70 Macworld • December 2019FEATURE
The Elephant Queen documentary represents an
attempt to save them by celebrating them, as it
follows an elephant matriarch named Athena for
four years while she hunts for water along with
her herd. The Elephant Queen evokes both the
BBC’s Planet Earth and The Lion King, mixing
as it does high-definition panoramas packed
(narrated with voice-overs from Chiwetel Ejiofor)
with near-anthropomorphic scenarios featuring
elephants and creatures like dung beetles.
There’s maybe a little too much of the latter,
which suggests The Elephant Queen is mainly
aimed at children. Even so, there are moments of
beautiful and deep emotion, such as when Athena’s
herd stops to caress the carcass of one of its fallen
former members. Arguably, The Elephant Queen
could have done more to call attention to the plight
of its subjects besides the grim message about the
herd’s fate in the credits.Ghostwriter
Back in the 1990s, the BBC and PBS teamed up
to create Ghostwriter, a show about a group of
kids who solve mysteries with the help of a ghost
who can only communicate by writing messages
on various objects. (The title, as you might have
guessed, is quite literal.)
Today, Ghostwriter is back with a 21st-century
setting – even though it still spends a lot of time in
an old bookstore. The series presents a relatable
cast of characters along with some impressive
special effects, such as a CGI white rabbit that’s