Attenborough nature series reels in viewers using tricks of TV dramas like Adolescence

David Attenborough's BBC series Kingdom has broken new ground by using the tricks of TV dramas such as Adolescence to immerse viewers in the action with cliffhangers and moving camera shots.

- Tara Conlan

Since the advent of streaming services, production of nature programmes has increased with the genre popularised by Attenborough and the BBC's natural history unit (NHU).

From Apple TV's nature adventure series The Wild Ones to the Ryan Reynolds-voiced Underdogs on Disney+ and National Geographic, natural history programmes are big business, but they are having to evolve in a crowded market.

The six-part series Kingdom follows lions, leopards, wild dogs and hyenas living by a river in Zambia to document, for the first time, how their interactions affect each other after a pack of wild dogs arrives.

The producers claim Kingdom sets a new "gold standard" in filming - following the action more closely by switching between moving cameras and tiny "flying cinematographer" drones, which animals don't notice as much as those operated by humans.

The producer of the series, Felicity Lanchester, said when drones came out, filmmakers thought they were ideal for replacing helicopters to get aerial shots; but as they have become smaller and quieter and crew skilled at flying them, "they've become a way to get intimate footage".