Vintage nature documentaries

It's finally getting properly cold here, so I've decided it's time to start putting cinnamon and ginger in my hot chocolate of an afternoon. Very good stuff.

Anyway, I was looking around on BBC iPlayer for old David Attenborough documentaries, as you do (in my opinion the best television ever made was 'The Life of Birds'), and came across this, a collection of some of the earliest programmes he made, way back in the 1950s. I've been watching the first couple of episodes of 'Zoo Quest' this week (they've got one long episode about a trip to Sierra Leone, then two series about Southeast Asia and Madagascar, as well as some slightly later and more anthropological-looking programmes).

It's fascinating stuff—very much of its time, this being a time when one could apparently just jet off to Borneo, wander into the forest and find a random man willing to trade a baby orang-utan for some tobacco. It reminds me a bit of Gerald Durrell's books about collecting animals for the zoo, and the animals are similarly characterful and entertaining, especially that orang-utan! But there's some solid natural history stuff too, which is always good to see. It's interesting from a history of TV perspective as well—obviously a lot less polished than modern nature programmes, and it feels much more opportunistic and meandering rather than crafted to tell a story. I'm enjoying it so far!