Aarcflick

Just five years ago, Tom Hardy was the nation's whisperer-in-chief, bewildering viewers as the formidable top-hatted adventurer Jack Delaney in the BBC drama Taboo. Some viewers were angry, while others reckoned that the 98 pig-like grunts Hardy emitted in the first seven episodes were not so much signs of an apparently pre-verbal role, but rather a cry for help. How nice to report then that in Sky Nature's new Predators series, Hardy has stepped back from the brink of incomprehensibility. In future episodes, polar bears, wild dogs, cougars and lions will take center stage, but here we watch two male cheetahs mow down as much of the Tanzanian wildlife as they can, while Hardy narrates with the crisp enunciation of a post-war Eliza. makeover. Doolittle. Perhaps reading bedtime stories calms a person. The only pig-like grunts you'll hear in Predators come from the prey who realizes too late that, like the innocent insects eaten by Matt Hancock, their fate is for their final m...