BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ It isn't enough for filmmaker Brad Bestelink to observe the wild animals of Africa. He has to be part of them. While OSHA would not approve, Bestelink has spent his life in the bush in Botswana, filming up close and personal the creatures that command the plains.
In fact, he's fourth generation Botswanan, educated in South Africa, but always returning to the veldt where's he's lived since he was 4 days old.
Bestelink and his team of cameramen are responsible for NatGeo Wild's fierce new series, "Savage Kingdom," premiering Nov. 25.
"We have a small company and a handful of camera men, three that work with me," he explains in a deserted meeting room of a hotel here.
"We go out to the field ... living out of the vehicle _ no camp, no base, just nomadic, keep moving with the animals."
Once a week the team takes turns trekking into town for supplies and a much-needed shower, then it's back to the acacia trees and watering holes, he says. Bestelink follows each animal's journey in a unique environmental situation. A river starts to flow, creating an oasis in the desert. "Over time all the animals respond to it and grow bigger and bigger," he says.
"You don't know the reason, but all of a sudden he river stops flowing and all those animals that have expanded on the fat of the land get left with diminishing resources, it forced everybody into a very small area. I've been in that location or four years and we've been watching it build and build and build, and all of a sudden the resources got pulled away, so large numbers of predators filed into a very, very small area, so they compete to maintain their lives in that small area."
Bestelink's forefathers first came to Africa with the settlers of the 1820s. His great grandfather worked for the British government in tsetse-fly control efforts. His grandfather, who was killed by a black mamba snake, was licensed to hunt crocodiles. "He was given the Okavango region, so he pioneered in that area. Very few people would take the outpost way up in the bush, so a pioneering spirit has been in the family for years," says Bestelink, 39.
His grandfather set up camping spots to facilitate his crocodile skin operation and when he died, Bestelink's parents took over the camps and turned them into the first photographic tourism camps.
"The only reason people went to Africa was to shoot something, we were doing photographic tourism which was an unknown concept," he recalls.
"Where I grew up we used to have two months at a time we never saw a tourist, so we were Robinson Crusoe for two months, waiting for the tourists to come in. It was fun times ... Without regular tourists coming in, supplies were limited. My dad used to hear the lions kill something at night and sneak out with the car and go push them off the kill and take the leg of a buffalo, and take it back so we'd have some fresh food," he laughs.
Bestelink is married to Andy Crawford, his business partner and the mother of his children, a boy, 12, and a daughter, 9.
They met when Bestelink delivered his film to a production company in Johannesburg, where Andy was working. "I was headed in that direction anyway," she says of her walk on the wild side. "I was a lawyer and made a decision to give up my normal life. I decided I can't do the corporate city thing. So I worked for this production company as a means to get out in the bush. I was living in Johannesburg. I was a researcher and through that, I found Brad."
Bestelink bears three tattoos signifying close encounters he's suffered with wild animals: elephant, crocodile � and on his ankle, a lion.
One evening he went out to the grassland to admire the sunset while Andy prepared dinner in the back of the vehicle. "Mosquitoes started buzzing, and I looked up and there was a lioness standing in front of me. The element of surprise in that situation is all you've got," he says.
"So you don't want her to know what you are. As long as she's nervous about what you are and you hide that, so I stayed seated. She walked up to me three or four meters in front of me, she walked around me, and then came at me from behind, so I had no choice.
"So I got up and chased her. She ran, stopped and turned around, and her tail was flicking. So I ran at her again and chased her. As I chased her, another lioness came from the other side. So now I'm stuck between these two lionesses. I called my wife, 'Bring a torch (flashlight).' Luckily she heard me call. She was about 400 meters away in the forest and she heard and started coming.
"I would chase one lioness and the other would come closer. So I pushed the one, she backed off, the other came closer, pushed her again, and a male lion came in from the other side. So now I had three of them standing around me, and I was in the middle.
"You get to the point that you can't move, the more you move the closer they come to you. If Andy was 30 seconds later, one of those lionesses would've jumped me. When she arrived with the car with the lights, there were 13 lions around me, I only saw three. It was quite exciting," he laughs.
NO MORE 'MR. GOOD-GUY' SAYS TV PRODUCER
Most of the fathers of TV comedies try to convince you that their characters are likable guys who occasionally misstep. But Michael Showalter, one of the producers behind TBS' "Search Party," isn't one of them. "Part of what is challenging, in a good way, about the show as a whole is what defines a good person and how, as individuals, do we choose what kind of people we want to be? And what is that journey like? And I think that's specifically true when you are young and when you are kind of figuring it out. And so I think that in the writing of this show, the goodness or not goodness of a character was actually something we talked about a lot. And so I think, in a way, the ambiguity about it is what, hopefully, will be something that people talk about when they see the show, which is, are these good characters? Are they bad? Do I like them? Do I not like them? How will they turn out? How will they change over the course of this season?" The show, which premieres next Monday, is about a pack of selfie-obsessed millennials who find one of their own missing in what the network calls a new genre: a comedy-mystery.
POST WWII ALLIES COMPETE FOR GERMAN BRAIN POWER
After World War II the British, Americans and the Russians were competing for a precious resource that we don't hear much about. That resource was the brilliant minds of German scientists who had toiled for Hitler's war effort. We're aware that rocket scientist Werner Von Braun was one of them hustled to the U.S. after the war. The British-made drama, "Close to the Enemy," follows such an uneasy alliance when an English intelligence officer is charged with convincing a recalcitrant German scientist to help develop the jet engine for the Brits. The series, which begins streaming on Acorn TV this week, is filled with questionable characters, and we're not sure whom to trust. Angela Bassett shows up as an American jazz singer and Alfred Molina plays a mysterious business man who may have dubious motives.
HALLMARK CHANNEL SERVES TASTY FAMILY FARE
The Hallmark Channel will stuff Thanksgiving week with a nightly helping of original holiday movies that the whole family can share. Starting on Nov. 23, "Broadcasting Christmas" features Dean Cain and Melissa Joan Hart as competing TV anchors. Taylor Cole plays a famous actress who learns you CAN go home again in "Christmas in Homestead," on Nov. 24. Alicia Witt stars on Nov. 24, and on the 25th you have a killer cast with Kristin Davis ("Sex and the City") as a newcomer to heaven who's tethered to her guardian angel (Shirley MacLaine). Their task is to help Eric McCormack ("Will & Grace") apply his musical talent to healing an old family rift. On Nov. 27 Candace Cameron Bure stars in "Journey Back to Christmas" along with Tom Skerritt and Oliver Hudson.
.png?w=600)
