THE NATURE OF SHOPPING
7 x 52'
What we buy connects, usually, with the natural world. Sometimes it's obvious - like a flower, a fish or a parrot. But what about a hamburger, a condom or an ice-cream? This group of seven one-hours links shopping with nature, the consumer with the consumed.

1. MEGA MALL
In Los Angeles is a shopping mall with 52 cinemas and a zoo. There you can buy almost anything you could ever want.  And Californians are great consumers. We follow a typical L.A. family through a day "from early morning coffee to late night condom". They go shopping at the giant mall and use many natural products during that day.  We connect wild plants and animals with everything from sugar, cotton, bananas, trainers, newspapers, tobacco and beer. And don't forget the condom, from a rubber tree plantation in Malaysia, once the jungle home for orang-utans and many other species.  But human overpopulation and consumption is a major part of the problem for a sustainable planet.  Birth control is part of the solution - so what do we do about that?

2. THE REAL PRICE OF A ROSE
Around Lake Naivaisha in Kenya, 12,000 Africans are employed growing flowers.  It's a tiny part of an enormous global business.  A single flower may be flown to Holland and on to Hong Kong or Rio to live for a few days as a token of happiness or sorrow. Flower-growing is the latest impact on the lake.  From the unusual viewpoint of a python growing up; under water, on the shore and amongst the flower-growers we see the changes over the years at Naivaisha. Introduced plants and animals of all sorts have damaged the lake's rich ecology. Now, when you see the potential effects of growing all those flowers, for us, you may look at a rose a bit differently.

3. McJUNGLE
The humble hamburger changed the face of the USA, then Central America, now Brazil.  The beef industry, on the prairies, in the jungle and on the savannahs has put an alien animal on vegetation that never grew there before. Cattle make hamburgers - a monoculture replaces diversity. That's the deal. That's what hamburgers cost in ecological terms. To examine these connections we visit the cerrado savannahs of Central Brazil, natural home to a very special community of animals and plants. Now the wild grasses are replaced by tough introduced ones and the armadillos by cows. In the nearby River Amazon and the rainforest is some of the greatest biodiversity on Earth.  Even today new species of quite large animals are still being discovered - and many small ones.  But they may disappear tomorrow, when the cattle come.  Maybe that's the true cost of a hamburger - whoever you buy it from.

4. THE PAINTED LADIES ARE COMING!
The painted lady butterfly is a great traveller. This beautiful insect sometimes crosses Europe in large numbers and recently such an invasion arrived in England. We follow migrants from North Africa, across the Mediterranean and on over Spain and France to the English Channel.  Using a model helicopter carrying a camera we get a butterfly's eve view of farming and the changing landscape of modern Europe. It's an unusual perspective, with other insects, down amongst rare wild flowers, in pretty gardens or across monocultures of the crops we eat, some of which may be (GM) genetically modified.

5. THE WORLD'S RAREST BIRD - A PARROT
Less than one is extinction. Spix's macaw was down to one bird in the wild.  For years a very lonely male lived in a valley in a remote corner of Brazil. This is the story of attempts to save the species from the ultimate end. It's also about how very different nationalities and personalities co-operate - or don't - to save the Spix's macaw and other parrots.  A similar species, the Glaucous macaw, is believed already extinct, and the spectacular Lear's macaw may go the same way as Spix's has almost gone - though there are other Spix's in captivity.  The macaw trade connects millionaires, the growing of cannabis and the police and customs officers around the world. Fanatics, smugglers, vets, geneticists, may all be part of the world of that parrot you might just want to buy.  Or not.

6. MOORHENS - SEX & VIOLENCE ON THE RIVER
The extraordinary life of this familiar bird is revealed in a "video diary" made over three years. The River Chew in Somerset may seem a gentle idyllic piece of English countryside but it hides some very strange goings-on! And the threats to the moorhen's home are typical of what is happening to many of England's most beautiful-looking waterways. Those changes may be result of our demand for water and the price we pay for it.

7. JUMBO'S WOOD & PEOPLE
Elephants and Africans need trees. Tourists by wooden carvings as souvenirs.  In this portrait of a Tanzanian village by a verdant national park we reveal the importance of wood, this natural product that many of us take for granted.  To the local people wood is crucial.  And the forest that provides it connects with soil, streams and a lake, plus baboons, lions and elephants all overseen by very less-than-beautiful marabou stork - he's awesome!