King of the swingers: what Primates tells us about our locked-down world

From the orangutans that lived undisturbed for 700,000 years to the frolicking rhesus macaques of Kathmandu, the BBC's new nature blockbuster brings us closer than ever to the planet of the apes

One day 23 years ago, scientists were exploring a lost world called Batang Toru when they glimpsed something moving in the forest canopy. What they saw was a great ape that had lived in splendid isolation for 700,000 years. With its kindly black face, orange fur and vast proto-artisanal beard, it looked like the familiar Sumatran or Borneo orangutans, but was neither. In 2017, the Tapanuli orangutan was recognised as a new species. It is smaller, and has paler, thicker fur than its lowland cousins and lives in reproductive isolation on that remote plateau in the north Sumatran jungle 1,000m above sea level.

The news about this addition to world species lists prompted producer Nikki Waldron to scramble to the Sumatran jungle, to film the Tapanuli orangutan for the first time. After a few weeks, she and her crew found a mother and daughter in their natural habitat. "When we first arrived, the cameraman sighed. The light levels were really low because of the density of the leaves, and the orangutans live 40m up in the trees."