TV Reviews : ‘Serengeti Diary’--A Special as Rich as Its Subject

Africa’s Serengeti plains, wrote Beryl Markham, “are endless and they are empty, but they are as warm with life as the waters of a tropic sea.”

Such panorama eludes the small screen. What “Serengeti Diary” does so successfully, however, is provide a sense of community on a global scale, a feeling that we are all part of nature and that we, too, have a stake in this vast area in Tanzania inhabited by 2 1/2 million animals and seminomadic herdsmen known as the Masai.

So beautifully photographed by Joe Seamans and Hugo van Lawick that you can almost feel the rain fall heavily on the plains, this “National Geographic” special airs at 8 tonight on Channels 28, 15 and 24, and at 9 on Channel 50.

TV has become its own Serengeti of nature and wildlife programs, the sheer multitudes seeming to run together in the mind. On almost any night, you can turn on PBS or cable’s Discovery Channel and see monkeys grooming each other, cheetahs pursuing Thompson’s gazelle or migrating herds of wildebeest braving predators and turbulent weather.

Animals are abundant here, too, of course (the sight of hyenas preying on flamingoes is extraordinary). “Serengeti Diary,” however, produced by Seamans and David R. O’Dell, is mostly a view of this 5,700-square-mile national park through human eyes.

They’re the eyes of photographer Van Lawick, whose collaborations with his famous former wife Jane Goodall produced many an exhilarating TV special. They’re the eyes, too, of Tanzanian authorities turning poachers into prey.

Most interesting of all, they’re the eyes of the Masai, in particular a Masai with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan who returns to his village and the “amazing serenity of peace” he had left behind.

His head freshly shaved and wearing red tribal robes, he is now indistinguishable from the other Masai as he joins them in the ritualistic killing (this is rather gruesome) of an ox, whose blood they drink and whose stomach they use as a cushion to sit on.

The “National Geographic” hour quotes Ernest Hemingway: “Now being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it.” You feel the same way watching “Serengeti Diary.”