My Tiger Family; Forensics: Murder Scene

“My Tiger Family is not the place to come if you want to learn much about tigers. Valmik Thapar notes a handful of the new discoveries made on the reserve but this is not a usual natural history documentary. It is a tribute to a handful of individual tigers and the astonishing beauty of their surroundings. It also stands as a tribute to what people can do to protect precious things when they want to – and a reminder of why we should want to.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“This film is the fruit of a long collaborative friendship with the British natural history film-maker Mike Birkhead. They are both old men now, but Tharpar’s passion seems undimmed as he tells the story of the five tigresses he came to know and love as he filmed them day by day and year by year.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph

“Thapar made a storyteller worthy of Kipling, with wonder and magic in his voice. His voice simmered with anger as he described the years spent begging politicians to ward off the poachers with an army of rangers. It’s a life well spent, and a story movingly told.”
Christopher Stevems, Daily Mail

“This impressive series took the viewer behind police tape and into the crime scene to see the blood splatters, the chaos, the tattered bra. This felt strangely intimate and perhaps a little intrusive. But it is a privilege to see just what work goes into every murder investigation. No detail or piece of analysis was omitted.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“There was no wild speculation and no twists. Instead, it focused on the minutiae of the investigative work required not necessarily to secure a conviction, but to prove premeditation and thereby ensure a just sentence was handed down. The film clearly wanted to be a responsible and respectful addition to the true crime genre, but this noble ambition was undermined by repeatedly showing the devastating and bloody crime scene – there was an hour and a half to fill, after all. And while officers talked with empathy and humanity about Harleen as a victim, we did not learn enough about her as a person (at least until victim statements from her family in India at the end).”
Rachel Sigee, The i