In this delightful documentary about a trove of ancient bones, Sir David brings you as close to religious awe as it’s possible to get without God
After decades of fossil hunting in their spare time (he wooed her with two halves of an ancient beast’s vertebrae; they cut their wedding cake with a Neanderthal handaxe they had unearthed together), Sally and Neville Hollingworth made the discovery of a lifetime at the bottom of a quarry in Cerney Wick. It was a collection of mammoth bones of a size, state and number more usually found in Siberia than Swindon, left in the wake of the Thames’ ancient wanderings and dating from more than 200,000 years ago. While we wait impatiently for the 90-minute British romcom to be written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, starring Olivia Colman as Sally and Martin Freeman as Neville, as must surely come to pass, we have an equally endearing documentary about the fossil find itself.
Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard (BBC One) opens with Sir David visiting the Hollingworths at their neat suburban home. Every wall is lined with shelves and cases housing immaculately presented fossils they have found. The mammoth bones are on the kitchen table. Attenborough floats through in a trance of delight. “It’s a great thrill, isn’t it?” the world’s most revered naturalist murmurs reverently, as he lays hands on a giant ice age humerus. “The whole of this business.”
