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    Gordon Buchanan

    The beeb have been showing his old series over the festive period. It's basically him mooching about incredibly wild and beautiful locations making best pals with animals. They had his wolf cub one on this afternoon, and he spent the entire time in Fjallraven smock and hat cosying up to a wolf yearling and three cubs. It is now clear to me that I have wasted my life.

    He did one with polar bears, where he was sat in a perspex igloo and a bear decided to try and pop him out, like the toy in the middle of a kinder egg. I don't suppose it's much fun being sat directly underneath a polar bear's jaws with only a sheet of plastic to hide behind. Never eat brown snow.

    Buchanan is now my go to guy for outdoorsy jacket-rich telly. Sorry Chris Packham, you have slid down the pecking order. Though Winterwatch is on soon, and it's in the Cairngorms. We stayed in the exact lodge that the crew are using last week. A beautiful stone farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I took a couple of days away after the Christmas bastardathon and sat in front a log burner watching Scandi Noir boxsets (Forbrydelsen is fucking ridiculous telly. The ploy has more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire.) and reading. I heartily recommend this way of life, it is good for the soul.

    I only went up to the Highlands because I got a Fjallraven Yupik parka for Christmas and it's not been cold enough to wear it round Manchester. I tried once and nearly passed out from heat exhaustion in Wilkos. But up a hill in Scotland it's about -4, which is ideal big coat weather. Loch Morlich, is, I think, one of my favourite places in the world. The clear water reflecting the trees and hills, it's scenery that rivals anything I saw in the Canadian Rockies.

    In Inverness Wildlife Park they have two male polar bears, Walker and Arctos (which is an odd name for a polar bear) and a mother and cub. Seeing how chunky they are in real life emphasised how fucking scary it would be to be in a plastic igloo while one tried to smash you out. And while I don't really think a muddy field in the Highlands is the ideal place for a polar bear, I appreciate the opportunity to see them big scary fuckers up close. Those paws, man. Paws for though.

    Anyway. The BBC is dead good at nature programmes, isn't it? Nice one, Auntie.

    #2
    So basically this is yet another one of those shows I detest before I've even seen it? Where the person delivering the story is in the centre, not so much the animals? Which the arse could have delivered in a studio back home in a flat in UK and let the film crew do the rest? He could have super imposed his ego over a blue screen.

    I don't know. I'm asking you whether it is.

    I’m personally fed up and bored with this new-ish schtick where it’s somewhere around 50% about the person doing the show, and 50% about the topic.

    That born a bloody continuous bastard Steve Irwin was a maestro when it came to it. The Australian who would run around shouting like a moron on LSD about all the dangerous animals he would mess with by grabbing them ADHD-like, and in every show you’d see his face 70% of the time, the animals themselves you’d see about 30% of the time. If even that.

    Those shows. I fucking hate them. They’re not even about the topic! They’re about someone talking into a camera about the topic.

    Travel shows have gone the same way. 50% of the time you will have to watch the one travelling being interviewed in his own show, by himself or herself about how great he or she feels to be there, or how sad her or she feels to experience being amongst poverty, yet so happy to experience it, and how… blab la bla. All about the person travelling there, less about the place.

    It’s a bunch of bullshit.
    Stay out of the fucking picture!

    There’s a reason why Richard Attenborough is revered. Because he wouldn’t demand that 75% of the time, he’s in the fucking picture. He rather talks behind with his wonderful voice, and let us be startled about what he talks about. Which ain’t him but became him because of the way he’s done it.

    Or maybe this one isn’t with the fucker kind who wants himself to be at the centre in a show about animals? However “making best pals with animals”, makes me wonder.

    And knock it off with the Swedish Fjällräven obsession. Only capitalist are obsessed with brands, for Christ sake! You Burberry wannabe.
    We've had that shit for decades here and it's not all that. It's only a brand which happened to be hyped by the likes of you.

    Comment


      #3
      "Where the person delivering the story is in the centre, not so much the animals?"

      No.

      "And knock it off with the Swedish Fjällräven obsession."

      No.

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        #4
        "Which the arse could have delivered in a studio back home in a flat in UK and let the film crew do the rest?"

        Film crew? He's a camera man. He filmed 'Snow Wolf Family and Me' all alone, from a tent in the Canadian Arctic. He spent weeks there gaining the trust of the wolves and getting the footage. The programme is about wolves, not about Gordon Buchanan. Much like in Attenborough's Dynasties, the animals themselves provide the story. Birth, survival, relationships. It's just brilliant, brilliant television.

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          #5
          I'll watch it instead, man. Will give it a shot.

          But the rest remains regarding most shit on Discovery or National Geographic or elsewhere being more about the hosts than about the topic. That's why crap like Beckham on a motorbike through Argentina or Ewan McGregor on his following the Silk road even becomes a documentary. Or why Gordon Ramsey has made millions on cooking, or boy band face Jamie Oliver. You see their faces more than the bloody food or the ingredients every single ep.

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            #6
            he sounds likehe should have been a Manchester United Defender in the 1980's.

            .

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              #7
              I'd have loved that.

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                #8
                can't you bring him to Manchester to do one of those urban wildlife series. he could use film you lolloping to work in your Fjällräven yupik. He could build a hide to attract fellow Fjällräven- clad foraging in the Stretford end with Brian Macclair.

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                  #9
                  One for series two of Into The Wild? That was another cracking programme, and one where there was more about the human side of things.
                  http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=...ordon_Buchanan

                  EIM speaks for me here, Buchanan is top drawer.

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                    #10
                    I watched a bit of the brown bear one over Christmas but his constant whispering kept triggering my misophonia.

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                      #11
                      Mrs b and I went to see Gordon Buchanan give a talk about his telly work a couple of years ago - seems a genuine enough guy, and has plenty of stories to tell about the inaccessibility of some of the places he's filmed (high Himalayas chasing after snow leopards for example).

                      And yes, his wildlife documentaries are the business.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Pietro Paolo Virdis View Post

                        There’s a reason why Richard Attenborough is revered
                        Because he stayed away from nature programmes?

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                          #13
                          Cheers EIM! We watched the two Snow Wolf episodes on the iplayer earlier this evening. Top stuff.

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                            #14
                            I'm a bit with PPV, I often wish he'd just get out of the bloody way and let us see the animals.

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                              #15
                              Gordo is on BBC2 right now, knocking about Russia in Fjallraven with some lynx. Great telly.

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                                #16
                                I loved the lynx, obviously, but it probably wasn't such great news for the rats and voles of that foresty enclosure. That was Russian ratty heaven until Gordon unleashes those big spotty killing machines upon them.

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                                  #17
                                  One of them struggled with chicken on a string. There's hope for them yet.

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                                    #18
                                    Chicken on a string... I'd happily watch a Buchanan film where they serve that late at night at a snide KFC while Gordon sits quietly at a corner table filming a bunch of hammered students trying to get to grips with it.

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                                      #19
                                      One of my Facebook workmates filmed his cat sitting close to the tv transfixed by the lynx

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                                        #20
                                        What's better than a Chris Packham birthday message? A Chris Packham birthday message AND a Gordon Buchanan birthday message!

                                        https://www.instagram.com/p/CDq0RrYj...d=putidsd6rnc6

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                                          #21
                                          Those messages were awesome mate.
                                          How the F did Packham get 4 puffas on though?

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