Hot Picks: Earth’s Magic Moments

If there’s one thing wildlife filmmakers have at their disposal, it’s time. Hours a day spent in the field with close to nothing happening, making those brief moments of animal activity all the more special – and then back again tomorrow in the hope for more.

In pondering the natural world’s relationship with time, the team at Offspring Films started exploring the ‘magic hour’ of different habitats, and the struggles of the animals within to meet their own life-or-death deadlines.

“Every story had to be told through the prism of time, with an animal in a rush to get something done,” says series producer Dan Perowne. “It’s driven us to find the sorts of stories that we probably wouldn’t have considered for a more conventional natural history show.”

Centring on the Amazon rainforest, the Kalahari Desert, the Australian reefs and the Rocky Mountains, each episode of Earth’s Magic Moments (working title) intertwines the stories of seven or eight animals.

Viewers will see a juvenile gabar goshawk swooping down to a Kalahari waterhole to wait for flocks of birds to arrive, when it will flip on its back and attempt to pluck one out of the air. Then there’s ‘Snakey’, a sea slug living in the tides off Australia’s west coast, a herd of bison trying to fend off wolves in the Rocky Mountains, and a family of bats that have to relocate to a new leaf every day in the Amazon.

It’s the connections between these tales that are the series’ calling card: inspired by Netflix drama Adolescence and films like Birdman and 1917, it deploys a number of seamless sequences, each around a minute, to swoop between the various parts of the terrain. “The idea was to take the audience on an immersive magic carpet ride through these worlds by connecting every story,” says Perowne.

The device, like the focal point of time across the series, aims to engage viewers with a lightness of touch.

“Modern life is stressful and natural history is a genuine form of escapism,” says Fremantle vice-president, non-scripted acquisitions, Céire Clark. “This doesn’t feel like a biology lesson. It’s fun and fast-paced, the production values give it real scale, and it has a very strong narrative engine at its heart.”

The time angle also affords some discussion of environmental themes, reflects Perowne. “As our world warms, nature’s clock is changing, and it is sadly having an effect on the animals. Some are coping and adapting, but many, unfortunately, are not.”

As broadcast partners, the BBC and PBS have been “reassuringly aligned” in their demands, Clark says. The UK version is a full hour, while the US gets 56 minutes. Both feature a “very special”, internationally recognised narrator, whose name remains under wraps for now.

As for how it resonates internationally, Clark is encouraged by Fremantle’s pre-sale of the series to France TV ahead of delivery. The four-parter leads the distributor’s natural history pack at this year’s Mipcom, where other treats on offer include Beach House Pictures’ National Geographic Wild UK three-parter Panda School.