Wild Africa

This first movie reveals wildlife coping with Africa's most extreme environment, a world above the clouds, where temperatures can plummet to -20C.

Focusing on Africa's savannahs - grassy plains and woodland filled with spectacular concentrations of big cats, huge herds of buffalo, wildebeest and gazelles.

Looking at those parts of Africa where rain may not fall for years and deserts dominate the landscape. These expanses are virtually uninhabitable, but time and nature's ingenuity have lent themselves to the evolution of some extraordinary creatures, including cartwheeling spiders and squirrels which use their tails as sunshades.

This is a journey along Africa's greatest frontier, 29,000 kilometers of coast, from the icy waters of the Cape to the tropical shores of the Indian Ocean. This is a world where seals eat birds, crabs climb trees, penguins live in deserts, baboons eat sharks and seals die of heat stroke. The waters throng with life, from flocks of devil rays to the mighty great white shark, Africa's largest and most powerful predator.

The heart of Africa is not dark, but a living breathing world of green, a vast primeval land of trees - the jungle. This programme journeys deep into the tropical rainforest, to unravel the continent's strangest mysteries.

This programme looks at the wildlife that congregates around Africa's lakes and rivers, including the flamingos of east Africa's soda lakes, giant crocodiles battling with buffalo on the banks of the Luangwa River in Zambia, and the massive clouds of flies that erupt across the waters of the Rift Valley lakes.