Wild China

there's an article about that in the latest BBC Wildlife magazine, looks excellent. We probably won't get the series over here in NZ for ages though -- we're still waiting for 'Life In Cold Blood' to be shown dammit!!
 
But now there is the new BBC iPlayer so you can watch (nearly) anything that has been on BBC in the previous 7 days. Not as good as seeing it on the tv but better than nothing.

PS Life in Cold Blood is brilliant - my favourite bit was the monogamous bobtail skinks, particularly sad as you see loads of them squashed as roadkill so there must be an awful lot of widows/widowers around.
 
Pygathrix said:
But now there is the new BBC iPlayer so you can watch (nearly) anything that has been on BBC in the previous 7 days. Not as good as seeing it on the tv but better than nothing.

PS Life in Cold Blood is brilliant - my favourite bit was the monogamous bobtail skinks, particularly sad as you see loads of them squashed as roadkill so there must be an awful lot of widows/widowers around.
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You are right Life in cold blood is brilliant, many Bobtail skinks and (other species) get killed on the roads here, another common name for them here is Shinglebacks, at least mine are safe from being run over they have their own custom made enclosure outside the house ;)
 
Unfortunately, iPlayer is only for UK.

They say it is only for technical reasons. I wonder if it would be legal if somebody :) :) :) transfered it into youtube?

I hope that with China's growing openness, I would soon be able to see wild snub-nosed monkeys and chirus with my own eyes. ;)
 
MARK said:
You are right Life in cold blood is brilliant, many Bobtail skinks and (other species) get killed on the roads here, another common name for them here is Shinglebacks, at least mine are safe from being run over they have their own custom made enclosure outside the house ;)
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Wow Mark,

As a reptile enthusiast (am keeping Uromastyx with a friend), I might come over and see them in your yard - if that is ok with you - when I finally get over to Aussie shores in 2 years time!

Jelle
 
Due to a Video rec failure (or my failure, as you wish) we managed NOT to record it tonight...

Anyone any idea if this series is re-run (perhaps at night) on another day? Or if it's watchable on internet somewhere?

Pah :(
 
It's repeated Saturdays 1900 BBC2. It's a co-production with canal+ so should be on some European channels too. I think iPlayer is limited to UK because of copyright issues but you might be able to access it using a proxy server.

Beautiful photography as expected, quite a lot about the land and people as well as the animals. Francois Langurs caving was a high spot. The commentary was a little trite as is often the case, ie ends with the platitude that nature always finds a way despite all the threats, even though they had just shown us one of only three known individual Swinhoe's turtles, which had since died, and no mention of the baiji.
 
They could have reduced the ethnography part and should have rather focused on the fauna & flora (after all, that's what I expected from the title...). However, the footage of wild Golden-Snub-nosed Monkeys, Shensi-Takins and Mongolian gazelles was worth watching the whole episode. Let's see what the next episodes on the local television channel can offer...
 
Sun Wukong said:
They could have reduced the ethnography part and should have rather focused on the fauna & flora (after all, that's what I expected from the title...).
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With these big mega-series filmed in difficult places its often impossible to find enough wildlife to fill the whole of each programme, so they are 'fleshed out' with cultural stuff too. From what I saw of it this episode looked to be about 65% culture/35% wildlife. I would think you can expect a similar, but varying, ratio in the other episodes too....
 
Pertinax said:
From what I saw of it this episode looked to be about 65% culture/35% wildlife. I would think you can expect a similar, but varying, ratio in the other episodes too....
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D'oh!

Too bad, as China would have (still) enough wildlife to fill the other 65%.
 
apparently they had trouble finding the animals to film. According to the articles in BBC Wildlife magazine (May 2008) there are very few people studying the wildlife in China (which is to say, there are lots of zoologists "mostly engaged in classifying new species" but few naturalists that know where and when animals do stuff), so it took them a long time to find and film even the most common of species because no-one locally could tell them where to go to do so.
 
I agree I would have preferred to have seen more of the animals, although overall I found the programme good. Some scenes eg cormorants/fisherman have been seen many times before.

At least it was better than the wildlife programmes which show more of the researcher than their elusive subject. The worst example ever I saw of this was about Gerald Durrell and his team in Madagascar as they captured aye-ayes. I had anticipated this highly as I had grown up believing they were doomed to extinction in my lifetime, and they had not been shown on tv before. More than 59 minutes of Gerald sitting around in the camp (because he was too unfit to go into the forest) and the rest of his team returning daily to report no luck. Literally the last ten seconds showed a single aye-aye stick its head out of a crate and take a piece of fruit from Durrell, then credits!
 
The following episode was much better and didn't (fortunately) follow the predicted ratio. Wild Yunnan Snub-Nosed Monkeys, Chinese Cave Fish and Chirus-that was definetely worth watching it.
 
Wild China is to be shown here on the TV this Sunday on the ABC @ 7.30, Looking forward to seeing the it
 
Sun Wukong said:
The following episode was much better and didn't (fortunately) follow the predicted ratio. Wild Yunnan Snub-Nosed Monkeys, Chinese Cave Fish and Chirus-that was definetely worth watching it.
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The ratio will vary depending on the availability and filmability of the wildlife in each region they cover. Of course they could condense ALL the wildlife into (say)just three films, but that makes it economically unviable- i.e. they need to get a full series of (say) six films from all the trouble/ huge expense of going there in the first place. Then of course some wildlife segments maybe don't work out as expected, so to make up the running time you have include more film of people, buffaloes, silkworms etc....;)
 
Pygathrix said:
More than 59 minutes of Gerald sitting around in the camp (because he was too unfit to go into the forest)
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Pretty boring prospect. I saw him once at the Zoo driving around in a golfing buggy- I guess he was a semi-invalid by then..
 
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@Pertinax: Well, the local telly here summarized it all up in 2 episodes-and when looking at the local reviews, it seems that I wasn't the only one who had expected more wildlife...
Anyway, the show had a couple of nice shots, like the great footage of the Francois' Langur. Just makes You want to see more...;)
 
Sun Wukong said:
@Pertinax: Well, the local telly here summarized it all up in 2 episodes-and when looking at the local reviews, it seems that I wasn't the only one who had expected more wildlife...
Anyway, the show had a couple of nice shots, like the great footage of the Francois' Langur. Just makes You want to see more...;)
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Obviously (some) people do notice if a programme/episode is 'thin' on wildlife. I didn't see the whole episode (it will be repeated in the week) but I liked the Francois' Langur sequence where they crept along the caves to go to 'roost.' Not sure there are many leopards left to predate them nowadays though...
 
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