African social spiders’ sinister game of ‘grandmother’s footsteps’ could be breakout moment in BBC’s Parenthood
It is a scene that will make every parent shudder and fuel the generation wars debate.
David Attenborough’s new series, Parenthood, features sinister behaviour that has not been captured by TV cameras before of a 1,000-strong pack of young African social spiders hunting prey in a game of “grandmother’s footsteps” during which they freeze in unison like musical statues then eat all their mothers and elderly relatives alive.
Attenborough was both “delighted and horrified” by the groundbreaking footage when he narrated it, according to the series producer and director, Jeff Wilson. Wilson, who has worked with the broadcaster for years, said he had “never heard Sir David deliver a sequence as good as that … it sort of brings a lump to your throat … he’s the master at delivery”.
The combination of Attenborough’s words, atmospheric music by the Mulan and Ted Lasso composer Tom Howe (which “adds to the whole horror”) and painstaking filming to capture the spiders in their nest, is “probably one of the best” sequences Wilson said he had worked on in 30 years of film-making, but will also chill parents “to the bone”.
