Britain Goes Wild with Bill Oddie (2004)

Genre

documentary film

Country

United Kingdom

Length

1 season, 12 episodes

Rating

9.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and Simon King present a live wildlife show from a farm in Devon, using hidden cameras to observe birds and badgers. Each episode also features short nature films from locations around Britain. The series ran for three weeks and attracted millions of viewers.

livelyupbeateducationalobservationalcasualengaginginformativenature-focused

What happens

Britain Goes Wild with Bill Oddie is a live BBC TV show, broadcast nightly, Monday – Thursday, from 31 May 2004 to 17 June 2004. Following on from the previous year's Wild in Your Garden, presenters Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and Simon King spent one hour each evening, describing wildlife and presenting live action from a number of hidden cameras in or near nest boxes, as well as a badger sett. Short, pre-filmed documentary pieces were also included. While Oddie and Humble both presented the series from an organic farm in Devon, England, where the nestboxes and sett were located, King worked on location – at Bass Rock observing gannets in the first week, at a quarry observing a family of peregrine falcons in the second week, at the London Wetlands Centre in the third week, and joining Oddie and Humble on the farm for the final programme. It set a record for its timeslot of 8pm on BBC Two on its first evening of broadcast of 3.4 million viewers – one million more than the Channel 4 programme showing at that time. It also created a run on nest boxes for wild birds and bumble bees, bird baths and bird feed from suppliers, likened to the Delia power phenomenon created when Delia Smith mentioned the tools and ingredients she was using on her cooking programme Delia's How to Cook. Oddie presented an update of some of the featured animals later in 2004. A sequel, Springwatch with Bill Oddie, was broadcast in 2005. The series' theme music was composed by David Poore, and is still used as the theme for Springwatch and Autumnwatch. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Bill Oddie's How to Watch Wildlife (2005)
• Planet Earth II (2016)
• Planet Earth (2006)
• Birding with Bill Oddie (1998)
• Life (2009)
• Sea Monsters (2003)
• The Way We Went Wild (2004)
• Bill Oddie Back in the USA (2007)