A three-part series called Expedition Guyana was hurriedly retitled Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC1, Wednesday) possibly in the hopes that viewers might think it was a spin-off from Top Gear, more likely because a BBC suit suddenly realised that the name ‘Guyana’ wouldn’t pull in viewers. No doubt someone else wanted to call it Lost Land of the Jaguar Celebrity Makeover, but a compromise was reached.
Thank goodness, because this really was terrific. At first I suspected it would be just another hectic, ‘Hey, gang, follow me into the jungle!’ BBC documentary in which the mere subject takes second place to the breathless presenters. And it started that way. ‘Guyana is the size of Great Britain, and has the population of Liverpool!’ someone enthused, and I thought, ‘What the hell are they doing there?’ But it got much better. For a start, our guides were experts who knew what they were talking about, rather than superannuated soap stars and Blue Peter presenters. The demented eagerness of the true aficionado makes for compelling television, so that when someone burbles excitedly, ‘They’re the biggest otters in the world!’, instead of thinking, ‘Well, some otter has to be’ you actually want to see the things. (They looked much like ordinary otters, only bigger.)
‘Justine is the canopy specialist,’ said someone else, which I misheard as canapé specialist, and imagined her sitting hundreds of feet up a tree, serving howler monkeys and macaws with a selection of mini-caesars and satays with dipping sauce. The star was the oldest member of the team, George McGavin, the entomologist, who crawled into a dead tree looking for insects and came out with so many scarlet bites dotting his back that an astrologer could have told his fortune.
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