Last Chance To See: TV Series Episode 1 - Amazonian Manatee

BBC2's schedule webpage now confirms that episode 1 of the Last Chance To See TV series, featuring Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine, is called "Amazonian Manatee", and will air on Sunday, September 6th at 8p.m. For all you UK viewers, enjoy. I've already got the DVD on order for my Region Free player, so I'll be a little behind with any thoughts on the shows.

Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine head to the ends of the Earth in search of animals on the edge of extinction, following the route Mark took 20 years ago with the author Douglas Adams.

They set out to discover how the lugubrious Amazonian manatee, a freshwater mammal, has survived the last two decades, but Stephen breaks his arm deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Last Chance To See TV Series: Mail On Sunday Feature

The Mail website features a lengthy article on the making of the Last Chance To See TV series, as media coverage starts to pick up ahead of the BBC2 broadcast in September...

At 5am, deep in the Amazon jungle, as the film-makers struggled through horrific conditions, Fry slipped on the makeshift dock and crashed down onto his side.

It was immediately obvious that he was badly hurt. But this was the middle of the jungle, there was no help at hand, and the rain was beating down.

Carwardine, Fry's long-term friend, recalls, 'Seeing Stephen in agony, and trying to decide quickly what to do, was tough. We couldn't tell if he had damaged his spine, because the pain was so severe he couldn't move. We called for help on our satellite phone, while someone else ran to a village that had a small medical centre to get pain relief.'

Stephen Fry: New Scientist Interview

Issue 2721 of New Scientist, and online, features an interview with Stephen Fry about his involvement in the Last Chance To See TV series project. The interview also covers his interest in Twitter, Apple and all things technological.

Had things got worse since Adams's visit?

Each place has its own unique problems. In Madagascar a slash-and-burn policy over the past 60 years has devastated four-fifths of one of the most remarkable forests there ever was. That is what threatens the lemur population in Madagascar, as opposed to the [central African] northern white rhino, now extinct in the wild, which has more to do with poaching and the cross-border incursions of whatever war is going on.

Last Chance To See - TV Series Begins Sunday, 6th September

According to Mark Carwardine's website, the Last Chance To See TV series featuring Mark and new presenter Stephen Fry will begin on Sunday, 6th September, at either 8 or 9p.m. on BBC2.

The six-part series will include some of the old stars from the book, and it will introduce us to many new ones that have inevitably joined the ever-expanding cast of endangered species.

Updating the animals’ stories and explaining their ecological predicaments, Mark and Stephen will face (and they already have) a catalogue of adventures. The amazing, often eccentric human characters whose determination was all that kept the animals from going extinct all those years ago have still been around.

The Last Chance To See DVD and Blu-ray are already available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk. The countdown starts now...