The demands of a celebrity chef, especially one that runs three vibrant restaurants and a fried chicken franchise, are rigorous. The daily upkeep to ensure quality and consistency in his establishments keep him busy enough, but add to that the photo shoots, TV appearances, interviews and a constant online presence, and the tasks become herculean. When Ludo Lefebvre needs to escape the chaos, he heads to the lilting and poetic world of Paris in the spring, where the emphasis is placed on the joy and fun of life.
The world of the armoured creatures is equally fascinating and bizarre. Galapagos giant tortoises solve the problem of making love in a suit of armour; a heated sea turtle orgy leaves females in mortal danger and we witness the explosive arrival of a baby pig-nosed turtle. Giant salt-water crocodiles crowd a flooded river-run to fish for mullet and a caiman leads her brood in a touching trek to a communal crèche.
Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive? A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon. Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the to river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house. Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.
A mighty army of dolphins, sharks, whales, seals and gannets hunt down the billions of sardines along South Africa's east coast each winter. This is the Sardine Run: an underwater Armageddon, the greatest gathering of predators anywhere on the planet, and the most spectacular event in the world's oceans. From intimate moments of the creatures caught up in the run, to the dramatic finale of this spectacular event, The Great Tide is an action-packed feeding-frenzy, filmed underwater, on the ocean's surface, and in the air. However, in recent years the sardine run has become less predictable, perhaps due to the warming effects of climate change. If the sardine run does not happen, the lives of the animals caught up in the drama hang in the balance. Pioneering a unique boat stabilised camera mount for surface filming, Nature's Great Events crew capture all the high octane action as the predators compete for sardines, filmed with aerial, underwater and above water cameras. Super slow motion cameras also capture the very moment gannets plunge into the water, hitting it at sixty miles an hour. A violent winter storm is the trigger for the sardines to begin their desperate dash. They are followed by a super-pod of 5,000 dolphins and further up the coast more predators gather. A shoal of sardines 15 miles long is pushed into the shallows and aerial shots show thousands of sharks gathering to feed on them. The climax to the sardine run is a spectacular feeding frenzy as the dolphins round the sardines up into balls on which all the predators feast. Gannets rain down in their thousands, sharks pile in scattering the fish and a Bryde's whale lunges in taking great mouthfuls of sardines.
Meet Tim Raue, the lauded German chef who went from gang life to fine dining. After leaving the streets, he defied all odds with explosive creativity, but also the knack for running several lucrative restaurants. For a high school dropout once told he could only be a house painter, gardener, or cook, it's a culinary story that does seem to be written in the Michelin stars.
How does a chef trained in the finest kitchens of France translate his haute cuisine to fast food? Ludo’s obsession with a perfectly cooked bird can be traced back to France, where he learned to roast chicken. His love for the American classic was solidified in 1996 when he arrived in LA and ate at KFC for the first time. “It was the same sensation,” he’s said, the crunchy skin and juicy flesh, and the gap between his two worlds was bridged. In this episode we learn how a Frenchman became famous for a truly American dish.
When Ludo Lefebvre needs to escape the chaos, he heads to the lilting and poetic world of Paris in the spring, where the emphasis is placed on the joy and fun of life.