In our attempts to understand the world, wildlife films play a significant role. Wildlife films help us to see new places and learn about animals in remote locations, that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. Yet wildlife films have throughout history been criticized, mainly for the ambivalent relationship between science and storytelling. While the films give us a scientific impression and say something about the “reality”, they clearly have the intension to amuse, capture and entertain their audience. In doing this, the wildlife film shapes characters, plays dramatic music and creates narratives with beginnings and ends.

In this essay I study the narrative structures in five chosen parts of the BBC production Life (2009). I attempt to show how the parts can be seen through the narrative scheme that Labov and Waletzky introduce in 1967. The results are leading to a discussion about the way in which the narrative structures affects the science in the film parts. Mainly through the narrative need of spectacular points and breach from normality, and the way in which narrative structures contribute to anthropomorphism.

My intension is to show how the narrative structures are working in order to better, as a viewer, determine what´s fact and what´s fiction.