Secret Lives of Orangutans; The Walking Dead: Dead City

“Secret Lives of Orangutans is not the place to come if you’re expecting adrenaline-packed dramatics. Even the fights between fanged males are only brief and alluded to. And the documentary doesn’t quite reach the astonishing visual and audio heights of some of wildlife TV’s more showstopping offerings, such as the BBC’s Planet Earth III, or Netflix’s Our Planet II. Even so, this is gentle yet captivating viewing; a beautiful glimpse into a world we don’t often get to see.”
Daisy Jones, The Guardian

“Even with the injection of a narrative arc, it can be oddly uneventful at times. The colour palette doesn’t help. Our eyes feast on little beyond the green of the foliage and the orange of orangutan fur across the 80 minutes, during which they eat and mate (though we are spared scenes of copulation), and males are supplanted. Just like us, of course. This isn’t a terrible film. It is pleasant, undemanding and occasionally enlightening. But I hoped for slightly more.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Secret Lives of Orangutans is entertaining enough and sometimes funny (witness flirty Yulia’s amorous overtures to the uninterested Titan). I was happy to spend an hour and 20 minutes in the delightful company of Ellie, Eden and all but at the end I wasn’t sure I’d really learned a huge amount about the lives of orangutans, secret or otherwise.”
Neil Armstrong, The i

“The frenemy energy between the leads is what helps this series rattle along like a disreputable B-movie. If it cannot match John Carpenter’s blackly comic Manhattan suicide mission Escape from New York – an obvious influence – it at least has fun trying.”
Graeme Virtue, The Guardian