#HiddenKingdoms - Wildlife cute fest & family fun on #BBCOne

This show is upfront about the whole filming process, there's no pretence - this is an animal drama based on real life behaviour and events. 

"We feel this is an interpretation of the world these animals live in," Mike Gunton, Executive Producer, said. "Audiences do understand that these are films," he added. "You don't turn up, press a button, film for 50 minutes then turn off. They understand editing happens, compression of time and highlights." 

Just check out the website, packed with behind the scenes interviews and DIY guides to creating the magic. 

Hidden Kingdoms is a perfect Christmas family watch, so its a-shame that it's missed the merry season by a few weeks, but it'll surely be a cracking start to another awesome year of wildlife on the BBC.

Episode 1: Elephant Shrew

The show was inspired by the adorable elephant shrew sequence in 'Life', and you'll be pleased to know that in 'Hidden Kingdoms' our rodent hero returns. Known by its African name of 'sengi', this is a creature that spends its whole life on the run. Unlike most small mammals, it doesn’t have a burrow to shelter in, but instead constantly races through the miniature jungle of the savannah grasslands. The sengi must survive in the world literally beneath the feet of some of the largest and most deadly animals on Earth. The sengi’s answer is to rely on its incredible speed and some remarkable trail-building skills. A sengi constructs a meticulously maintained network of tiny trackways through the undergrowth, using them to race through its territory in search of food, and evade even the fastest predators. But while these trails are the source of a sengi’s strength, they are also its greatest weakness - the racetrack is a prison: without it, the sengi cannot survive in the dense undergrowth.

Another adorable animal that stars in episode one is the tiny grasshopper mouse, a fearsome fidgety creature constantly hopping about and capable of disarming the desert's deadliest scorpions. It warns others of its presence like a tiny wolf, standing on hind legs, throwing back its head and howling at the moon - without doubt one of the funniest moments in wildlife TV. Its home in the Sonoran desert is not only a world of relentless heat and bleached-out sunlight, but a realm of reptiles, ruled over by a posse of pack-hunting Harris Hawks. When you are a few inches tall, the desert becomes a real life Jurassic Park. You cant help but warm to these creatures.