November 2005 - Radio Times

‘This is an astounding piece of work by Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, whose photography manages to make even the most revolting-sounding scene look gorgeous’.

November 2005 - TV Times – pick of the day

November 2005 - Saturday Times – TV choice

‘Ian Holm’s pared down narration is the perfect accompaniment to the otherworldly wonder of the camerawork. For lovers of natural history films this is a classic’.

November 2005 - Saturday Guardian

‘The honeyed tones of narrator Ian Holm belie the torrid nature of the bond between tree and insect which involves not only fly’s with penises ‘twice their body length’ but also incest, infanticide and plain old murder’.

November 2005 - Observer

Mark Deeble and Vicky Stone’s film is beautifully and cleverly shot...the result is an edifying portrait of a tree which sustains not simply the fig wasp but many other creatures’.

November 2005 - Sunday Times - critics choice

‘This is not so much a tree as an entire ecosystem and it is so beautifully presented that you feel quite sad at the end when a one millimetre long fig wasp dies’.

November 2005 - The Daily Mail

‘An amazing programme...the compelling story four years in the making, is narrated beautifully, by Ian Holm’.

November 2005 - The Daily Mail

‘It’s impossible to watch this amazing film without being slack-jawed in awe at the sights that unfold...what you’ll see is truly spectacular’.

November 2005 - The Guardian

‘The tiny miracles created by the African sycamore fig tree and the fig wasp are captured in this exquisite film’.

November 2005 - The Daily Telegraph – pick of the day

‘...seeing the system mesh so perfectly feels like a privilege’.

November 2005 - The Independent – pick of the day

November 2005 - Evening Standard – pick of the night

‘A graceful beautifully shot film documenting how two living organisms rely on each other to survive’.

November 2005 - Metro – today’s highlights

‘An impressive documentary which is sure to make you marvel’.

November 2005 - TIMES 03.11.05 Last Night’s TV – Ian Johns

‘Rome wasn’t the only BBC2 programme to feature battles, betrayals, sacrifices and English thesps. Ian Holm narrated Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone’s remarkable film for Natural World. It revealed in breathtaking detail the complex ecosystem surrounding a sycomore fig tree in Africa, from microscopic fig wasps and nesting hornbills to elephants and the Masai. To see how this society meshed together was wondrous. The producers of Rome should take a look before embarking on the next series.’

April 2006 - The New York Times

TV REVIEW | 'NATURE: THE QUEEN OF TREES'
PBS 'Nature' Series, 'Queen of Trees,' Focuses on Giant Fig and Tiny Wasp

By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: April 8, 2006

Sex, drunkenness, treachery, murder. Not bad for a nature program about a fig tree. "The Queen of Trees," an installment of the PBS series "Nature" tomorrow night, is full of little dramas of perseverance and interdependence, and no matter what your belief about how the world came to be, it will leave you awfully impressed at the handiwork. The filmmakers, Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, focus on a small, seemingly ordinary bit of nature, a single fig tree, on a riverbank in Kenya, and show that it is not so ordinary, after all. In their narrative, delivered by the actress Patricia Clarkson, they call the tree the Queen, and for good reason: it is the center of life for a range of creatures, from the microscopic to the mammoth. Elephants and giraffes eat from its branches. Butterflies become intoxicated sipping fermented fig mash. A family of hornbills lives in a hollow — with one chick, in a particularly affecting segment, racing against time to learn to fly before bees take over the nest. Ants, cicadas, snakes, monkeys and more, all captured in amazing camera work, swarm over the Queen, sometimes cooperating, sometimes engaging in life-and-death struggles with one another. The program's main focus, though, is the unusual symbiotic relationship between the tree and fig wasps, tiny bugs that bore into the figs and do the vital work of pollination. "The two partners couldn't be more different," Ms. Clarkson says of tree and wasp. "One can withstand a river in flood, the other can drown in a dewdrop." And the sex between the male and female wasp — well, it's something to see, let's leave it at that. The fact that we're able to see it at all (how does one get a camera inside a fig, anyway?) says a lot about this extraordinary film.
For full review click here

April 2006 - Associated Press THE QUEEN OF TREES - by Frazier Moore, AP television writer

A recipient of a prestigious Peabody Award and a treat for the eye and the soul, this documentary tells the epic saga of Africa's natural history in the sensuous terms of a regal fig tree and a pollinating partner: a tiny wasp so tiny it could fly through the eye of a needle. It is a cautionary reminder of how Nature depends on the most delicate of relationships

April 2006 - Globeandmail.com - PICK OF THE DAY Henrietta Walmark

On a Kenyan riverbank a massive ancient sycomore fig produces tons of fruit to sustain a host of animals from elephants to ants to giraffes. Yet this prominent centrepiece of a teeming ecosystem is utterly dependent on its tiny resident fig wasps. Husband-and-wife filmmakers Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone spent two years patiently filming this remarkable symbiotic relationship whose influence extends top other plants, animals, humans and even fish. From its stunning panoramas of African bush and wildlife to its intimate macro images of wasp life inside the tree's fruit, The Queen of Trees reveals the delicate connections that literally feed such an exotic diversity.

April 2006 - THE SUN HERALD - 'Queen of Trees' has handmaiden

by Jean Pestcott
Patricia Clarkson's narration is flat, but its focus - a common African tree and the tiny insects with which it enjoys symbiosis - needs no dramatic delivery.
The images that dart across the screen are all that is needed to reaffirm the wonders of Nature, should South Missiaaippians have lost themselves in nature's horrors.
The interior shots of the figs are remarkable, brilliantly clear and lit from within by some unimaginable light source. The sysomore fig and fig wasp compete for the title of nature's oddest couple, a relationship whose influence extends out widely across the African bush, supporting hundreds of other plants, animals, people, even fish.