Colin suits up for wildlife

COLIN STAFFORD-JOHNSON is sitting on the bank of the river Dodder, dressed in his camouflaged ‘eejit-suit’ and holding a branch in his hand.

It all looks like a ridiculous scene from some spoof spy movie. Then suddenly there’s a flash of blue and Ireland’s most beautifully-coloured bird comes to a halt on the stick. Bullseye!

By his own admission Stafford-Johnson buzzes from the encounter with the kingfisher. Earlier in this first episode of the new series of Living The Wildlife (Tuesday, RTÉ One, 7pm), we had seen him shaking with anticipation when he found the riverside nest. “It’s like the first time every time,” he tells us. This from a cameraman who has travelled the past few decades travelling the world filming some of the most spectacular wildlife on earth. Tigers in India, rhinos in Africa, river birds in Dublin — all are approached with similar levels of infectious enthusiasm.

Stafford-Johnson’s recent film Broken Tail: The Last Days Of A Wild Tiger has been aired on the BBC in Britain and PBS in the US, and is as powerful a wildlife documentary you’ll see anywhere. While that somewhat depressing tale acts as a final call to arms on the perilous state of wild tigers, in this RTÉ series he’s presenting a more positive outlook on the prospects for Irish wildlife.

In the first episode we see how kingfishers are thriving in a river just four miles from Dublin city centre. Much of this success is down to community interest and involvement in protecting their local environment, not least through the efforts of the local angling club. Future episodes will cover such topics as woodpeckers in Wicklow, vampire eels in Limerick and the rescue of the grey partridge from extinction in Offaly. It’s all about good news, and is all the more welcome for that.

While Juarez in Mexico is just a few thousand miles away from the peaceful banks of the river Dodder, the troubled city actually feels like it belongs on a different planet. Three thousand people were killed last year in the ongoing war involving rival drugs gangs and state forces. That’s about 55 people a week. Ross Kemp is there for his excellent Extreme World (Monday, Sky 1, 9pm) series and in his short time filming 60 more people were killed. As usual, Kemp looks at the violence from several different angles, hanging out with ambulance crews, policemen and a high-ranking member of one of the murderous drug cartels.

Finally, history buffs shouldn’t miss Niall Ferguson’s latest series, Civilization: Is The West History? (tomorrow, Channel 4, 8pm). Over the next six weeks Ferguson aims to show how western civilisation came to dominate the world, and why its ascendancy could now be coming to an end. Incidentally, the Scottish historian pins the west’s success on six “killer applications”: competition, science, the property owning democracy, modern medicine, the consumer society and the Protestant work ethic. Episode one begins in 1420 when China had the most developed society on Earth, and Europe seemed to be lagging behind. Sound familiar?