The Mating Game (Season 1)

"The Mating Game" (2021) is a BBC natural history series you can watch online on iFILM, narrated by Sir David Attenborough across 22 countries. The subject is the moment every animal faces: finding a mate — and what happens when they fail.

The series covers more than 80 species across its episodes, from insects with elaborate colour displays to deep-sea creatures using bioluminescence to signal in the dark. Some males spend hours constructing intricate bowers of twigs and found objects; some females reject nine out of ten candidates without a second look. Directors Joe Loncraine, Simon Nash and Jeff Wilson led crews through jungles, deserts and ocean floors to capture behaviour rarely filmed before.

A joint production involving teams from the UK, China, France, Japan and the United States, the series turns a lens on a subject that bigger nature franchises tend to treat as a footnote. For viewers who've seen Planet Earth and want something with a sharper single focus — one biological drive, dozens of species, very different solutions. Stream "The Mating Game" (2021) online on iFILM.