Monkeys, lemurs, lorises, bush babies and, of course, the great apes. Countless faces, one remarkable animal family.

Captured with BBC Studios Natural History Unit’s signature style, with immersive cinematography, emotional storytelling and new insight into the animals we thought we knew, Primates combines celebration with revelation. We meet familiar primates with new stories and new species rarely seen on screen.

Chris Packham narrates the definitive series about our closest relatives.

At the heart of this ground-breaking series is incredible animal behaviour. New technology has captured primates on their level and in their world, whether that’s in the treetops of a flooded forest, or the tangled undergrowth of the Sri Lankan night.

Over the course of two years, the Primates team embarked on 28 filming expeditions across the world. They battled snowstorms in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, and forded or floated through flooded jungles in remote corners of Sumatra and Brazil. Along the way, they captured some of the very first images of the newly described Tapanuli orangutan, and were the first crew in years to attempt to film the bald-headed white uakari. And in Equatorial Guinea, one team spent over two months, camped on a remote beach, to capture the most intimate images ever seen of a drill, one of the world’s least understood primates. And in Sri Lanka, another crew captured the very first low-light colour images of the elusive gray slender loris at night in the wild.

Engrossing new stories combine family drama with the latest science. On Congo’s volcanic slopes, we meet an apparently fearsome silverback mountain gorilla, who turns out to be a gentle and attentive father to his young. Cutting-edge research indicates that caring fathers are the most successful silverbacks. In South Africa, we join an elusive and diminutive lesser bush baby from a newly discovered urban population, on a night-time raid of the city zoo. In Malaysia, we experience a Lar Gibbons’ canopy world from their perspective, in a filming first.

From snow-capped mountains to the hottest deserts, and from the most remote, unexplored landscapes to the very heart of our modern world, Primates is the ultimate, definitive celebration of our very own animal family.

Narrator - Chris Packham was born in Southampton in 1961. A trained Zoologist, he has been a familiar face on British television since 1986 and is known for being one of the most passionate and authoritative voices on natural history

Executive Producer - Michael Gunton (Dynasties, Big Cats, Planet Earth II)

Series Producer - Gavin Boyland (Big Cats, Animal Babies, Monkey Planet)

Producers
Nick Easton (Big Cats, Life Story, Africa)
Nikki Waldron (Springwatch, Life In Cold Blood)
Victoria Buckley (MSc in Primatology, World’s Sneakiest Animals, Monkey Planet)

Researcher - Dr Camila Coelho (Experienced Primatologist, with broadcast credits on Earth’s Wildest Rivers and Wild Brazil)

Scientific Consultant - Dr Russell Mittermeier, Chief Conservation Office, Global Wildlife Conservation, chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group. And he’s the first man in history to see all 79 genera of Primates!