It’s 2.45pm on a Thursday afternoon and on the edge of the Peak District’s Hope Valley, sheltered from the rain in a fairy-lit tipi, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are preparing for the evening’s Springwatch and find themselves in a disagreement about the hornet hoverfly.
As they zoom in to a close-up shot of the fat, fluffy insect, Packham (Prada bucket hat, orange anorak) wonders, “Are we going to have the Latin name on the screen?”
“I don’t think we should have the Latin names at all,” says Strachan (no bucket hat, red anorak), in a tone that makes me suspect they’ve had this conversation before. “Hardly anyone cares.”
“What do you mean nobody cares?” says Packham with comic outrage. “Chris, you’re a nerd,” she replies. “Most people don’t have a clue.” They move on to the other beasts on the agenda (wren, tree pipit, red-tailed bumblebee) and six hours later, as the show goes out live, she is triumphant. (For those who do care, the Latin name was Volucella zonaria.)
Springwatch is the only programme on TV with a chance at getting the general public to feel invested in the function and fate of a hoverfly (“They’re REALLY INTERESTING, STICK WITH ME!” pleads Strachan to camera during rehearsal).
It’s the only programme that would give the hoverfly proper air time, the only programme that would use a prop made out of cardboard and an old sock to explain how it pupates from the rat-tailed maggot, and certainly the only one on which its presenter (Packham, obviously) will stick that hanging rat tail in his mouth and pretend to smoke it like a hookah, live on BBC Two at 9PM.
This year’s Springwatch is on the National Trust Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire (Photo: BBC Studios/Pat McKeeman)But that is exactly why it has survived for 20 years. Accessible, funny, playful, fastidious, teeming with digestible facts and buoyed by the chemistry of its presenters – originally Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and Simon King and now Packham and Strachan, with their 35-year friendship – this annual three-week wildlife fiesta is about much more than chicks hatching (though there are a lot of those, too).
As I learn during a day on set at the National Trust’s Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire, Springwatch is a testament to the value of public service broadcasting in the face of more than one existential threat.
“This programme reignites that childlike curiosity that we’re all born with,” Strachan tells me in her trailer, where she sits next to a shelf of Graze snacks and mango slices. She’s reading over the evening’s running order (subject to change – sometimes the scheduled animals have been eaten and they have to change it all around) and writing up her notes (Packham never writes any). She concedes that even for her, first thing in the morning, the hoverfly was a bit of a hard sell.
But by now she’s learned about how they transform their bodies to mimic more dangerous species and ward off predators, and as is the case every day on this job, an ordinary creature has become more thrilling than any exotic one.
“What do lions do?” she asks. “They sleep all day, and yet everyone wants to see a lion. If I said, ‘Shall I take you on safari to see a hoverfly?’, you probably wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic. But once you get into the detail of those smaller things, it is absolutely incredible.”
Springwatch’s original line up: Kate Humble, Simon King and Bill Oddie (Photo: BBC/Rob Cousins)The detail of smaller things feels like Springwatch’s guiding principle. It is both what allows us watching to consider how every living thing fits into the environmental bigger picture – more on that later – and it’s what makes the stories it tells so gripping.
Argy bargy badgers, a “glamour couple” of kingfishers fighting intruders, a fox creeping into a field of deer for some “fawn falafel” – all of these are spotted by the team in the “story truck”. In this dark trailer, lit by a kaleidoscope of screens, researchers monitor the nests on 20 locations across the site for 24 hours a day as little dramas and miracles unfold.
Every morning, the researchers report back on the day’s action to decide what characters and cliffhangers will make it into that night’s show. Buzzards and birds of prey are boring, I’m told; the general consensus is that owls are the favourites; and everyone agrees that the small birds are the most interesting. It doesn’t take long in the truck before I realise why watching them becomes addictive. These little universes are entrancing, and when things start to kick off – a birth, a bit of predation, some light cannibalism – everyone gathers round.
“It’s impossible to watch this intimately and not see the personalities,” says wildlife story producer Ruth Peacey. “You’re not meant to anthropomorphise” she says, but they take the psychology of wildlife seriously.
And observing the animals so closely means they do grow attached to them – and naturally want to interfere when something is coming to harm (they are left alone but teams on the site will remove plastic from nests). “It’s an emotional experience,” she says. “You want to stop it unfolding but know you can’t. It’s heart wrenching. You have to remind yourself of what would happen in the wild.”
The nest cameras inside the story truck (Photo: Francesca Sostero)Indeed, the day before I visit, the brutality of mother nature was on full, gory display as a short-eared owl ate its own sibling. Some online complained that it was shown.
“But hold on, that’s the truth,” says Packham, bemused, when we speak in a big tent in front of about eight different recycling bins that he insisted on. “That’s what happened. It is gruesome. Things eat one another. Did everyone who complained about that not go to a supermarket and buy some packaged meat and eat it all? The only separation is the fact that they didn’t see the cow being kept in a shed all of its life and then be slaughtered in a horrible abattoir and packaged for profit.” (Packham is vegan.)
He breathes. “Don’t get me going. Our job is to show the truth. If we hid that, we would lose public trust. We’ve earned public trust over years and years of making natural history programmes by telling people the truth, and sometimes owls eat one another. Yum, yum.”
That’s the critical thing about Springwatch. It does not exist to tell happy, cosy stories about woodland critters.
“Climate breakdown is not some imaginary existential thing,” says Packham. “This is manifesting in front of our eyes and our cameras. The changes we’ve seen are absolutely phenomenal, and it’s got to the point where it’s gone beyond worrying now. It’s terrifying. Trying to find a method of communicating that urgency, but also generating an affinity, is where this programme lies.
“I don’t have time to do anything where there’s not a vocational component,” he adds. “I’m 64 years old. This is decaying as rapidly as I am. It’s going to hell in a handcart out there and I’ve really got to do everything that I can within my small amount of power to effect change.”
That requires him to explain things like, for example, why warmer weather affects when a blue tit fledges, and what that means for the breeding periods of other animals, in the simplest terms possible. “My mission is to imagine that I’m in a pub talking to a group of people who are interested in the same subject as I amy,” he says.
But getting people to care about animals is one thing – getting them to understand the bigger picture is another. “We really struggle in Natural History broadcasting to get people to understand ecology”, he says. Why cutting down woodland is important, why deer populations need to be managed. Mention that, and “all of a sudden you’re shooting Bambi. We can’t get past that emotional engagement. I’ll probably be working on that all my life, really.”
Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan in rehearsals (Photo: BBC Studios/Pat McKeeman)Packham thinks the messaging around climate breakdown has been all wrong. It’s been presented to the public as an abstract, “phenomenal” problem that’s out of our hands – something global over which we have no control. To change that, he thinks you need to engender people to local environments, and to “tangible” animals.
“The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, despite the fact that we claim to be a nation of animal lovers,” he says. “Our role on this programme is to say, ‘Look how brilliant this is. Cherish it. It’s part of your community.’ Which is why we’re not doing golden eagles. We’re doing robins. They’re in everyone’s back garden. People love their robins.”
They’re in everyone’s back garden – people love their robins,” he explains. “We made the polar bear a symbol of climate breakdown on a melting iceberg. Have you seen a polar bear? Poor choice.”
Springwatch‘s ecological commitment extends to how it is made, too. In a new scheme this year, leftover food from the set is redistributed in nearby Sheffield and Chesterfield, the crew’s menus are becoming more plant-based, and the show is the world’s first outside broadcast production to run entirely on energy from a hydrogen generator that produces zero emissions.
“Wimbledon ought to be using that,” Packham says. “All of the BBC outside broadcasts ought to be using that. Glastonbury ought to be. I’ve rammed that down Tim Davie’s neck so many times. Every time I see him, I bang on about the hydrogen.”
As he mentions the Director General, I wonder how much the team here are feeling the BBC’s cuts – Springwatch’s budget has been slashed, Autumnwatch was reduced to a segment on The One Show a few years ago. Strachan feels the story is a bit overdone.
“Yes, budgets are smaller, but you either moan about it or you say, ‘Yes, they are, isn’t it great that we can still do the programme on this budget?’ Little cuts have been made, but I think we cover that really well.”
Packham is more outspoken. “They’re shrinking on all the costs, yeah, because the BBC has been mistreated by a succession of governments. And that’s something that really does perturb me, because I very much cherish the BBC’s need for impartiality…
“And now we’ve got GB News and those sorts of malevolent forces to deal with we must be fighting for the BBC harder than ever. I test the limits of editorial policy because of my need to campaign to look after the environment and animal welfare. But I test the limits of something which I know, cherish and love.”
The production gallery get ready for the live show (Photo: Francesca Sostero)The greater challenges the BBC faces, the more important Springwatch is. Because beyond opening people’s eyes to wildlife and telling them what to look for in their own environment, this production – which starts in earnest in February/March – provides an opportunity to experiment with ways that the BBC can reach and retain future audiences.
“Every single person who comes to work here is thoroughly embedded in this project, and also desirous of making sure that we put every penny on screen,” Packham says.
That includes things like the companion show Watch Out, which goes behind the scenes and introduces some of the people working in nature and conservation. It includes the nest live streams on BBC iPlayer, which are used to experiment with technology and formats that then shape live coverage of events like VE Day, sports, and music festivals. It includes Springwatch Street, a new segment in which researcher and bird fanatic Jack Baddams explores the gardens of nearby Sheffield residents.
All of these are ways to build the Springwatch digital presence and deliver the brand to viewers in new ways – and try things out that can be applied elsewhere on the BBC. Future-proofing means optimising programmes for the platforms used by younger people, making content that’s shareable, and being imaginative about how to find and engage people who might not watch terrestrial TV – whether it leads them to the main show or not. I’m informed that the cutest animals are the most popular on TikTok live – and spiders can turn people off.
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At 5pm it’s time for the rehearsal. An owl glides down its first common shrew “in one”, Iolo Williams reports on some “bananaing seals” from Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland, and Packham, wearing some elf ears under his bucket hat, wonders if there’s a “happier” shot of the northern hairy wood ants (the ones they’ve got look a bit miserable). He and Strachan are laughing almost all of the time.
I watch the live show in the gallery truck, another dizzying wall of screens, where producers guide the presenters through the show, finishing each live segment with a “well done” and smiling to themselves at every ad-lib. Everyone holds their breath when we spot four little badgers scampering out of their set on one of the nest cameras, hoping that they’ll still be visible in a few seconds when the current VT is over.
No joy – they’ve disappeared into the brush. So there’s a last-minute decision to go to the song thrush before Packham and Strachan explain the life cycle of that hornet hoverfly with impressive simplicity using the rat-tailed maggot prop, whose wet glue has only just finished being hair-dried. Other science programmes might be able to afford flashy digital graphics and diagrams, but the presenter won’t pretend to smoke a bar chart at the end of the show – and where’s the fun in that?
One of Springwatch’s many running jokes, repeated after especially nerdy or ridiculous segment, is, “now that’s what you pay the licence fee for!” But it’s true. This is TV with purpose – and it might be the most Reithian thing on the BBC.
‘Springwatch 2025’ concludes tonight at 8pm on BBC Two
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