'GAME OF THRONES BUT WITH WHISKERS'

The hierarchical lives of Africa's lions and leopards come under the lens with the return of Big Cats 24/7 this week. JAMES RAMPTON examines the hit BBC show's majestic pride and ferocious appeal

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IT’S BEEN dubbed “Game of Thrones with whiskers” — and it’s easy to see why. Back this week for a second series, Big Cats 24/7 plays like the best kind of soap opera, conveying the most gripping moments in the lives of several families of lions, cheetahs and leopards living in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.

Full of larger-than-life characters and cliffhangers, the BBC wildlife series reminds us that the natural world is endlessly and innately dramatic. In one typically gripping scene, lionesses climb a tree to scoff the warthog kill that a leopard has hidden up there — the leopard understandably backs away as a lioness is about three times a leopard’s weight.

“Nature and the cats tell their own stories,” says presenter and cinematographer Gordon Buchanan. “And our job is to capture that.”

‘And that means refusing to sanitise the precarious, often doomed existence of most animals in the bush. Viewers are reminded that nature is very much red in tooth and claw, and a grisly end is never far away.

Every creature in the Okavango Delta, except the apex predator that is the lion, spends its whole life just trying to stay alive and cheat death. In fact, only a quarter of cheetah cubs will make it to three months because the lion is their number one killer.

Picking up six months after the first series was shot, Big Cats 24/7 this time follows the new threat posed to the 40-strong Xudum lion pride, now thought to be the largest in the world. Deserted by their dominant males, Big Toe and Madumo, the pride’s females find themselves forced to battle intruders alone and mount a constant and desperate hunt for food.

They face greater peril when a new group of four aggressive males, known as the Rogue Boys, arrive and start causing serious trouble. It’s a fearful moment for the females, as typically a new male lion’s first act in taking a pride is to kill all the cubs sired by the previous alpha male to ensure only his DNA survives.