Like a pair of sulky teens, sibling cheetahs in the flood-struck Maasai Mara national reserve appear in ITV1's Force of Nature. The documentary, three years in the making, focuses on the impact of extreme weather events on animals worldwide.
Disaster movie tone dominates
Narrator Andrew Lincoln declaims, "When nature turns against them, they're not just enduring … they are fighting back. These animals are … a FORCE OF NATURE!" The thunderous soundtrack and shots of crashing waves and sorrowing elephants evoke late-90s Hollywood disaster movies, leaving little room for subtlety.
The show features elephants up to their trunks in churning storm water, a lizard clinging to a plant stalk in a gale, and a polar bear floating mournfully on ice. Disembodied news snippets report "West Africa's worst heatwave in living memory" and "Arctic is warming at around three times faster than the rest of the globe."
Cheetahs face flood challenges
In Kenya, cameras capture record-breaking floods in the Maasai Mara. Cheetah siblings, drenched and miserable like sulky teens at a bus stop, are forced to cross a roiling river to reach antelopes. The swimming-averse cats bob and lurch through the water, a poignant sight. Lincoln weeps, "The bigger the storm, the greater the heroes."
Owls endure monster storms
In South Dakota, an owl family faces "MONSTER STORMS" and "cluster bombs of tornadoes." They scurry into their burrow, standing with trembling backs to the wall. The owls emerge wobbly but alive after the storm. Whether they can endure another five episodes of Lincoln's italics remains to be seen.
The photography is tremendous, but the show's tone turns the climate crisis into a pompom-shaking spectacle, reducing animals to victims of a human-made disaster.
Force of Nature aired on ITV1 and is on ITVX now.
