Locally-raised composer scores landmark TV series

Thomas Farnon said that working with Sir David and the band Coldplay were career highlights.

The Coldplay song Paradise was reworked into the extended trailer for the series, Mr Farnon's compositions played by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

Mr Farnon had lived in Guernsey until he was 13, but moved to the UK where he studied at specialist music school Wells Cathedral School in Somerset and then composition at Trinity College of Music.

‘I was fortunate to be brought up in a musical family,' he said. 'My dad David is also a composer and I loved and played music from an early age. I had music lessons on-island and then left to go to school in the UK when I was 13,’ he said.

‘I first worked with Sir David on Our Planet II in 2022 and around the same time was lucky enough to be asked to score Mammals. It’s been an amazing two-year process on Mammals so I’m incredibly excited for it to be out.’

He said that he met Chris Martin of Coldplay a few years ago and that the Mammals team thought that Coldplay would be perfect for the prequel at the very start of the project.

‘We were thrilled when they said yes,’ said Mr Farnon.

‘This series is a celebration of mammals, their ingenuity, their lives and of course their changing environment. Nothing resonates with this more than “This could be paradise”.’

The six episodes will follow different mammals and are entitled Dark, The New Wild, Water, Cold, Heat and Forest.

Executive producer Roger Webb said the combination of music and film footage was 'something quite special'.

‘To bring together the creative talents of Coldplay and Thomas Farnon to collaborate on the global hit Paradise is incredible.

‘I couldn’t think of a better way to launch Sir David Attenborough’s latest series.'

The first of six episodes of Mammals will air on BBC

One this Sunday [31 March] at 7pm, and on BBC iPlayer.