‘The Hunt’: Cougars Attack! Orcas Kill! Bunnies Die!
Photo: BBC America
If you’re looking for some relief from Fourth of July noisiness and cheerful celebration, you’d do well to watch the premiere of The Hunt, BBC America’s hypnotizing, exciting new nature documentary series. Sunday’s opening episode examines predators and prey in Africa, as leopards leap and strain to catch swiftly prancing impala antelopes, orca killer whales sink their razor teeth into the juicy, innocent bodies of baby humpback whales, and a chameleon with “a tongue longer than its body” laps up insects with a moist, deadly snap! There are scenes of a pack of wild dogs stalking and chasing a wildebeest with such blood-lusting ferocity that they simultaneously remind you of and — almost impossibly — nearly exceed the relentless pursuit of Hillary Clinton by Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee.
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As overseen by producer Alastair Fothergill and narrated by that most sagaciously veteran of nature narrators, David Attenborough, The Hunt is from the makers of another remarkable documentary series, Planet Earth, and this one is just as impressive. The hours the poor camera operators must have spent squatting in tall grass, waiting for a leopard to get within striking distance of an antelope! The creaky knees and stiff arms the humans must have endured lying in wait, much like the animals themselves, to capture on film chases that frequently result in empty jaws and hungry bellies: “Six out of seven leopard hunts end in failure,” Attenborough informs us in the sort of mournful tone usually heard only on audiobooks describing the death of Little Nell in a Charles Dickens collection.
The footage is truly extraordinary and gorgeous, and, for the most part, artfully edited. In this era of intense concern for animals, it takes great delicacy to provide the essential guilty pleasure of this kind of nature documentary — seeing an animal actually catch its prey and consume it — and yet it avoids potentially upsetting amounts of blood, teeth, agony, and death. Thus The Hunt’s cameras pull back with the polite discretion of a priest witnessing a young couple arguing viciously just before their wedding ceremony. Our eyes and Attenborough’s narration confirm that catch-and-kill, even as the actual death and consumption of the animal — necessary for the life of both species to endure in locked symbiosis — are seen by the merest suggestion of chewing teeth and ribbons of blood and meat.
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Subsequent episodes of The Hunt take the viewer to the frigid Arctic (four wolves chase a snow-white bunny — don’t let the kids stay up past their bedtime) and into steamy jungles, where animals from tigers to chimpanzees seek out their versions of Quarter Pounders, hold the cheese. Don’t miss a second of it.
The Hunt airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on BBC America.
