Life in Polar Bear Town
Life in Polar Bear Town with Gordon Buchanan is an hour-long special shot during the production of BBC2’s Arctic Live. Gordon had previously spent time filming polar bears in the Norwegian wilderness; but the Canadian community of Churchill - where the bears often stray into town - was a different proposition altogether.
“For those missing their weekly Planet Earth fix, cameraman Gordon Buchanan… is back with his own magnanimous brand of wildlife TV. But if Planet Earth was the showy, gregarious big daddy of the genre, then ‘Life in Polar Bear Town’ is its emo younger brother, more muted and contemplative, as bleak as it is enlightening.”
Not only have the inhabitants learned to deal with the daily reality of sharing space with one of the world’s biggest and most effective hunters; they have turned Churchill into a tourist site in which visitors can see these animals up close. It’s an uneasy mix full of contradictions that Buchanan, who is amiable to the last, gamely attempts to unpick.“