Nature: Words and Pictures

Bette Midler on Princess Anne: 'She really loves Nature' [beat] 'despite what it did to her.' Well, as is amply documented on this blog, I too love Nature (and on the whole it's treated me quite kindly). However, I do not, by and large, like watching wildlife documentaries, too many of which seem to be a case of genius-level camerawork undermined by remedial-level commentary (and, often, music). Even the great Attenborough is liable to lapse into the windy platitudes and twee anthropomorphism that characterise the genre. However, once in a while, a film comes along in which the words live up to the images on screen, and one such is coming soon. It's a Natural World film called Wild Places of Essex, and it's on BBC2 on Wednesday of next week. The reason it's so good is that it's made by Robert Macfarlane, who wrote The Wild Places - indeed the commentary is adapted from that book. The result is an unusually thoughtful, eye-opening and insightful film, which, while pondering the nature of wildness, opens up its unpromising subject into something fascinating (and, along the way, pays homage to the late Roger Deakin). It is, of course, beautiful to look at - but the chief pleasure is in the accompanying words actually having something to say, and saying it well. (The picture's a Peregrine, by the way: they haunt the Essex badlands these days.)