Nature
Sep 25, 2026 · 43 min · 11 segments
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode consider the role of natural history film and TV today. Ellen speaks to the wildlife cinematographer, Sophie Darlington ASC who has spent decades recording wildlife…
Sep 25, 2026 · 43 min · 11 segments
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode consider the role of natural history film and TV today. Ellen speaks to the wildlife cinematographer, Sophie Darlington ASC who has spent decades recording wildlife…
Mark KermodeHost
Ellen E JonesHost
Sophie DarlingtonGuest
Ed SayersGuestJames ReedGuest
Mark, what do you think about this business of anthropomorphising? Is it always bad?
I have a dog, or I have a collie, and I talk to Jessie... as if I am talking to a person.
And because Collie's, you know, famously intelligent dogs looks at me in a certain way, I'm thinking, are you understanding everything I say? And, you know, I say, oh, Jessie, we're going to go to this particular...
And the film critic Roger Ebert famously said that cinema is a machine for creating empathy.
It's very, very hard to be casual and have a destructive attitude towards something that you feel empathetic with.
So yes, there's so much wrong with anthropomorphizing because we are putting our qualities and traits onto animals who have completely different worldviews.
We do project things and we do tell stories and add order to things and meaning to things.
And that's just something we might observe about the human species, right? That's how we behave.
documentaries that there are because I think even as recently as the beginning of this program I kind of thought that there were only really two kinds right there's the sort of cuddly Disney kind of magic that you were talking about which has its place absolutely and then there's the sort of authoritative science-backed serious David Attenborough probably BBC wildlife documentaries and Nothing else,
Mark, what do you think about this business of anthropomorphising? Is it always bad?
I have a dog, or I have a collie, and I talk to Jessie... as if I am talking to a person.
And because Collie's, you know, famously intelligent dogs looks at me in a certain way, I'm thinking, are you understanding everything I say? And, you know, I say, oh, Jessie, we're going to go to this particular...
And the film critic Roger Ebert famously said that cinema is a machine for creating empathy.
It's very, very hard to be casual and have a destructive attitude towards something that you feel empathetic with.
So yes, there's so much wrong with anthropomorphizing because we are putting our qualities and traits onto animals who have completely different worldviews.
We do project things and we do tell stories and add order to things and meaning to things.
And that's just something we might observe about the human species, right? That's how we behave.
documentaries that there are because I think even as recently as the beginning of this program I kind of thought that there were only really two kinds right there's the sort of cuddly Disney kind of magic that you were talking about which has its place absolutely and then there's the sort of authoritative science-backed serious David Attenborough probably BBC wildlife documentaries and Nothing else,
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