Dr Ann’s Secret Lives review: naturally entertaining

Here’s a twist: despite a title that suggests yet another UK crime series involving a lead who resorts to murder to conceal her multiple identities, Dr Ann’s Secret Lives is actually a home-grown nature series starring the ABC’s decidedly non-lethal wildlife expert, Dr Ann.

Is the title an accurate reflection of the show’s contents or merely a scam by the ABC PR department to boost ratings by luring in crime fans? Well, the animals featured in this six-part series are relatively reclusive, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt – though if you’re expecting an expose on Dugongs having affairs or an Orangutan that’s moonlighting at the tax office there may be some disappointing news ahead.

In recent years, Dr Ann Jones has been heard on numerous ABC nature podcasts alongside her role as a network presenter on ABC National. As presenters go, she’s down the entertainment end of the scale, which is no bad thing: if getting kids interested in nature requires making a silly noise or two, then her children’s nature-adventure podcast

Noisy by Nature is all the better for it.

Dr Ann: the hook

With her first ABC TV series, the hook is a simple one. The nature journalist (turns out her PhD is in history) has spent a lot of time looking at nature from behind her binoculars, and now it’s time to get her hands dirty. Literally: the very first scene of the first episode sees her wrestling a baby Bull Shark up a very muddy riverbank in north Queensland so it can be tagged and genetic samples taken.

As she puts it, she’s getting ‘up close and personal – no matter how deadly the animal’, so maybe we were a little hasty saying this show would be murder-free.

Watch the Dr Ann’s Secret Lives trailer.

And just FYI, episode two starts off with what Dr Ann describes as ‘a health and safety nightmare’, so things aren’t going to get any easier as the series progresses.

Each episode focuses on a different animal. After the first episode’s bull sharks (both baby and full grown), there are sea snakes, orangutans, turtles, dugongs, and finally pangolins. With some the focus is on examining and studying them; with others, such as the orangutans and pangolins, just finding them is a big part of the challenge.

Dr Ann: down-to-earth

Unlike the ABC’s recent The Kimberly (read review), which went hard on selling the beauty and grandeur of the location and the wildlife, this takes a more down-to-earth approach. There’s a very good reason why Dr Ann has her name in the title: this is most definitely her personal journey to get up close with the animals, and shots of her settling into various locations and talking to local experts are just as important as the animals in their natural environment.

Where a lot of nature documentaries largely work as visually impressive wallpaper (especially once you turn the sound down), this is more committed to the educational side of things. It’s as much about the people studying the animals as the animals themselves, featuring plenty of healthy-looking experts (it’s a very physical job) in their shirt-sleeves wrestling with nature in the name of science – when they’re not talking about feeding habits and environments under pressure from humanity and climate change.

The emphasis on interviews means a lot is riding on Dr Ann herself. The press materials refer to her as a ‘nature nerd’, and her role here is more as an enthusiastic outsider than a qualified guide. She meets the experts, they give her the lowdown, she looks comedically horrified at the size of the hook required to catch a bull shark, and we’re just along for the ride.

She’s a likeable host who’s enjoying her job, and her energy keeps things interesting even when we’re just sitting in on planning sessions. The tone is a little more youthful than you might expect from a prime time ABC production: early on in episode one she describes the island she’s on as ‘it’s giving science meets White Lotus‘.

The scientists get a lot of screentime but the animals remain the stars. It’s refreshing to see a nature series that admits the animals we’re seeing are being studied rather than just roaming free (while being filmed), and the commitment to that study – to knowledge for its own sake – is something we can always use more of on our screens.

You’ll learn something, you’ll be entertained, and there’s always the chance someone’s going to get bitten: what more can you ask for from nature?

Dr Ann’s Secret Lives premieres 15 July at 8.30pm on ABC TV. All episodes available to stream on ABC iview.

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