Big Cats 24/7 follows named families of lions, cheetahs and leopards living in Botswana (Image: CREDIT LINE:NHU / BBC Studios / Lindsey Parietti)
It’s dubbed “Game of Thrones with whiskers” – and it’s easy to see why. Back this week for a second series, Big Cats 24/7 plays like the best kind of soap opera, conveying the most gripping moments in the lives of several named families of lions, cheetahs and leopards living in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
Full of larger than life characters and cliffhangers, the BBC wildlife series reminds us that the natural world is endlessly and innately dramatic. In one typically gripping scene, lionesses climb a tree to scoff the warthog kill that a leopard has hidden up there – the leopard understandably backs away as a lioness is three times a leopard’s weight.
“Nature and the cats tell their own stories,” says presenter and cinematographer Gordon Buchanan. “And our job is to capture that.”
And that means refusing to sanitise the precarious, often doomed existence of most animals in the bush. Viewers are reminded that nature is very much red in tooth and claw, and a grisly end is never far away.
Every creature in the Okavango Delta, except the apex predator that is the lion, spends its whole life just trying to stay alive and cheat death. In fact only a quarter of cheetah cubs will make it to three months because the lion is their number one killer.
Picking up six months after the first series was shot, Big Cats 24/7 this time follows the new threat posed to the 40-strong Xudum lion pride, now the largest in the world. Deserted by their dominant males, Big Toe and Madumo, the pride’s females find themselves forced to battle intruders alone and mount a constant and desperate hunt for food.
They face greater peril when a new group of four aggressive males, known as the Rogue Boys, arrive and start causing serious trouble. It’s a fearful moment for the females, as typically a new male lion’s first act in taking a pride is to kill all the cubs sired by the previous alpha male to ensure only his DNA survives.
Watching on what happens next is Gordon, fellow presenter-cinematographer Anna Dimitriadis and series producer Rowan Crawford.
“Because we didn’t see Maduro and Big Toe early on and we’d all fallen in love with the Xudum pride, it was even more terrifying going back for a second year,” says Rowan. “We thought the whole cast of characters could be under threat.”
Gordon nods. “When we met them in the first season this pride was almost bulletproof,” he says. “You had these really mature females that were holding up their end of the deal, by protecting their cubs, by hunting, by seeing off intruders.
“You also had Big Toe and Madumo, these sort of really experienced pride males that were security guards for that area. But we went back for season two. We saw the whole pride had become a victim of its own success. Because they had become so numerous, there was this baby boom, so there were more mouths to feed. Already really old males, Big Toe and Madumo were starting to lose their grip on power. That just changes everything.”
Filming Big Cats 24/7 is a huge operation – a completely portable camp, which operates a strict “Leave No Trace” policy (Image: NHU / BBC Studios / Russell Barnett)
Gordon reckons that change at the top is like a political party. “You oust one prime minister, and someone else comes in,” he says.
“That’s what we were seeing with this pride. The change at the top has repercussions that produce a tsunami effect. That affects every single lion within the whole pride, from the biggest to the smallest.”
Big Cats 24/7 is a huge operation. Some 40 people live in camp for six months, filming for 10,000 hours – 1,000 of which are at night. The completely portable camp, which operates a strict “Leave No Trace” policy, is four hours from anywhere. Remote doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Spending so much time in the company of these magnificent beasts, the crew found it impossible not to bond with them. They also felt it very deeply when animals were killed in front of them and they could do nothing to intervene.
“You can’t help but feel a connection to any character you spend that amount of time with, be it a human or or an animal,” says Anna. “From the success of series one and the feedback we’ve had, people generally do tend to connect better with animals if it’s through another human. Feeling sorry for any individual that is suffering is quite a normal human emotion.”
Gordon says one the main reasons why the series works so well is because we have so much in common with animals. “We share our core emotions with other mammals,” he continues. “They feel anger, frustration, fatigue. You can witness these things. We can only view the natural world through our human eyes. But we’re from that world. We’re kin under the skin because we are all mammals.
“When leopards fail to catch their prey during a hunt, they look embarrassed. They seem to be thinking, ‘I hope no one was watching that’. When she misses a warthog, she’s got that little curled lip of frustration.”
The response to the first series was hugely positive. Like the presenters, the viewers fell in love with the animals.
“I’ve had so many messages on social media from big cat fans asking how our characters are doing,” smiles Anna. “So I hope that they enjoy going back to the same place – and maybe they’ll also feel like they are going home to old friends. But they should probably have a box of tissues at hand because it’s going to be an emotional one.”
Rowan has high hopes for the second series. “I hope they’ll enjoy another rollercoaster ride through the real-life drama of the big cats’ lives. Forget Eastenders or Corrie – this is the soap opera you want to tune in for. It’s wild!”
The series follows the new threat posed to the 40-strong Xudum lion pride (Image: BBC Studios/Gordon Buchanan)
During the shoot, Anna, and 39 other filmmakers were based in a camp slap bang in the middle of the 10,000-mile-square Kalahari Desert.
She takes up the story. “In our rooms on camp, one half is just canvas and mosquito netting, so you’re completely open to the elements. On one occasion, I had done a night shift and took a nap during the day.
“Then I woke up to a sound. I just looked to my right, and there was an elephant right next to me. I was in bed, thinking, “Oh, my gosh, this is incredible. When do you ever get to be that close to an elephant?’”
You’ll no doubt be delighted to hear that Anna survived this quite unexpected meeting completely unscathed. She explains that she was totally unharmed because if you stay perfectly still, “The elephants don’t really know that you’re there.”
Gordon had an equally unsettling encounter with an elephant. “I came out of my room and there was a colleague standing on the steps outside,” recalls the filmmaker. “I immediately noticed something that he hadn’t noticed: four massive legs standing behind the nearby solar panels. It was an elephant.
“My colleague asked me, ‘How far do you think the closest elephant is? The water hole?’ ‘No, closer than that’, I replied. And then this massive trunk just swung out from behind the solar panels just five meters away.” Triggering the shock of his colleague’s life, I’m sure!
He chuckles: “Even something as big as an elephant can go completely unnoticed. I thought, ‘You need to be so vigilant’. You do want to know what’s out there, especially at night time, if you’re going to be walking from A to B.”
The team’s experience goes to show that it is extremely perilous to live in an unfenced camp. A camera trap took footage of a production team member who, unbeknownst to him, was being stalked by a lioness in camp just a few metres behind him.
Anna says that it is important to remember that “we are living in their home – that becomes apparent when you’re in the makeshift outdoor gym and a hyena decides to join you!”.
But above all it’s clear Big Cats 24/7 means the world to the team. Anna recollects the emotional reunion she had on her first day filming the second series with Pobe, the female leopard she was smitten by in the first series.
“It’s every wildlife cinematographer’s dream to be able to go back to the same place and see characters that you filmed with before,” she says.
“Seeing Pobe on the first day really felt like she knew we’d arrived. She was showing off because she had produced these lovely little cubs as well. It basically felt like seeing an old friend that I’d got to know really well.”
Showing me her upper arm, she adds: “Pobe is actually tattooed on my arm. She’s with me forever.”
Quick as a flash, Gordon jumps in. “I’ve got Madumo and Big Toe tattooed on my behind. I’ll show you later.”
Maybe that’s a rump I’ll leave for the lions.
Big Cats 24/7 starts on BBC2 and iPlayer on Friday.
Big Cats 24/7 presenter and cinematographer Gordon Buchanan (Image: NHU/BBC Studios/Lindsey Parietti)