“Hello Doctor Pic? We need you urgently! » In the narration, actor Féodor Atkine spins the metaphor of the hospital series, far from the standards of the classic animal documentary. Supported by the original music of Anthony Touzalin, which would not stand out in a thriller, it will describe in a new and delightful way the essential role of certain animal species in saving our damaged woods.
Fourth episode of the five “Christmas Animals”, offered by France Télévisions, from December 25 to 29, Dr Pic noir. Urgences des bois is the only one to break the codes in this way – after Ecureuil, the tribulations of a forester, Memories of a golden monkey in China, In the land of the black bee, filmed in the Cévennes, and before Castor, the force of nature (all on France.tv).
But back to our black woodpecker. “Our patient is a lowland forest around fifty years old,” continues Féodor Atkine, on images of dead trees and gnawed bark. The diagnosis is made: a pest insect is endangering the woods. This is good, it constitutes the basis of the black woodpecker’s diet.
“Keystone species.”
Once the pitch is made, other actors enter, such as “Dr. Great Spotted Woodpecker”, smaller, black, white and red, and “Dr. Lumbric”, in order to assist “Dr. Black Woodpecker”, the “Dr. House of the Forests”. “. The wink is supported by the actor who doubles Hugh Laurie in the famous series, after a rich film career.
But while the bird attacks carpenter ants and other bark beetles, we fear for a moment that the medical metaphor will become tiring in the long run. To avoid this pitfall, anecdotes are valued – like the fact that he closes his eyes when he knocks, to prevent them from being thrown out of their orbit.
Humor does not prevent seriousness. Naturalist fact sheets are interspersed on the screen with historical sequences, to explain how this mountain bird left the peaks to proliferate in the valleys since the 1950s.
The life of the picid unfolds over the four seasons. In the fall, he looks for a female, before spending the winter finding accommodation. ” This one ? Too old! That one ? Poorly exposed. » Anthropomorphism facilitates teaching to explain what a “keystone species” is, follow the birth of the young, their feeding, before “making these Tanguys leave”.
Another tip from the author, reading on two levels, which should delight the most attentive. Thus, when the young leave the nest, Féodor Atkine specifies that they will settle far from their parents, so as not to reduce their food resources – in short, so that there are not too many “Dr Pic” in the same forest: “A French hospital with enough doctors would be the world turned upside down”…