Whenever David Attenborough speaks, the world listens – so his latest BBC programme, which heralds the broadcaster’s 100th birthday, is bound to attract attention.

Secret Garden, which features five different UK gardens, might not be what people normally expect from Attenborough, says the show’s series producer, Bill Markham, as “there’s no lions and tigers”.

But he hopes it is “much more relatable” as it focuses on where Attenborough’s interest in natural history began: on home turf, with the veteran presenter stressing the importance of what is happening “right on our doorsteps”. He reveals that “some British gardens are almost as diverse as a tropical rainforest” and that “our gardens cover a greater area than all of our national nature reserves combined”.

The programme aims to ease eco-anxiety, featuring changes viewers can make to help wildlife, including some which people might find contentious.

Secret Garden estimates that the 9.5m pet cats in Britain may kill approximately 55m birds every year. Attenborough reveals that putting bells on cats “reduces pet cats’ hunting success by a third”, and raising bird feeders higher also cuts deaths.

Markham explains the current situation is “unfair on the prey”, because cats are “the biggest predator in our gardens [but] they’re being fed every day. There’s no limit on their population. So the normal relationship between predators and prey falls apart.

“What would work really well is if people kept their cats indoors during bird breeding season,” he says, citing an ecologist called Dr Davide Dominoni whose studies show that keeping felines indoors during April and May “would reduce their impact massively”.

“We didn’t want this to be a preachy series at all,” says Markham. “Not everyone likes to do this because they think their cat has a right to be out. There are a lot of cat lovers who feel very strongly about this. But if you also love your wildlife, and I think we’re a nation of animal lovers and we’re a nation of gardeners – then I think you can do your bit.”

Another episode covers pheasants, which “originate from Asia, but every year more than 30m are released into the British countryside” where they eat native insects, reptiles and amphibians.

The countryside lobby argue that shooting provides rural jobs. But Markham points out that, despite the trend for reintroducing native species such as beavers, “Every year, we unleash this scourge on the countryside. It’s messing with the ecology.”

Such calls to action could replicate the success Attenborough’s voice had in reducing plastic pollution following Blue Planet II. He is unafraid to take on the big issues as he approaches his century: last year in the film Ocean, released on his 99th birthday, Attenborough made an urgent, passionate case against the ruin caused by industrial overfishing.

Cat owners and the countryside lobby might argue that Secret Garden is one of the most contentious UK-focused natural history shows narrated by the presenter. But Markham says the UK loves “animals, gardens and David Attenborough”, so if Secret Garden “succeeds in encouraging people to rethink what their gardens can be, it will be in no small part due to his influence,” he says.

Despite his years of experience, Attenborough was “surprised by the incredible things living in our gardens”, Markham adds. “Probably the first animal he ever saw was in his garden, and that, quite conceivably, set him on the path of being the world’s greatest naturalist.”

Markham also hopes the show will be comforting, as “a lot of us have eco-anxiety. We’re worried about climate change, and feel there’s nothing you can do as an individual.

“But what you can do is go out into a garden. There are 25m gardens in the UK – 80% of us have got access to gardens and you can make one or two little changes.” He gives the example of planting a cheap native tree, which helps increase the supply of caterpillars for birds.

The idea for Secret Garden grew out of our increased interest in gardening during lockdown. Markham calls gardens “unsung heroes”, where the “laws of the jungle still apply”, and an average patch can contain about “2,600 species of animal and plant”.

Highlights of the show include a pine marten hunting sand martins in the UK, filmed for the first time; an otter hunting ducks; mayflies and damselflies fighting in a scene similar to the famous “snakes v iguana” sequence from Planet Earth II; and field mice leaving landmarks to find their way home, Hansel and Gretel-style.

Lisa and Stephen are good. “You good?” asks Stephen (Paapa Essiedu), plonking himself next to his wife on the sofa. “Yeah,” replies Lisa (Siobhán Cullen) from the depths of her oversize fleece hoodie. “Good,” says Stephen. “All good.”

Lisa and Stephen love each other and when Lisa has a miscarriage, then another miscarriage, they don’t talk about it, not really, because you don’t, do you? It’s just one of those things. “Gotta stay positive,” as Stephen says. “Eyes up, move forwards.”

They refuse to let their losses define them. Besides, as Lisa points out, no one else understands, do they? Not really. “We are,” she says, “so alone.” And so they tighten the drawstrings of their relationship, pull together and, in their happy-sad amniotic cocoon, continue to do what they’ve always done. Chin up. Get on with it. Put it all behind them.

So, yeah, Lisa and Stephen are good. All good.

Created, written and directed by Stefan Golaszewski, Babies is a drama about communication. It’s about what happens when people don’t, or can’t, ask for what they need, either because this makes them feel vulnerable or embarrassed, or because they fear the response will reveal something about themselves they would rather not have to face.

So, here are Lisa and Stephen. And here, too, are Stephen’s best friend, Dave, and his new girlfriend, Amanda. Dave (Jack Bannon) is a passive-aggressive wide boy, whose relationship with his young son is abysmal and his lack of self-awareness significantly worse. An inveterate banterer, Dave longs for emotional connection, but his terror of intimacy and inability to not say things such as “I can’t stand the sanitisation of the global west” casts doubt on his capacity for long-term romantic success. He is, to echo the words of one observer, “a prick”.

Amanda (Charlotte Riley), meanwhile, is … well. It’s difficult to say. Of Babies’ four exquisitely complicated main characters, she is perhaps the most complex; a stiff-jawed, meticulously bloused acquisitions manager who vacillates between near-mute self-preservation and lacerating emotional veracity. I think. Nothing here is straightforward.

Over six episodes, we follow the couples as they navigate their relationships and attempt to find some degree of happiness.

As with Golaszewski’s previous creations – Marriage, Him & Her, and the quietly miraculous Mum – Babies doesn’t have much in the way of plot. Information is released slowly, with even relatively minor revelations – a loathed acquaintance is pregnant; a seemingly laid-back family member is an emotional manipulator – landing like bombs. We fear the fallout from our protagonists’ reactions to these discoveries. We want to protect them from themselves.

The thread – the umbilical cord, if you will – that wends through this extraordinarily tense jumble of emotions is Lisa and Stephen’s longing to conceive. There are gloriously quotidian montages of their efforts to board the pregnancy hamster wheel: the frantic sex, the laughing at the insensitivity of doctors (“yeah, we’re all good, hahaha”), the sitting on the edge of the bath while staring tearfully at a plastic wee-stick. The many hospital scenes are similarly well observed, albeit difficult to watch (as astute a director as he is a writer, Golaszewski knows precisely when not to look away).

Like 2022’s Marriage, Babies asks more questions than it answers. Does grief excuse selfishness? What makes one death more significant than another? At what point does a positive mindset become a cudgel with which to obliterate the truth?

The series is a feat of narrative engineering. So many expertly assembled little cogs and pistons working in harmony. It’s an unapologetically adult drama, too, albeit one unafraid to end an emotionally devastating scene with a joke about Chicken Cottage.

Quibbles? The themes of toxic masculinity and generational trauma are, at times, slightly overplayed. And the treacly, busker-ish theme tune (which is, inexplicably, performed by Golaszewski himself)? Best to scurry past it with head down and hands in pockets.

But enough carping. With this unsettling, compassionate, funny, moving, wildly unpredictable and beautifully acted series, Golaszewski has given us something very special indeed. Babies, then. It’s all good.