Sir David Attenborough at 100: adored in UK and China alike

Sir David Attenborough, whose ground-breaking nature documentaries have been watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is celebrating his hundredth birthday on May 8.

Attenborough first started making natural history programs for television back in the 1950's and over the decades has helped shape public awareness about nature and how to appreciate and care for it. 

He may be turning 100 but Attenborough is still producing wildlife films. His latest is a look at what lives in people's gardens. The Secret Garden series is currently showing on the BBC.

For decades Attenborough has been the face and distinctive voice of wildlife documentaries, known around the world for his passionate storytelling and knowledge of nature.

He has helped shape public awareness of biodiversity and climate change and triggered behavioral shifts known as the "Attenborough effect," such as the massive reduction in single-use plastic waste following series like Blue Planet and Ocean. 

Doug Gurr, Director of the Natural History Museum which is currently showcasing some of his work, summed up Attenborough's significance.

"You can go anywhere in the world, you can go to America, Australia, Brazil, China, everybody knows Sir David Attenborough," Gurr said. 

"I think every single person who has seen anything Sir David has done has been inspired to care about nature a bit more, inspired to understand just how fragile some of our planet is and inspired to want to help."

Chinese connection

Attenborough, the younger brother of feted actor and director Richard Attenborough, is so well known in China that the internet once crashed as millions tried to stream him.

The BBC has co-produced major natural history series featuring David Attenborough in partnership with Chinese entities, specifically Tencent Penguin Pictures and China Media Group CCTV-9. 

Notable collaborations include Blue Planet II (2017), Seven Worlds, One Planet (2019), and A Perfect Planet (2021). Some had 250 million views on Tencent Video alone.

Close encounter

It was the landmark 1979 series Life on Earth which turned David Attenborough into a household name. It took three years to film across 40 countries and was watched by 500 million viewers worldwide. 

For his centenary there is now a documentary on how those 13 episodes were made. Victoria Bobin, director of the new documentary Making Life on Earth: Attenborough's Greatest Adventure, described the original landmark series as "extraordinary."

He told CGTN: "To suddenly see this incredible 13-part, very ambitious wildlife series and seeing places and animals that you'd never seen before, as somebody says in the series, it just blew people's minds. And I think it was something so extraordinary and so new."

One of the best remembered scenes was the father-of-two's close encounter with gorillas in Rwanda. He had only intended to get close to them but a mother and two of her young adopted him, grooming and even sitting on him, an experience he calls one of the greatest privileges of his life.

Attenborough's famous encounter with gorillas helped change people's perceptions of these giant apes. Once portrayed as violent and aggressive as portrayed in the movie King Kong, they are now seen as intelligent, peaceful creatures with many human-like characteristics.

Thanks to Attenborough, they are now protected in the wild while the Gorilla Kingdom at London Zoo is one of its top attractions.

National treasure

Christina Stender, one of the primate zookeepers at Gorilla Kingdom, originally from Denmark, said she grew up watching his films.

She told CGTN: "I have seen him and followed him as a child and he's just an incredible man, very inspirational. It's one of the reasons which led me to be a zookeeper today."  

It was London Zoo which helped David Attenborough make his break into television in the 1950s, co-producing Zoo Quest with the BBC. One of the earliest natural history series, it took young Attenborough around the world filming animals and bringing some back to the zoo.

Long feted as a UK national treasure, Sir David Attenborough reaches his century as passionate as ever about the future of the planet.