In the wild, there are no crowns, no treaties and no mercy. There is only territory, lineage and the instinct to survive.
Kingdom is a bold new six-part wildlife series, filmed in Zambia, from the world-renowned BBC Studios Natural History Unit, premiering on Monday, 16 March at 20:00 on BBC Earth, DStv Channel 184. Continuing BBC Earth’s legacy of landmark natural history storytelling, the series combines rigorous science with cinematic filmmaking to reveal the natural world in unprecedented detail.
Narrated by Sir David Attenborough and filmed over five extraordinary years in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, Kingdom focuses on a single, fiercely contested region known as Nsefu. Here, four apex predator families navigate shifting alliances, escalating conflict and the ever-present challenge of survival, offering an intimate perspective on resilience, leadership and adaptation in one of Africa’s last great wildernesses.
At the heart of the series are four powerful female leaders, each fighting to secure the future of her bloodline:
Olimba – a solitary leopard mother, raising her cubs in hostile territory
Storm – a determined wild dog queen whose arrival destabilises the existing order
Rita – a lioness rebuilding her pride after devastating losses
Tenta – a formidable hyena matriarch defending her clan’s position in the hierarchy
“I want audiences to witness the determination of these animals to do what it takes to survive and to protect their families,” says Executive Producer Mike Gunton. “In many ways, their lives reflect our own, marked by challenge, resilience and constant decision-making. Every day, they face intense life-or-death choices, and there is something profoundly uplifting in that.”
Filmed over more than 1,400 days, Kingdom represents the longest continuous single-location shoot in the history of the BBC Studios Natural History Unit. The production involved more than 170 contributors, including over 90 local Zambian crew members and wildlife experts, reinforcing the importance of African voices in telling African wildlife stories.
Set within one of Africa’s most biodiverse ecosystems, Kingdom also highlights the fragile balance between predator populations, territory and environmental change, a dynamic that underpins every encounter captured on screen.
Using advanced long-lens systems, drones, thermal imaging and remote camera traps, the team captured behaviour never previously documented, from wild dogs attempting to rescue a pack member from a crocodile to intimate shifts in power among individually identified lions, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. This is natural history filmed with the tension of a primetime drama, but every moment is real.
Kingdom premieres Monday, 16 March at 20:00 on BBC Earth (DStv Channel 184), with episodes available on DStv Catch Up. Separately, on the BBC News channel, two Zambia specials of the flagship travel programme The Travel Show will air on 21 and 28 March, looking at how the country has become one of the fastest-emerging tourism destinations in the world.
Presenter Dwayne Fields heads into the country’s wild heart, not to meet just the animals, but also their custodians who are keen to share and preserve their country’s most precious asset. At Kafue National Park, he joins the rangers taking their canine units out to track poachers, takes part in a lion monitoring expedition and meets the orphaned elephants being prepared for release back into the wild. He also visits Victoria Falls before heading to the country’s lively capital Lusaka and ends his adventure watching the world’s largest mammal migration, as 10 million fruit bats arrive in Kasanka National Park to feast on the area’s fruit trees.
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