CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Meet the hero dedicated to saving tigers in the real-life Jungle Book By Christopher Stevens Published: 01:23 BST, 13 August 2024 | Updated: 01:28 BST, 13 August 2024 e-mail View comments My Tiger Family (BBC 2) Rating: There's a fairytale quality about India 's national park at Ranthambhore, where the tiger population has been nursed back from the brink of extinction. The ruins of its sprawling, red stone fort are 1,000 years old, home to innumerable monkeys. When two golden eyes blink in the undergrowth, you realise why it all seems so familiar: this is The Jungle Book.
Author Rudyard Kipling was partly inspired by Ranthambhore, and much of its atmosphere is captured in Disney's film. There were no dancing bears or jive-talking orangutans in My Tiger Family, but the thrilling footage of hunts evoked Shere Khan at his most ferocious. Drawing on film shot over half a century by documentary-maker Valmik Thapar and his colleagues, it included sequences showing previously unknown big cat behaviour — including a tiger bounding deep into a crocodile-infested lake to seize a fawn.
Crocs and tigers seemed equally unafraid of each other. One mother with four cubs waded across an inlet with her little family splashing behind her, until an underwater predator snapped one up. But another female threw herself on a monster crocodile nearly 20ft long and almost ripped its head off with her powerful jaws before devouring it.
Ranthambhore was once the killing ground of maharajahs and their guests. One local potentate claimed to have shot 1,300 tigers, and even the Duke of Edinburgh hunted there, accompanied by the late Queen. There were no dancing bears or jive-talking orangutans in My Tiger Family, but the thrilling footage of hunts evoked Shere Khan at his most ferocious Drawing on film shot over half a century by documentary-maker Valmik Thapar and his colleagues, it included sequences showing previously unknown big cat behaviour — including a tiger bounding deep into a crocodile-infested lake to seize a fawn Thapar made a storyteller worthy of Kipling, with wonder and magic in his voice.
He first came to the reserve in his early 20s, after his first marriage collapsed. 'I went on a whim to escape the city,' he said. 'One afternoon, I just walked out of my house in Delhi, leaving everything behind, and caught a train to Ranthambhore.
I wasn't a scientist or a naturalist, an activist or a conservationist. I was simply a filmmaker who fell in love with the beauty of this place and its tigers.' He joined an intensive campaign to protect the remaining big cats, barely a dozen of them.
Numbers quickly doubled, and doubled again: the new generation of tigers had no fear of man. They ceased to be nocturnal — one female was named Noon, because she liked to hunt at lunchtime. And then the poachers came.
They were able to shoot tigers point blank, because the animals had never seen guns. Chinese smugglers were willing to pay obscene sums for tiger bones, a supposed aphrodisiac. The striped pelts fetched a high price too.
One photo showed hundreds of tiger skins, enough to carpet a tennis court. Thapar's voice simmered with anger as he described the years spent begging politicians to ward off the poachers with an army of rangers. 'When I am asked what I have done with my life,' he concluded, 'the only answer I can give is this: I have been among the wild tigers and helped them to thrive.
' It's a life well spent, and a story movingly told. Dark humour of the night: When a chef suffered facial burns from an accident at breakfast, the 999 call handlers on Emergency (Ch4) sent an ambulance but joked, ‘He’s got egg on his face.’ Dr Ibraheim explained, ‘A bit of banter helps take the edge off.
’ Not for the chef, perhaps! Edinburgh India Share or comment on this article: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Meet the hero dedicated to saving tigers in the real-life Jungle Book e-mail Add comment.
