Review from The Times newspaper, UK. 26th Oct 2009

“After the histrionics of Ed Wardle's Alone in the Wild, where there was a bear around every corner ready to attack, it was a relief to find Dr Lynn Rogers involved in a very different relationship with the grizzly denizens of the Minnesota Northwoods. In Natural World, the bears loved Dr Rogers and they had every reason to: sometimes devotees of anything can be hard work - their passion usually obscuring logic, or simply making them seem a little loopy.

But Dr Rogers, a passionate protector and observer of bears, was the best kind of advocate: fearless, intelligent, warm and unintentionally very funny. Bears are very big and quite scary, but to this seemingly kind, gentle man - who, like the rest of us, grew up with scary images of bears - they are his friends. He had names for them: Joan, Big Harry.

The tumbling cubs were cute, although the documentary itself was quietly revelatory. We watched Dr Rogers feed the bears nuts so he could put a tracking device around their necks. He said that when bears look as if they're going for you aggressively, what they're actually saying is: “I'm nervous, give me some space, let's talk about it.” The bears ate ant larvae and green shoots, they play-fought, and Dr Rogers got incredibly close to them. (“It's me, bear,” he said by way of a greeting.) As he approached the lairs where the bears were dwelling you feared for his life, but the creatures seemed relaxed around him: at one point he lay on the grass next to one, man and beast in perfect repose.

The hunting season began and Dr Rogers tried to keep the bears he was studying safe by tying big pink ribbons on them (which certainly made them stand out). The companionship of three bears Dr Rogers called “the amigos” was shattered when two were killed. But his spirits were lifted when his surviving study group all made it into their lairs to hibernate.

The changing seasons - burnished copper trees in the autumn, glistening snowscapes - were beautifully captured by the photography of David Wright, David McKay and Sue Mansfield, and despite the bullets of the hunters there was a happy ending. Dr Rogers's favourite bear had two cubs. On an autumn night, it made you go “awww”.