Bruce Parry’s TV documentary series Tribe being recommissioned by the BBC after 20 years

Twenty years after it first aired on BBC, Bruce Parry’s TV documentary series Tribe is making a comeback after it captured the hearts of the nation

Bruce Parry’s TV documentary series Tribe is being brought back by the BBC almost 20 years after it first aired.

The 55-year-old is filming a three-part follow-up – called Return to the Tribe – revisiting the remote communities he spent time with for the original programme. Tribe, which ran for three series between 2005 and 2007, showed the ex-Royal Marine in many unusual situations, including taking hallucinogenic drugs with the Sanema people of Venezuela.

A source said: “Bruce was the Bear Grylls before Bear Grylls – an epic jungle adventurer who threw himself into his explorations. And among all of his work, Tribe stands out as truly incredible.

It will be fascinating to see him revisit those communities he immersed himself in the first time around and see how they have changed – or not. And it’s an opportunity to introduce the series to a new audience.”

In the first series of Tribe, Bruce visited indigenous people in Gabon, India, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Venezuela and Mongolia. He tried to fully take the plunge as he joined in with their way of life. It included eating everything he was offered – from locusts to rats.

In West Papua in Indonesia, he lived with the Kombai people to discover if cannibalism was still part of their lives. In Ethiopia, he spent time with the Suri tribe, known for a spectacular form of stick fighting. He said he briefly felt sure he was going to die after taking the hallucinogenic iboga root with the Sanema people.

Bruce’s voiceover on the 2005 episode added: “My blood feels like it is on fire. I can feel panic welling inside.” He later said that he had out of body experiences in which he saw things from the perspectives of the people around him, and “the pain I was causing them”.

In the second series, from 2006, he spent time with three tribes in remote Ethiopia, taking on tasks such as crocodile hunting. A year later in the third and final season of Tribe, he spent time with indigenous people in places such as Borneo, Tanzania, Siberia and the Amazon rainforest.

Over the three series, Bruce embedded himself with 15 indigenous tribes in total. He went on to make two more BBC series, Amazon in 2008 and Arctic in 2011. But the TV explorer, who won two Royal Television Society awards for best presenter as well as scooping a BAFTA, then vanished from screens for more than a decade.

He once said that in between trips he used to live a “hedonistic” life. Bruce has only made one significant screen appearance since 2011. This was his 2017 documentary Tawai: A Voice from the Forest. The film highlighted the plight of the Penan people in Borneo, who had been forced into permanent settlements by the destruction of their jungle home.

Speaking in an interview at the time, Bruce said BBC bosses had approached him a number of times about a follow-up to Tribe. He said: “The BBC have been very sweet and occasionally say we should go and do a revisit. And of course, that would be very much of interest to me.”

He added: “It’s all very well going over to visit a group and talking about the problems they’ve got, but to go back and see the reality of the changes and how they’ve had to move because the whole valley has been flooded for a dam, or how the loggers have all come through, or how the kids have all gone to the city, or how the government has persecuted them in some way...”

A BBC spokeswoman last night declined to comment.

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