A pride of lions silently patrolling the grassland at dusk; a cheetah closing in on its prey with mind-blowing speed; a watchful leopard curled artfully in a tree. There’s nothing quite like a big cat in the African wilderness to make the heart skip a beat.
We and our colleagues at the BBC Natural History Unit have long thought about how we could create a new series that would really get under the skin of Africa’s three big cat species, using a format that would appeal to a contemporary audience.
Well, cue a revolution in night-time filming technology, plus the chance to immerse an international team of cinematographers in one of the last truly wild places in Africa, and the idea of Big Cats 24/7 was born.
What is Big Cats 24/7 about?
Big Cats 24/7 is a deep dive into the lives of the cats that reside in the south-west corner of the Okavango Delta, Botswana.
Its six episodes follow the fortunes of a cast of individuals day and night across two dramatic seasons, as well as charting the highs and lows of the cinematographers that are out tracking them. It’s a thrilling new format in which our camera team are the primary storytellers.
It’s through their unfiltered experiences and relationships with their subjects that the stories unfold, creating a natural-history show with a very different look and feel.
Who are the team behind Big Cats 24/7?
The series is narrated by UK-based Nigerian actor Adetomiwa Edun. Tomiwa, as he is known, has a passion for African wildlife and drives the stories forward in a natural, intelligent and unobtrusive way.
His voice feels like an extension of the on-screen camera team, a talented ensemble that includes photographer and film-maker Gordon Buchanan, Vianet Djenguet, Anna Dimitriadis, Brad Bestelink, Greg Hartman, Gaokgonwe Seetsele Nthomiwa, Reatile Schulte To Brinke and Tristen Woodward. Tomiwa is part of the ‘gang’, helping to maintain the show’s overall immersive style.
Some of the key moments from Big Cats 24/7
Fight for survival
Gordon Buchanan follows one of the largest lion prides in Africa as they hunt to feed 28 hungry mouths. Cinematographer Anna Dimitriadis tracks down the Okavango’s most elusive big cat, the cheetah; and local film-maker Brad Bestelink reunites with his favourite leopardess, Xudum. A huge wildfire threatens both cats and team.
Establishing new boundaries
After the fire, Gordon and cameraman Vianet Djenguet trail the lion pride’s dominant males, Big Toe and Madumo, as they reinstate their burnt-out boundaries and fight with intruders. Brad follows Xudum as she learns to hunt from trees after the fire wipes out her cover. And Anna sticks with the cheetah day and night.
Wandering wild
Dominant male lions Big Toe and Madumo disappear after fighting intruders, leaving the family exposed. The film crew picks up subadult males Colin and Ngkonne, who are not yet big enough to challenge rivals. Photographer Greg Hartman follows the young female leopard Xudum as she strays into dangerous territory, while local cinematographer Reatile Schulte To Brinke finds Pobe’s daughter.
Flood waters threaten
The annual flood arrives, bringing new challenges. Gordon follows the hungry lion mothers, whilst eldest cub Mathata learns to avoid dangerous prey. Anna tracks Mushi, a young cheetah struggling to hunt. Brad is sure Xudum is pregnant and seeking a den, but flood waters are pushing dangerous male leopards into her territory.
Mother pushed to the edge
There’s a baby boom in the delta. Vianet follows lioness Matho as she struggles to raise her cubs alone. Tristen Woodward and Brad glimpse Xudum’s newborn cubs. Anna tracks a cheetah mother who has been pushed to the very edge of the territory in order to keep her cubs alive.
Is there enough food to go around?
Brad witnesses Xudum fight to save her newborn cubs. Anna finds a brave cheetah thriving in the heart of lion territory, while Vianet tracks lioness mum Tsebe as she risks her life to feed her cubs. As the lion pride continues to grow, competition for food leads to chaos and infighting. Could this pride’s success also be its downfall?
Why the Okavango Delta?
A six-part series filmed over just six months, Big Cats 24/7 was a hugely ambitious project for the Natural History Unit to undertake. The aim was to blend genres and create a premium style, warts-and-all observational documentary.
Obviously, big cats are not new territory within the genre, so the bar for capturing engaging and revelatory content was going to be high. What would be even more challenging was that we only had around a sixth of the filming time afforded to a traditional landmark natural-history series. It certainly didn’t feel like it was going to be easy.
However, the Okavango Delta is no ordinary place. One of the largest inland wetlands in the world, it sits slap-bang in the heart of the Kalahari Desert and is an oasis of life. Tourism has a relatively small footprint here, which means the local big cats are largely undisturbed by human activity.
The Okavango is also an incredibly dynamic landscape subject to natural events that change it dramatically throughout the year, from droughts and wildfires to life-giving floods. This provides an amazing backdrop to the narratives, with the environment a constant catalyst for change in the cats’ lives.
Another key factor in choosing the Okavango was the chance to work and collaborate again with Brad Bestelink and his Natural History Film Unit. Born and bred in Botswana, Brad has a remote filming camp like no other, immersed right in the heart of the delta.
The camp provided the team of cinematographers immediate access to all three of Africa’s big cat species in a relatively small area. Even better, some of the key characters we follow were already known to Brad and his team – namely Xudum, a female leopard, and Big Toe and Madumo, the dominant male lions of the Xudum pride – which meant there was a degree of acceptance to our cameras right from the start of filming.
Certainly, choosing the Okavango as our location paid dividends. We came away with incredible new insights into wild big cats, and the camera teams captured behaviour that has rarely, if ever, been filmed before. For example, a hungry lioness desperately trying to grab a giant catfish from a drying-out pool at night; a young male cheetah traversing deep water and then using it as cover to ambush his prey; and intimate footage of three-day-old leopard cubs exploring the safety of their den and being cared for by their exhausted new mum.
Through such scenes, we hope viewers will see that, while big cats are indeed powerful predators, they are also sensitive, compassionate and highly adaptable.
What big cats feature in the series?
Our cast of cats in the show is broad and varied, and all the animals are different and authentic in what they bring to the series. We have our key characters, of course, which include Xudum, Big Toe, Madumo and a female cheetah named Pobe. We also document various other females, subadult males and cubs from the 39-strong Xudum pride, as well as four other cheetahs, including Pobe’s adult daughter, Neelo, and three other leopards.
What none of us had bargained for was the sudden and dramatic increase in lion numbers during the team’s time in the delta. In 2022, the Xudum pride had just one cub, but in 2023, Big Toe and Madumo fathered an impressive 16 youngsters between them. Even with eight crews working around the clock, it seemed the team would never be able to keep up with the growing number of cubs as the lion baby boom took hold, and choosing which to follow became a challenge.
Filming this kind of intense series is not easy at the best of times, requiring crews to be on location and filming at all hours of the day and night, in searing heat and remote and harsh terrain. But one of the biggest difficulties the team faced was an unprecedented wildfire during the early weeks of filming.
It was one of the largest and most destructive burns in nearly a decade, and came as a major blow to filming plans, completely wiping out a large swathe of the location and significantly disrupting the cat behaviour the team had expected to film.
However, the fire provided an entirely new set of problems and possibilities for our big cats, and the unfolding stories of how they all cope in this altered landscape are fascinating. The lions, for example, find their territory is now exposed to intruders, because the scent-marks of the dominant males have been wiped out by the flames. Xudum, without the ground cover required to successfully ambush prey on the ground, must finesse her tree-jumping skills – something for which the Okavango leopards are renowned – and we witness her launch a spectacular aerial assault on an impala. And Pobe can now use her super-speed to chase down prey in newly cleared expanses of dry floodplain. It’s an illuminating transformation, both of the environment
and of the big cats that call it home.
Africa without big cats is unthinkable. But if we don’t protect them, one day that could be a reality.
Meet the stars of the show
Lions Madumo and Big Toe
Most likely brothers, Madumo and Big Toe are 10 years old and have been the dominant males of the Xudum pride for more than five years. The pair have a close bond and make a strong and formidable team, with Madumo the brains and
Big Toe the brawn.
However, their dominance continues to be tested. Madumo is slightly larger than Big Toe and has a dark tint at the centre of his mane. Big Toe is named for the long toe on his front foot.
Leopard Xudum
Xudum, named after the island in the Okavango, is the resident female in the filming area. Her territory surrounds the filming camp and she is well-habituated to the crew’s vehicles.
She is five years old, and at the start of the series had yet to rear cubs successfully, having lost at least one litter. In this series, she mates with an unknown male and gives birth to two cubs.
Xudum is a formidable aerial hunter, able to take prey from trees. Her territory is perfect leopard country, and she is experiencing increasing pressure from surrounding leopards.
Cheetah, Pobe
Pobe is the most commonly seen female cheetah in the Xudum area. Her territory overlaps that of the lions, yet she has survived alongside them for years.
Pobe is smart and experienced, having reared at least one cub to adulthood – no mean feat in a land of hungry lions – and is also a resilient hunter, never giving up on a meal
How was Big Cats 24/7 filmed?
The unique selling point of Big Cats 24/7 is the ability of the teams to follow and film the cats day and night. This was possible thanks to a complex rolling shift pattern for the cinematographers, but also to recent advances in thermal-imaging camera technology, which enables them to capture extraordinary behaviour after dark in mesmerising detail.
So that they could stay out on location for days at a time, the teams were equipped with specially adapted filming trucks kitted out with bed-rolls, fridges and gas stoves. This degree of immersion in the Okavango was not physically easy, but gave them the flexibility and independence to exist alongside their subjects and closely follow their day-to-day lives.
The immersive approach of the series reveals deep layers and fresh details about big cat society. Whether a social cat such as the lion, or solitary species like the cheetah and leopard, this series has the time, space and storytellers to feature content that may never appear in other natural-history shows.
From the surprise behaviour of lions stalking lechwe antelopes in deep water at night – captured unexpectedly by Gordon – to the gradually unfolding scenario of sub-adult male lions being pushed out of the pride over the course of several weeks, the series pulls back the curtain on the secret lives of big cats, inviting viewers to really get under the skin of the animals they are following.
There are many standout moments and stories across the series, but one of the most memorable has to be the story of Xudum. The teams follow her for the entire six months, really developing her as an individual character and rooting for her to succeed. Her story is nothing short of astounding, and while we don’t want to
give away any spoilers, suffice to say it would sit happily in a TV soap opera such
as Eastenders.
While Big Cats 24/7 doesn’t follow any singular conservation stories, our fundamental aim is to highlight the extraordinary nature of the Okavango Delta and the big cats that live there. This is a haven for wildlife, and a place where big cats are thriving – but that’s not the case across Africa, or the world. Globally, lions, leopards and cheetahs are all in decline. All three species are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. There are only around 7,000 cheetahs left in the wild, and in some parts of Africa, lion populations have fallen by up to 60 per cent.
The aim of Big Cats 24/7 is to reignite a love and awareness of big cats, ultimately putting these animals in the spotlight and ensuring we think carefully about how to look after them for the future. Africa without big cats is unthinkable. But if we don’t protect them, one day that could be a reality.
We hope you watch this series to gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies – and drama – of big-cat existence. These are incredible animals that lead complex and endlessly captivating lives. What’s also exciting about this new format is that it features both closed and open narratives –in other words, some stories that resolve in a single episode, and others that run across multiple episodes, much like a soap opera. To us, it feels like a truly engaging and entertaining way to package natural history. After all, there is nothing more dramatic than real life.
About the authors
Rowan Crawford is the series producer of Big Cats 24/7.She has previously worked on productions including Coast for BBC Two.
Tom Jarvis is the executive producer of Big Cats 24/7. His previous BBC credits include Bears about the House and Nature’s Miracle Orphans.