The opening episode of BBC1’s Dynasties — the new Attenborough-fronted series from the Natural History Unit — introduced us to ‘a territory ruled by a strong and determined leader: an alpha male known as David’. Despite what you might think, though, this wasn’t a reference to the Natural History Unit itself, but to a troop of chimps in Senegal, whose power struggles unfolded on Sunday in an almost Shakespearean way.
As ever, Sir David started by demonstrating that he can still handle a spot of location shooting, in this case bellowing a few lines from a jeep speeding across the African savannah. But after that, he was again content simply to supply an authoritative voice-over and the occasional joke.
When we joined the chimp troop, the simian David’s leadership was already under attack from two whippersnappers called Luther and Jumpkin. The threat was serious enough for David’s close-ups to show him looking alternately worried and calculating; and for him to form an alliance with an older male by grooming him with affecting tenderness. (‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,’ the non-simian David duly chuckled.) This initially seemed to work — until David was so badly beaten up by his rivals that the following morning he appeared to be dead. Fortunately, in perhaps the programme’s most memorable moment, and certainly its most unashamedly theatrical, we then saw him twitch a toe, open an eye, drag himself to his feet and set off to reclaim his kingdom.
He succeeded too — so much so that Luther was soon begging for a forgiveness he never received: at which point you half-expected him to be offered the chimp equivalent of a bottle of whisky and a pearl-handled revolver.
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