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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cantelo" data-source="post: 1736542" data-attributes="member: 2844">Although I thought many  of the images were superb, I thought that the spoken  imagery was often woefully overblown. Indeed, I came close to switching the programme off largely because I couldn’t abide what was, to me at least, dreadful  ‘purple prose.’   I thought it was close to being a textbook example of this wordy excess that is  “prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself”.  At times when the scene on the screen said it all, I found the commentary more irritating than illuminating.  I longed for a little simplicity if for no other reason than it would compliment the flowery bits.  A bit like food - I like rich chocolate cake and a dollop of cream, but even I couldn’t eat a whole gateau and tub of cream! Mercifully, I’ve forgotten most of it, but I do recall one line that compared a sprig of bramble to a coil of razor wire which claimed that the one was the “rhyme” of the other.   Since what was being described was entirely visual, I found this use of a word entirely aural in nature plain annoying. An attempt to be unnecessarily ‘clever’ with words that, as far as I’m concerned, entirely backfired.  Compare, for example, David Attenborough’s elegant and deceptively simple commentary when famously approached by that alpha Gorilla. He said so much, so simply and without a hint the dreaded purple prose. What I found so irritating, was that the man just couldn’t leave the images to speak for themselves, but just had to ‘impose’ his own internalised reaction – some straight out of pseud’s corner.  Naturally, advocates of this style will see my lack of empathy as a failing in me rather than in the prose and it may be so!  In fact, all the press comments I’ve read about the programme loved all that verbiage.Despite the gorgeousness of much of the footage, I also had some issues with the filming.  Weren’t some of those images in un-announced slow motion?  And if so didn’t they give a false image?  Perhaps I’m wrong, but that was the reaction I had at the time. And it’s hard to see how those close-ups of flying Peregrine could have been obtained with anything other than a falconer’s bird.  In fact, I’m sure I had a glimpse of a leather strap on one of the legs.  And, since the film was about ‘wild’ Essex isn’t this a bit of a ‘cheat’?</blockquote>

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