Chimp (please can we call it something other than) Empire

Outside my window, the sun is setting over the Atlantic. I snuggle down and open my laptop. I am in Dakar, Senegal, on my way to study the Fongoli chimpanzees, but this evening I'm ready to watch some different chimps. The Ngogo chimpanzee communities in Uganda are the stars of a new Netflix show Chimp Empire, a four-part series documenting a year in their lives.

The chimpanzees at Ngogo have been studied since the early 1990s. They are the largest chimpanzee community ever researched peaking at over 200 individuals. But in 2015, the Ngogo community started to split into Ngogo West and Ngogo Central, and it's the conflict between these two newly formed groups that is the focus of Chimp Empire.

Cards on the table: I liked Chimp Empire a lot more than I thought I would! From the start, we are struck by how stunning the footage is – a friend described it as 'realer than real'. As a researcher whose work relies on following and filming apes throughout their daily lives, I couldn't help but feel inadequate at the quality of my own video footage. I will have to replace my handheld Panasonic with a professional film crew in my next grant application!

I was nervous about how the series would handle chimpanzee conflict and death. It is pitched almost like a drama and has been compared elsewhere to Succession. But these are real chimpanzees, living real lives, and dying real deaths. With text on screen telling us each chimpanzee's name, we learn about each precious individual. When we see a chimpanzee become sick, he's really sick. When we see a chimpanzee get hit, she's really hurt. So, I appreciated the sensitivity and tenderness with which the filmmakers handled these difficult moments.

While there is some simplification and hyperbole around the chimpanzee's political manoeuvring – [serious narrator voice] 'Jackson can feel Abrams closing in' – I can see how these descriptions makes their behaviour accessible to a wider audience. However, I wish that more care had been taken to avoid colonial undertones.

Besides the use of 'Empire' in the title, there is a particular moment where chimpanzees are described as 'inescapably territorial and tribal', which replicates colonial imaginaries of non-European societies that were often deemed 'primitive'. These tropes perpetuate colonial harm and they don't reflect chimpanzee social relationships. We can communicate science in better ways.

Despite these shortcomings, Chimp Empire is a narrative and aesthetic success and welcomes people into the lives of these remarkable communities of chimpanzees. The film offers a glimpse of the ways in which documentary storytelling is improving, and I hope will continue to improve with more critical reflection and research into these remarkable apes. 

Reviewed by Kirsty Graham, University of St Andrews.