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Attenborough as I didn't know him

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bungeejumper
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Attenborough as I didn't know him

#337323

Postby bungeejumper » September 1st, 2020, 8:53 am

I chanced up some very old David Attenborough programmes on iPlayer recently - entitled Quest under Capricorn (1963), and they came as quite a surprise. Not least because they didn't focus particularly on nature and wildlife. Instead, Attenborough was wandering through Australia and talking to the residents about how they lived and survived out in the bush. Aboriginals, of course, but also the old white crazies who'd been hunkering down in rotting tin shacks ever since the railways had taken the road traffic away in 1928. (I kid you not.)

Attenborough displays a Louis Theroux-type ability to ask alarmingly open-faced questions ("are you mad?" "Don't you miss women?"). But he also taught me a few things about aboriginal culture that more recent travelogues would probably have shied away from in these more sensitive times. I'm only part way through this series so far, but I'm enjoying the ride.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p00zw1jd

BJ

bluedonkey
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Re: Attenborough as I didn't know him

#337427

Postby bluedonkey » September 1st, 2020, 3:08 pm

bungeejumper wrote:I chanced up some very old David Attenborough programmes on iPlayer recently - entitled Quest under Capricorn (1963), and they came as quite a surprise. Not least because they didn't focus particularly on nature and wildlife. Instead, Attenborough was wandering through Australia and talking to the residents about how they lived and survived out in the bush. Aboriginals, of course, but also the old white crazies who'd been hunkering down in rotting tin shacks ever since the railways had taken the road traffic away in 1928. (I kid you not.)

Attenborough displays a Louis Theroux-type ability to ask alarmingly open-faced questions ("are you mad?" "Don't you miss women?"). But he also taught me a few things about aboriginal culture that more recent travelogues would probably have shied away from in these more sensitive times. I'm only part way through this series so far, but I'm enjoying the ride.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p00zw1jd

BJ

Thanks for this. I've just started a bit further back with his Zambezi programmes. I was trying to recall what his delivery reminded me of, never having watched the original. It was Monty Python! You can just imagine the same voice saying something like: "And here we see the lesser spotted Reginald Maudling gambolling through his natural habitat, the saloon bar."

MaraMan
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Re: Attenborough as I didn't know him

#337432

Postby MaraMan » September 1st, 2020, 3:35 pm

I should have put this in the unpopular opinions thread but I cannot bear David Attenborough. I like the photography of his shows of course but I think he is just creepy, so the sound has to go off. I say this as someone with a profound interest in wildlife etc having travelled and photographed many many times in Africa and the Arctic. Don't know what it is about DA but I just don't like watching him nor listening to him.

MM

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Re: Attenborough as I didn't know him

#337479

Postby feder1 » September 1st, 2020, 7:31 pm

We enjoyed the first one about Ayers Rock and the people so far.
Thanks for the reference.

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Re: Attenborough as I didn't know him

#342174

Postby dionaeamuscipula » September 23rd, 2020, 10:43 am

bluedonkey wrote:Thanks for this. I've just started a bit further back with his Zambezi programmes. I was trying to recall what his delivery reminded me of, never having watched the original. It was Monty Python! You can just imagine the same voice saying something like: "And here we see the lesser spotted Reginald Maudling gambolling through his natural habitat, the saloon bar."


Often the actual voice is a parody of Alan Whicker.

bungeejumper
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Re: Attenborough as I didn't know him

#342264

Postby bungeejumper » September 23rd, 2020, 3:12 pm

dionaeamuscipula wrote:Often the actual voice is a parody of Alan Whicker.

"....For this is Whicker Island."

"An island inhabited entirely by ex-international interviewers in pursuit of the impossible dream."

"The whole problem of Whicker Island is here in a nutshell."

"There are just too many Whickers."

"The light-weight suits."

"The old school tie."

"The practised voice of the seasoned campaigner."

"Cannot hide the basic tragedy here."

“Father Pierre, why did you stay on in this colonial Campari-land, where the clink of glasses mingles with the murmur of a million mosquitoes, where waterfalls and whiskey wash away the worries of a world-weary whicker, where gin and tonics jingle in a gyroscopic jubilee of something beginning with J?”


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