Gorilla Family & Me
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan ventures deep into the Congo to find out more about the largest gorillas in the world, the endangered Grauer’s gorilla.
Gorilla Family & Me
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About the show
Can Gordon join the troop?
Grauer’s gorillas are beautiful yet little-known giants living in the foothills of eastern Congo’s Virunga volcanoes. To get to know his gorilla family, Gordon must earn the trust of the massive and potentially dangerous Silverback male – Chimunka.
Suspicious of newcomers, Chimunka weighs three times as much as Gordon, and could tear him apart with his bare hands. But he’s also a caring and devoted parent to his children and the main carer for orphaned baby gorilla Mharle.
Winning acceptance from the Silverback isn’t the only challenge – Gordon must also watch out for powerful, testosterone-fuelled young males vying for supremacy within the family. When Gordon and the baby gorillas get caught up in an epic battle between Chimunka and his huge brooding rival Mugaruka, the lives of the family hang in the balance.
This is Gordon’s most dangerous and toughest Family & Me mission yet. But if he can become part of the Grauer gorilla family, he can show the world these unique great apes and help to bring hope to the eastern Congo.
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Profile
Gordon Buchanan
Hailing from scenic Tobermory on Scotland’s wildlife-rich Isle of Mull, Gordon grew up watching Sir David Attenborough documentaries.
He took his first steps into natural history broadcasting at the tender age of 17, when the late wildlife filmmaker Nick Gordon offered him a life-defining job as his filming apprentice in Sierra Leone. Gordon quit school in a heartbeat, and spent the next 18 months documenting beasts in the Gola Rainforest National Park.
After honing his camera skills shooting footage of indigenous Piaroa communities feasting on giant tarantula spiders in Venezuela, and filming all manner of wildlife species in the Brazilian Amazon, Gordon purchased his own recording kit and braved becoming a cameraman in his own right.
Assignments to film lions and hyenas in the Serengeti, leopards by night in Sri Lanka and tigers in the Brazilian rainforest gained Gordon kudos as a big cat specialist, and he has since gone on to become one of the UK’s most celebrated on-screen wildlife cameramen.
In addition to becoming a household name as the face of the popular BBC series Big Cat Diary, Gordon’s other noteworthy TV credits include The Polar Bear Family and Me, The Bear Family and Me, Land of the Tiger, Land of the Lost Wolves and Wild Burma: Nature’s Lost Kingdom.
In 2013, Gordon became a patron of Trees for Life, a conservation charity committed to restoring the Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands.