The Animal's Guide to Britain

Medieval folk held that wives who scolded their husbands would have their mouths sewn shut by a "devil's darning needle" - ie, a dragonfly. There was also a theory that the testicles of beavers worked as painkillers, a belief that, as you might expect, helped the species to extinction here in Britain. If that sort of trivia appeals, you'll find much to enjoy in Chris Packham's new series. It sets out to show Britain through the eyes of its wildlife, with nice detours into the animals' chequered history with humans. Mostly, though, Packham offers portraits of beloved creatures - all, in this opening programme, living in and around our rivers, lakes and ponds. So there's wonderful footage of ospreys fishing in a Scottish loch (it later emerges this is a fish farm, which almost seems a cheat), and the amazing hinged jaw of the dragonly larva, and the sad tale of how imported American mink that escaped from mink farms (or were freed by activists) almost wiped out our native water voles. But now, thanks to some firm intervention, the water vole is making a comeback - and if a trial in Scotland is successful, the beaver may follow.

This time Chris looks at grassland animals. Chris burrows into the grassland himself so that he can observe the eating habits of starlings, clever and well-adapted grassland predators. British starlings have had their ups and downs: they were once so common that they famously stopped Big Ben due to numbers perching on the clock hands, but nowadays their food supply is dwindling, thanks to modern pesticides. There are new revelations about how honeybees - insects vital for our future - manage to collect nectar and pollen. And how horseshoe bats, brown hares and barn owls are all learning to adapt to modern Britain in different ways.

This time Chris looks at woodland animals. Chris meets our top woodland predator, the goshawk. With the use of high speed photography, Chris demonstrates how these impressive raptors twist and turn in flight to negotiate dense thicket, something which could account for the forests that they like to inhabit in Britain. Chris also meets the hedgehog, the animal that gets the best national health service after humans; and the fallow deer, an animal that has been so pampered through history that it has sometimes been treated better than its human neighbours. Chris discovers that stag beetles rarely move beyond the M25 when looking for a home - a nice piece of rotting wood to live in. And he meets a man who is so determined to make Britain a better home for the red squirrel, that he wants the rest of us to eat the grey ones.

This time Chris looks at coastal animals. Chris investigates why the waters and coastlines of the UK are the most popular places in the world for two of our coastal species: the grey seal and the Manx shearwater. He also makes a stand for an animal that he considers much misunderstood - the British gull. And he meets two animals which have truly extraordinary ways of sensing Britain's coastal environments - the shore crab which finds its way around by smelling through its feet; and the bottlenose dolphin which can identify a fish at 200 paces in the pitch black, using echolocation.