Nature on the box
News of the best in the entertainment world this month
Norman Wright
Some of the earliest TV nature programmes came from the work of two husband and wife teams: Hans and Lotte Hass, diving the oceans, and Armand and Michaela Denis on safari.
Both brought exotic wildlife into our living rooms albeit in rather grainy black and white. Their stories were remarkably similar.
Austrian Hans Hass was a scientist with a bent for developing technology. He modernised divers’ breathing gear and innovated in underwater photography equipment. He divorced his wife in favour of his glamourous secretary, Lotte, and made underwater films and TV programmes together.
Armand Denis was a Belgian scientist and inventor and his invention of an automatic volume control for radios funded his travel and
