and with 4 or 5 million people tuning in every week, who can complain?
 
Chris79 said:
It's easy to get snobbish about programmes such as these, but if you start including scientific names of every animal flashed up on the screen half the audience would soon switch over
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Really? It's not unusual for gardening programmes to mention the scientific names of plants, so why assume that people would be put off if the same was done for animals? Why do we always think that only the lowest common denominator will do?
 
MikeG said:
Really? It's not unusual for gardening programmes to mention the scientific names of plants, so why assume that people would be put off if the same was done for animals?
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Scientific names of plants are common lexicon amongst gardeners because often there is no alternative common name, so gardening programmes rightly assume that audiences would expect them to use scientific names.

Viewers of wildlife programmes are more diverse and only a small minority of them are likely to be familiar or interested in scientific names, which is why it's preferable to stick to common names. Of course, when an animal doesn't have a common name the scientific name should be used - the BBC Natural History Unit are generally pretty good at this.

The tricky thing about filming expeditions to uncharted places is that many of the animals encountered are either new to science (in which case they have no name), or so rarely seen that only a handful of people can positively identify them, which may not be possible in the time between filming and broadcasting.

MikeG said:
Why do we always think that only the lowest common denominator will do?
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It's a shame that you regard "Lost Land of the Volcano" as lowest common denominator television - its predecessor won a BAFTA. I will agree with you on one point though; I also like to be informed about every animal that is shown on screen, no matter how fleetingly. :)
 
Chris79, I had to smile when you defended 'Lost Land...' on the grounds that "its predecessor won a BAFTA". When you recall that Harry Hill, amongst many other talentless TV 'celebrities', has won a BAFTA award.....then the accolade becomes rather meaningless!
[Apologies to any Harry Hill fans out there]
I enjoyed watching 'Lost Land...' but it could have been so much better than it was.
 
Correction to my previous message: the previous series was nominated for a BAFTA but lost out to "Life in Cold Blood". It did, however, win an RTS award. These accolades are a pretty good hallmark of quality in the documentary categories.
 
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