TV review: Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero

Comedian Bill Bailey is keen to put his forgotten hero's name back in the spotlight.

In this two-part BBC2 documentary, Bailey follows in Wallace's footsteps in tracing his exploits in discovering thousands of species previously unknown to science on his travels through the islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Bailey's own love of animals and enthusiasm and passion for the subject shines through.

He begins the story of Wallace in London's Natural History Museum where he bemoans the lack of a statue of his bespectacled and bearded hero to match that of Shropshire-born naturalist Charles Darwin who independently came up with the idea of natural selection.

It's clear from the start that Bailey has a genuine admiration for Wallace, who rose from humble origins and overcame numerous obstacles to travel the world and become the greatest naturalist of his era.

He is thrilled to see Wallace's collections of butterflies, bugs and birds he sent back from his journeys are still held at the museum and it emerges Bailey's interest in Wallace originated from his own youthful hobby of butterfly collecting.

Bailey heads to the East Indies where Wallace first travelled in 1854 and starts out from Jakarta, Indonesia visiting a market to get a first glimpse of the exotic creatures Wallace was looking to collect.

He has fun gurning at a baby Macaque and there is plenty of Bailey's quirky humour to enjoy, but he never lets that overwhelm his desire to present Wallace as a figure deserving respect and admiration for his discoveries in what was then a "zoological black hole".

Moving on to Borneo he is struck by the sheer number of animal species to be seen and appreciates how his hero began to try and work out how each fitted in and came to be.

Jungle encounters with proboscis monkeys and orangutans illustrate how Wallace became fascinated by the idea that man and monkeys and apes might be related.

Bailey is proud that unlike many contemporary explorers Wallace took the trouble to learn the language of the native head-hunting tribes and enlist their help in his jungle exploits.

Meeting descendants of those tribes enables Bailey to display his musical ability on native pipes.

In a comical sequence he also tries his hand at catching butterflies in a net as his hero would have done and accidentally ends up capturing a frog.

Wallace's collecting of so many insect species led to him realising subtle variations between them and making the first steps to what would lead to his world-changing theory.

Bailey, equipped with head torch, also goes in search of Wallace's flying frog that also gave further clues about adaptation with its large webbed feet that enable it to glide through the treetops and he is genuinely thrilled to find one.

Wallace's realisation that there was a pattern to similar species being located in geographic areas led him to publishing his idea of Sarawak's Law in 1855 and saw him come to Darwin's attention.

General reaction back in Britain was dismissive but Wallace was spurred on to find more evidence and continue his travels through the islands.

Bailey explains that it was his arrival in the island of Lombok and the puzzle of its totally different animals to neighbouring Bali that gave him his next big clue.

In the second part, Bill continues to explore Wallace's efforts to unlock the mystery of the origin of species and attempts to restore him to the position he feels he deserves to hold in scientific circles.