{"id":226324,"date":"2026-01-04T03:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T03:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226324\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T03:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T03:36:11","slug":"wild-london-review-honestly-telly-does-not-get-any-better-than-this-david-attenborough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226324\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild London review \u2013 honestly, telly does not get any better than this | David Attenborough"},"content":{"rendered":"

The journey begins in a row of allotments lodged deep between two north London streets. It\u2019s 8.30pm and David Attenborough<\/a> \u2013 99 years young, in customary short-sleeved blue shirt and chinos \u2013 is on the hunt for Tottenham\u2019s most elusive resident. He gets settled on a camping chair. Waits. Emits a tiny rhapsodic gasp as the creature in question appears. It\u2019s a \u2026 fox.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still a huge thrill to see one suddenly emerging from the bushes,\u201d he whispers to camera of a sight so bog-standard most Londoners wouldn\u2019t bother looking up from their phones. \u201cA totally wild creature!\u201d Attenborough holds out a hand. Murmurs a delighted \u201chello\u201d. The fox comes within a few inches of the greatest natural historian and broadcaster this country has ever produced, then slinks off into the night. What an encounter! And if you think that\u2019s exhilarating wait until you see his reaction to a pigeon getting on the tube.<\/p>\n

For those at the precarious stage of the holidays where a poultice for the heart is urgently required, I give you Wild London. An exquisitely cheerful, beautifully produced, unexpectedly moving special, captured over Attenborough\u2019s centennial year, in which he seeks out the wildlife of the capital and we discover that the secret to a good life isn\u2019t actually a parasite cleanse or a facial for your vagina \u2013 it\u2019s appreciating what\u2019s on your own doorstep. Which in Attenborough\u2019s case is a megacity home to 9 million people, 2.6m cars, 607 sq miles of concrete, asphalt and steel, and more wild animals than seem possible in such unnatural circumstances. Plus, of course, one vanishingly rare David Attenborough. \u201cThroughout my life I\u2019ve had the good fortune to travel the world witnessing many spectacles,\u201d he says in a black cab home to Richmond. \u201cBut this is the place to which I\u2019ve always returned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Still a huge thrill\u2019 \u2026 David Attenborough with a fox in Wild London. Photograph: BBC\/Passion Planet Ltd\/Gavin Thurston<\/p>\n

And so to Hammersmith station, through which Attenborough once regularly commuted, his day \u201calways brightened\u201d by the sight of \u2026 yes, I too was thinking a rat! But no. Pigeons. Hopping on and off trains before the doors close with the chutzpah of Indiana Jones grabbing his hat, while commuters look on obliviously and Attenborough explains how pigeons typically use the sun and magnetic fields to find their way, but in urban areas have learned to navigate using landmarks, roads, even train lines. Honestly, does British telly get any better than this?<\/p>\n

Next, peregrine falcons, which Hamza Yassin fans will know<\/a> are now nesting in pairs all over London. When Attenborough moved to the capital in the 1950s they were virtually extinct in the UK. Today? \u201cThey\u2019re thriving in London in greater numbers than almost any other city in the world.\u201d There\u2019s breathtaking footage of the fastest animal on Earth soaring through the city, nesting in the Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross hospital and factories on the Thames, which work as ideal substitutes for their natural cliff habitats. \u201cLondon\u2019s concrete canyons\u201d, Attenborough calls them. \u201cPlenty of opportunity to make a killing in the city.\u201d The writing, as ever in his films \u2013 which he has always insisted on refining and rewriting himself \u2013 is lyrical, mischievous, glorious.<\/p>\n

So much evokes childlike wonder: \u201cgreen squadrons\u201d of parakeets, honeybees drunk on fermenting nectar, Aesculapian snakes along Regent\u2019s Canal, emperor dragonflies breeding in the pond outside the Natural History Museum and, most astonishingly of all, the return of wild beavers to a London wetland. A species that disappeared from the UK about 400 years ago. \u201cIf someone had told me when I\u2019d just moved here that one day I\u2019d be watching wild beavers in London I\u2019d have thought they were mad,\u201d he says. \u201cImagine what else can be achieved if we let nature back into our cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only beavers that blow his mind. \u201cOh, what a lovely thing,\u201d Attenborough says, holding a four-week-old peregrine falcon chick. He marvels at a vixen hiding a chicken bone under a car\u2019s windscreen wipers. He\u2019s tickled by the \u201chedgehog highways\u201d the owners of London\u2019s 4m private gardens have introduced, cutting holes in fences to allow males to travel up to two miles every night in search of a mate. In Hyde Park he witnesses a face-off between some territorial coots and a frankly terrifying herring gull, whose taste for pigeon meat \u201chas given him the glossiest plumage on the shores of the Serpentine\u201d. Without getting into the gruesome details, I found myself jumping up and screaming three words I never thought would fall out of this Londoner\u2019s mouth: \u201cCome on, pigeon!\u201d<\/p>\n

What is most moving is seeing the common urban spectacles the rest of us take for granted, or don\u2019t see at all, elevated to the giddy heights of an Attenborough documentary. Whether he is witnessing a herd of fallow deer cross an east London street to feast on someone\u2019s garden roses, or narrating the high-stakes drama of a mother trying to hide her fawn from an off-lead dalmatian sniffing about the bushes of his local park, it\u2019s this endless capacity for wonder, on his own doorstep and everywhere else, that is most humbling. This one human animal has changed the way we see the natural world. Whatever will we do without him?<\/p>\n

Wild London aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The journey begins in a row of allotments lodged deep between two north London streets. It\u2019s 8.30pm and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-226324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}