Land of Heat and Dust

David Attenborough tells the story of one of the most intriguing wild places on earth: Madagascar, a huge island of dramatic landscapes, where the wildlife is strange and unique. Madagascar is an island of extremes. While the east is cloaked in soaking rainforest, the west and south is almost a desert. This is a scorching landscape where it might not rain for nine months of the year, and some years not at all. To live here, you have to be a specialist. The animals and plants of the dry southern lands are stranger and more mysterious than on any other part of the island, and their strategies for surviving the dryness are extraordinary. In this programme, we follow their fortunes as the year swings by and they wait for the brief rains to return.