Popularizing Science and Nature Pro-
gramming: The Role of “Spectacle” in
Contemporary Wildlife Documentary
By KAREN D. SCOTT
Abstract: Natural history has long
been a staple genre on British televi-
sion. Encompassing a varied range of
texts, the genre has managed to retain
a foothold in an increasingly diverse
schedule. However, generic codes and
conventions have dramatically altered,
and the author examines these
changes. Using the concept of specta-
cle, she explores the many ways in
which contemporary natural history is
now presented.
Key words: natural history, new tech-
nology, representation, spectacle, tele-
vision, wildlife
I believe that the cutting-edge computer
graphics we use in the series are the
closest we are ever likely to be to bring-
ing these animals “back to life.”
—Alex West, producer of Extinct 1
N
atural history has been a sta-
ple genre on British television
for many years. Encompass-
ing a range of texts from the anthropo-
morphic programs featuring Johnny
Morris, to the didactic style of David
Attenborough, and more recently the
proliferation of computer-generated
extravaganzas, such as Walking with
Dinosaurs (BBC1, 2000), the genre
has managed to retain a foothold in an
increasingly diverse television sched-
ule. However, traditional generic
codes and conventions have developed
in response to a number of variables,
including an increase in the range of
available television channels.
With reference to the concept of
“spectacle” (Darley, Debord), I ex-
plore some of the ways in which nat-
ural history is presented. Concentrat-
ing primarily on examples featuring
“wildlife,” I will not be suggesting
that so-called blue-chip (big budget,
conventional) natural history texts are
no longer in production, but rather that
the programs being made supersede
traditional generic boundaries in their
attempts to capture the imagination of
the contemporary audience. As noted
by Jane Krish, the chief executive of
the international festival Wildscreen,
“The great thing about blue-chip is
that, unlike pets and vets, they have a
very long shelf life” (Clarke 17), sug-
gesting that repeated viewings (and
potentially international sales) are pos-
sible from a single blue-chip text, con-
structed utilizing traditional codes and
conventions.
The advantages of some of the more
contemporary texts, such as “pets and
vets,” however, are their relative
cheapness and quick production turn-
around times. As commissioning edi-
tors of specialist natural history chan-
nels (Discovery, National Geographic,
Animal Planet) have more airtime to
fill, it could be argued that the cheaper
options are becoming increasingly at-
tractive.
Spectacle
The idea of spectacle is useful for
contemplating the natural history for-
mat. As these texts can be considered
within a documentary context, ideas
relating to their production and con-
sumption are relevant. The concept of
a relatively closed text with little room
for audience interpretation reflects ac-
curately the conservative, didactic
1
style of many traditional natural histo-
ry documentaries.
Spectacle has also been used to de-
scribe images that produce a visceral
response in the viewer by way of the
sheer audacity of the image itself. The
power of an image to excite wonder-
ment in an audience can be related to
both the “fantastical” and the “natur-
al” world. During the Victorian era,
phantasmagoria2 shows provided audi-
ences with an opportunity to experi-
ence illusions that rendered the spirit
world visible, resulting in a visceral
and visual experience. The persistence
of vision toys such as the Panorama
and Diorama produced similar view-
ing effects with illustrations taken
from the natural world.
The duality of the concept of spec-
tacle can easily be used to explore the
ethnographic and anthropological
photographs taken during the era
while documenting the British Em-
pire. Images containing fantastical in-
dividuals dressed in native costume
were captured within an institutional
mode of representation that encour-
aged the reading of the images as au-
thentic. This duality of the text—using
the codes and conventions of docu-
mentary realism yet containing specta-
cle in terms of the kinds of images
portrayed—is useful for a comparison
with natural history documentaries
produced today. Contemporary texts
are able to elicit a similar sense of
wonderment in the audience while still
using the idea of authenticity associat-
ed with more traditional documentary
forms.
The natural history genre has been
quick to exploit developments within
2 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
technology. Whether to “resurrect”
long-dead creatures or render visible
the invisible, new technology has
added a dimension to the genre not
previously possible. The seamless ani-
mation of what was previously illus-
trated using archive footage, some
form of pictorial illustration, or oral
description further concretizes in the
mind of the audience that the informa-
tion being offered is authentic. Jasper
James, series producer for Walking
with Beasts (BBC1, 2001), was asked
to comment on the accuracy of the se-
ries in light of the negative response
by many to the inaccuracy of Walking
with Dinosaurs: “Our position is very
much the same as last time. It is spec-
ulation, but it is very, very informed
speculation” (Davies 39). This illus-
trates the tension created by a series
promoted as the first natural history of
dinosaurs, the main protagonists of
which are creatures with no real-life
referent. In other words, it was a sim-
ulacrum, which produced a sense of
wonderment in the viewer, while ex-
ploiting the institutional codes and
conventions afforded a narrative situ-
ated within a documentary context.
The inclusion of computer-generat-
ed images (CGIs) is not confined to
texts that focus on dead animals, such
as Extinct or the Walking with . . . se-
ries. Examinations of the natural
world have also been quick to exploit
visual spectacle, the series Space
(BBC1, 2001) being a prime example.
The spectacle afforded by natural
devastation has become increasingly
linked to the impact such events have
on the lives of indigenous populations.
Rather than spectacle relying on the
scale of the visual alone, which is lost
on television’s small screen, a sense of
awe is created via empathy with cen-
tral protagonists. This works equally
well when the protagonists are human
or animal, their narratives related via
similar formats.
Traditional Codes and Conventions
The natural history genre encom-
passes a wide variety of programs, all
of which follow a similar format using
a limited range of codes and conven-
tions.3 The texts tend to be closed, with
the relationship between the viewer
and the text becoming more didactic
as the space for individual interpreta-
tion by the viewer is minimized. This
results in a “distancing” from the text,
as the viewer is encouraged to be a
passive observer rather than an active
interpreter.
The use of didactic narration is
common, enabling chunks of informa-
tion to be related to the viewer in an
economical way—no amount of visu-
al persuasion could explain the history
of the dinosaur, for example: We need
the accompanying voice-over as a link
to the visual images. Often displaying
strong expository elements, events are
explored and historical developments
charted, with the narration tending to
be paternalistic and authoritative. The
objective discourse of scientific
knowledge (facts and figures) and aca-
demic superiority are established by
the use of experts from a variety of
fields, who validate the point of view
being expounded.
Accompanied by a strong musical
score that underlies the majority of the
action sequences, the viewer is en-
couraged to have an emotional re-
sponse to the program, reinforcing
how the viewer is supposed to react to
certain sequences, supporting the idea
of a passive viewing experience.
The primary subject matter is an ex-
ploration of the natural world, with
texts typically focusing on living
things (most commonly animals or
plants) in their wild state. Narrative
conventions include following the pat-
terns established by particular natural
cycles, such as the changing seasons
or individual life forms, showing birth,
growth, reproduction, maturity, and
death. Historically, programs have
been shot on location, showing the liv-
ing things interacting with their envi-
ronment, possibly as part of a larger
ecosystem. However, it has always
been common to stage action in stu-
dios where conditions are easier to
control and manipulate.
Observational techniques are used
to encourage the breakdown of the
barrier between a subject, the repre-
sentation of the subject, and the audi-
ence. Natural history documentaries
support this by taking the viewer into
locations and situations that they
would not generally have access to.
An attempt to “frame” material as
being unadulterated is a primary
focus, promoting the idea that the ac-
tion would have taken place regardless
of the camera.
Utilizing new technological devel-
opments, many wildlife documentary
series have made a particular feature
of the fact that they are offering view-
ers a privileged, almost voyeuristic,
glimpse of worlds that would normal-
ly remain hidden, for example, David
Attenborough’s Private Life of Plants
(BBC, 1995). Over the course of time,
these new technologies have influ-
enced what viewers are willing to ac-
cept as being authentic in the context
of representations of the natural world.
Time-lapse or slow-motion sequences,
infrared or heat-sensitive imaging, the
extreme close-ups of macrophotogra-
phy—all of these have become accept-
ed means of portraying the reality of
the plant and animal kingdoms, even
though they show aspects of nature
that would not normally be visible to
the naked eye.
Contemporary Generic Forms
Texts have tended to concentrate on
the natural world of the here and now.
A recent trend, however, has been to
examine the natural history of the
past, resurrected via new technologies
of representation. Using a combina-
tion of CGIs, animatronics, archives,
and newly filmed footage, programs
claim to be able to offer the viewer a
glimpse into the past.
With new technology comes the op-
portunity to experience interactivity, if
you have the necessary technology, of
course. There has been a push toward
producing interactive televisual expe-
riences, and the series Walking with
Beasts accomplished this. Receiving a
British Academy of Film and Televi-
sion Arts Interactive Award in October
2001 before the series first aired, digi-
tal viewers were able to experience the
first interactive application developed
for a factual program. Live interactive
elements included being able to substi-
tute the dramatic narration of Kenneth
 Popularizing Science and Nature Programming
Brannagh for a more scientific narra-
tion delivered by Dilly Barlow (the
regular narrator of Horizon) and a
range of windows displaying addition-
al information while the main program
continued to play in a video window.
Accompanying both of the Walking
with . . . series were Web sites offering
more information, which included in-
teractive elements such as “live” Web
casts, games, and competitions.
The same technology that has en-
abled the past to come to life has been
used to visualize the contemporary
natural world that, until now, we could
only imagine. In the series Space,
CGIs were used with filmed footage, a
dramatic score, and a film-star presen-
ter (Sam Neill) to explore the solar
system. Criticized by many as “dumb-
ing down,” the text could easily be de-
scribed as “spectacular” in the dual
meaning of the term.
Ever present on the outskirts of the
genre, nature as “other” (showcasing
“spectacular events”) has always had a
place within natural history program-
ming. The films often feature a range
of subjects, including examining the
daily rituals of traditionally dressed in-
digenous populations, such natural
disasters as freak weather conditions,
and the impact of humankind on the
natural world (for example, oil
spillages and deforestation). Many of
the texts comprise juxtaposed seg-
ments, edited in a seemingly arbitrary
manner, with the viewer being taken
on a spectacular, visual, sometimes
visceral, ride, often gaining little in-
sight into the political or ideological
implications of the situations being
represented.
The contemporary reincarnation of
this subgenre of natural history takes
the form one step further by placing a
presenter in a central role. The presen-
ter encounters dangerous situations in
place of the viewer, who vicariously
lives out the fantasy of danger in the
safety of an armchair. Spectacle arises
from the dramatic images of these
close encounters with the unpre-
dictability of nature.
The Impact of Technology
One of the defining features of the
natural history genre has been its abil-
ity to bring the audience privileged
glimpses into a world generally inac-
cessible to the naked eye. Bringing the
audience authenticity created via the
presentation of the natural world in its
natural state has been paramount. This
natural state no longer needs to actual-
ly exist, however, because new tech-
nology has afforded the genre the abil-
ity to represent nature as it might have
been as well as as it is.
Using technology previously asso-
ciated with the film industry, the
breakthrough series on British televi-
sion was the BBC co-production Walk-
ing with Dinosaurs. Sold to more than
thirty-eight countries worldwide, it be-
came the most-watched documentary
ever broadcast on cable television in
the United States and was the nine-
teenth most-watched program in the
United Kingdom ever according to
Broadcasters Audience Research
Board figures (Walking with Beasts
press pack). Although not the only se-
ries to exploit new technology to ren-
der visible the invisible, it was the
only one to fully utilize this form to
produce texts that seamlessly com-
bined a number of techniques that did,
in fact, resemble the Cartesian notion
of a window on the world.
The series created a spectacle by
providing the audience with an oppor-
tunity to experience computer-gener-
ated simulations framed within a doc-
umentary context. Drawing on estab-
lished representations of dinosaurs
(such as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film
Jurassic Park), the series reanimated
long-dead species, returning them to
their “natural” habitat. Eliciting a
sense of wonder and awe, seeing ex-
tinct creatures alive on screen, inter-
acting with their environment, provid-
ed a spectacle never before seen with-
in the genre. Encouragement to read
the images as real was enhanced by
the Making of . . . documentary in
which scientific justifications were
given to support the simulations.
Spectacle is thus fulfilled, providing
the audience with a representation that
3
inspires awe and wonder, yet is
deemed accurate.
The Channel 4 series Extinct also
used CGIs and animatronics to reani-
mate creatures now extinct. The series
followed a conventional expository
format with reconstructions illustrat-
ing an investigation into why certain
species had expired. Although the se-
ries could be considered spectacular in
the same way the Walking with . . . se-
ries was, the impact of the images was
diminished as the reconstructions used
were for illustrative purposes only and
any sense that the viewer was glimps-
ing real life was lost. The investigative
form of the narrative took the viewer
away from the world the (dead) ani-
mals inhabited and drew attention to
the mystery of the extinction.
More programs using CGIs and an-
imatronics to visually reconstruct “im-
possible” photography could result in
the visual spectacle diminishing as the
viewer expects to be confronted with
dramatic imagery. Productions such as
Jurassic Zoo (Fry 21) and The Future
Is Wild (“Bristol Indie”) confound this
further by exploring what the program
makers perceive to be the “animals of
the future,” which influences the sub-
ject matter that viewers expect to find
explored within contemporary natural
history texts.
The Deadly Force of Nature
There has always existed a desire to
produce texts that visualize the “sav-
age” side of nature. This could ar-
guably be traced back to the Victorian
era and the rise in ethnographic and
anthropological photography, which
resulted in a proliferation of images of
the natural world and their indigenous
populations. Spectacular in both sens-
es, what the images achieved was a
concretization of Western expectation
alongside the production of wonder-
ment (Price and Wells 12–22).
Photographs containing images of
fantastical individuals elicited a sense
of excitement in the viewer because
they were in direct contrast to their
daily Western lives. Positioned along-
side the persistence of vision, optical
illusions, whose images tended to con-
centrate on nature, provided a means
4 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
of visual stimulation that encouraged a
sense of awe and wonderment—nature
most beautiful and extreme.
This continued as motion picture
technology developed, with one of the
primary cinematic genres being the
“actuality.” As the genre developed
into what has become known as docu-
mentary, the desire to explore nature
continued. Now a staple television
genre rather than a cinematic form, the
power of images to elicit a sense of
spectacle in the viewer has developed
from one that relied heavily on “scale”
(arguably still prevalent in the Imax
format). The nature of the television
format meant that scale was lost on the
viewer, and spectacle had to be
achieved via an alternative set of con-
ventions. Here it is achieved by show-
casing the “deadly force of nature”
and the impact, potential and real, on
individuals.
These individuals do not necessari-
ly have to be from the indigenous pop-
ulation. In her article “BBC Drafts Its
Stars to Save Wildlife TV,” Katy Elliot
describes the move toward the produc-
tion of more celebrity-led programs,
featuring individuals who sometimes
have a tenuous link to the genre via
other television work (2). This widens
the programs’ general appeal by draw-
ing in viewers who want to see their
favorite celebrity in unusual situa-
tions. Arguably, natural history has al-
ways had its “stars,” most notably
British television’s David Attenbor-
ough, who has become the perceived
authority of the genre. However, his
exploration of the natural world still
leaves the issues at center stage, unlike
recent developments that focus on the
star’s experience of nature rather than
nature itself.
A spectacle is created by placing the
star/presenter in situations of danger.
Already established on satellite televi-
sion (for example, the work of Steve
Irwin in The Crocodile Hunter), this
style of program broke into the main-
stream BBC TV schedule with the
Steve Leonard series Ultimate Killers
(BBC1, 2001). Placing Leonard in a
series of face-to-face encounters with
some of the most deadly killers in na-
ture, the thrill came from the anticipa-
tion of danger. Although highly un-
likely that the protagonist would come
to any serious long-term harm, the
sense of danger was communicated to
the audience via his response to the
real threat. The spectacle of seeing the
protagonist, whom the audience has
come to see as a “personality,” picking
up a deadly scorpion or facing a giant
brown bear elicits a suspension of dis-
belief as the viewer simultaneously
feels the terror of the situation while
gasping in disbelief at the foolishness
of the presenter’s folly. This duality
draws the viewer into the program,
bringing natural history to life.
This use of a protagonist adheres to
what Andy Fry argues is a must in
(new) natural history programs—a
strong narrative. Although the genre
has always used the codes and con-
ventions of narrative structure, this
was not seen as the primary focus.
However, Fry argues, “Whichever cat-
egory a show falls into, it must have a
strong narrative. Across the board, the
emphasis is on human stories told
using production techniques which
have been borrowed from drama and
entertainment” (“A New Spin” 18).
Seen in direct contrast to the didactic
form that previously dominated the
genre, even natural phenomena cap-
tured on film are framed within a
“human interest” narrative.
From storm chasers to victims of
fire and flood, the spectacle of devas-
tation is framed within a narrative that
encourages the viewer to empathize
with the central characters. Whether in
awe at their audacity to place them-
selves in dangerous situations or at
their plight that is perceived to be out
of their control, the audience is drawn
into a world where the scientific dis-
course of past natural history series is
disregarded in favor of a more human-
interest angle.
Conclusion
Natural history has developed, and
flourished, by applying the codes and
conventions of a variety of genres to
survive in the twenty-first–century
television schedule. However, this has
meant that some of the hybrid forms
that have developed often bear little
resemblance to the iconic programs
generally associated with the natural
history genre. From the “docu-soap,
fly-on-the-wall series,” such as
BBC1’s long-running Vets in Practice,
to the “reality TV” elements of the
Steve Irwin/Steve Leonard texts, nat-
ural history has had to develop a new
aesthetic to cater to the demands of a
changing audience.
New technology and the demand for
a more immersive, interactive experi-
ence have led to the development of
series that use cutting-edge equipment
previously limited to use on Holly-
wood blockbuster film productions.
However, this in turn brings its own
problems, as the spectacle of the visu-
al image often overshadows the very
history being explored. As we saw
with Walking with Dinosaurs, it is
easy to forget that the show was billed
as “the world’s first natural history of
dinosaurs,” providing the audience
with a “window into a lost world,” to
make the audience believe that what
they were watching were “living,
breathing creatures in their natural
habitat” (Walking with Dinosaurs
press pack).
Having to be everything to every-
one, natural history can no longer sur-
vive on the curiosity of the audience
alone. Peter Jones, chairman of the in-
dependent wildlife production compa-
ny Green Umbrella, stated, “Natural
history will never be new or revolu-
tionary like [reality TV series] Big
Brother. It works by pushing the
boundaries but retains the best of what
came before” (qtd. in Bristow 19).
Quoted before the Walking with Di-
nosaurs phenomena took off, this new
breed of blue-chip production, which
incorporates cutting-edge technologi-
cal developments, pushing the limits
of audience expectation, is as revolu-
tionary as Big Brother, if not more so.
Move over reality TV, new natural his-
tory is here.
NOTES
1. Extinct, which aired on Channel 4
during 2000, was a series that explored the
demise of now-extinct creatures.
2. Phantasmagoria was a popular form
of entertainment from the late eighteenth
century that consisted of a séance-like dra-
 Popularizing Science and Nature Programming 5

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umentary “modes.” ford: National Museum of Photography,
Film & Television, 1999.
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