Queens, review: Disney needlessly injects natural history with girl power swagger
What would you get if you crossed a David Attenborough documentary with a Beyoncé video? The answer is: Queens, a new natural history series on Disney+. Other shows have anthropomorphised wild animals to play up the cuteness. Here, an Angela Bassett voiceover and hip soundtrack give everything a girl power swagger.
The first episode is called African Queens, to be followed by Savanna Queens, Rainforest Queens, Mountain Queens… you get the picture. We begin in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, which is beautifully shot. Every scene is narrated to sound like a Hollywood trailer.
“The wildest places on our planet have always been home to powerful leaders,” says Bassett, who has a gorgeous, honeyed tone you could listen to all day. “But now a new hero is rising – fearless, smart, resilient and FEMALE.” Tell us more, Angela. “It’s the prides that rule the crater, and by the prides I mean THE GIRLS.” The focus is on a family of three sister lionesses, raising their cubs. “Just weeks ago, they left their mother to go it alone, and already they’re KILLING IT.”
They’re literally killing it, obviously – a lion needs to eat – but Angela means killing it in the way that Taylor Swift is killing it. Confusing, I know. One of the lionesses is pregnant but “the father didn’t stick around”. Honestly, men. But it’s OK, because “the sisterhood can look after themselves”. A male lion turns up to mate with one of the females, but also to kill some of the young cubs to make room for his own. Again, not just the Taylor Swift kind of killing.
The sisters have a plan: they lure the male away from the den and “flirt” with him, creating a distraction which allows the mother of the cubs to begin carrying them to safety. Later, the mother mates with the male to protect her young, because that can make the male believe that any young cubs are his. Interesting behaviour to observe in a wildlife documentary, but did it really need to be accompanied by a slowed-down soundtrack of Blondie’s One Way or Another?
There are hyenas here too. Hyena clans are a matriarchy, and you wouldn’t mess with them. One of them fights off a lion. They’re also picky about who they sleep with: “The need for consent is what makes hyena society so special.” Now, I’m all for messages of female empowerment and sexual consent, but can we save them for Normal People and Bridgerton rather than two hyenas going at it?