Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

The aye-aye is what lemurs would look like if they’d been designed by Tim Burton. It’s a nightmarish, gothic sort of beast with big, mournful eyes and twig-like fingers. So if it’s cuteness you’re after, best skip the bits where Martin Hughes-Games follows captive breeding efforts to save the aye-aye, and pass instead to the sequence on the George Clooney of the koala world, a dashing male used by conservationists to check if females are in the mood for breeding.

Hughes-Games is at his most reverential as he meets the various stubborn biologists fighting to save species. But watch for the scene where a Tasmanian devil starts burrowing in his hair.

About this programme

3/4. Martin Hughes-Games focuses on animals that have evolved on islands, where they have nowhere to run when disaster strikes. The Tasmanian devil is threatened by a disease that has wiped out 80 per cent of the wild population, and while scientists search for a cure, zoos are desperately trying to set up breeding programmes. On Madagascar, the aye-aye lemur faces a double threat - not only is its habitat being destroyed, but many locals see it as a bad omen and it is killed on sight. Finally, Martin looks at how the Mauritius kestrel has been saved from extinction thanks to the work of one man.