We no longer have to die wondering what it’s like to be eaten by a polar bear, thanks to the ingenuity of the veteran producer of TV One’s new Polar Bear Family and Me, Tuesday, 8.30pm.
Jason Roberts built a perspex and steel version of a shark cage, designed to resist the depredations of these powerful beasts, while watching them up close.
So we got to see, from the prey’s eye view, what it’s like to have those massive spatulate paws slapping you about, and those seriously business-like incisors gnawing at you, as presenter Gordon Buchanan was virtually eaten.
Luckily, the cage proved to be satisfactorily polar bear-proof, though all bets would have been off had the hungry female decided to leap on its roof with her massive weight.
And to his credit, Buchanan continued to narrate professionally throughout his prophylactic mauling, despite admitting he was having bowel control issues.
The series follows another female bear, dubbed Lyra, and her two male cubs, for a year, with a view to quantifying the impact of global warming and shrinking Arctic habitat on the endangered animals.
As an ominous first indicator, the ship on which the BBC team travelled to the remote Norwegian island bear habitat would not till this year have been able to get through the ice during that part of the season.
There is less and less ice for the bears to do their traditional seal hunting.
Not that it’s much fun for the seals, either. In order to live, they have to swim under the ice to catch fish. But being mammals, they need to come up for air through holes in the ice.
Chances are, waiting at one of those holes will be a ruddy great hungry bear with a nose attuned to seal breath.
However, so far we have only seen footage of a bear cartwheeling over a seal breathing hole in a failed attempt to catch one. The series is unexpectedly suspenseful, as the bear cubs’ lives depend on getting their first feed in about half a year.
Lyra has lived on her own stored fat while nursing her cubs. Unless they get some seal blubber into themselves soon, they’ll perish.
This is simply riveting wildlife cinematography, allowing us to marvel at close range as these lumbering, pigeon-toed but magnificently regal animals go about their business – before and after humans shoot darts in their bums and put radio collars on them, that is.
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