The Born Free Legacy, BBC Four

If you have fond childhood memories of either the Born Free book or movie, you might want to stay away. From the opening moments of this documentary, the knowledge that lion-loving conservationist George Adamson was fatally shot in the back on a dirt road in Kenya will immediately stop John Barry’s epic and optimistic theme song from swelling to life in your head. But that’s only the beginning of a systematic dismantling of the Born Free myth from a documentary which, ironically, was made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Joy Adamson’s unexpected bestseller.

With the authoritative presences of David Attenborough and Desmond Morris onboard, one has no choice but to believe that the Disney-esque version of events presented by the book and James Hill’s cosy 1966 feature film are only half the story. But you’ll be pleased to learn that the core life-changing moment of the couple adopting the orphaned lion cub, Elsa, and teaching her to hunt so they can release her back into the wild, was all as previously reported. In fact some of this film’s most entertaining footage is of the almost-adult Elsa chasing after some freshly slaughtered animal carcass (like a kitten after a ball of wool) which has been tied to the back of the Adamson’s Land Rover.

In fact, cat lovers will get a lot of pleasure in general from watching the Queen of the Beasts rolling on her back or playing with an old car tyre, as if she wouldn’t harm a zebra. Fortunately the couple shot acres of cine film such as this of their surrogate child (as some commentators theorised) behaving more cutely than any 300lb killing machine has any right to.

But for anyone who has ever loved a dog, cat, rabbit or even mouse (see Michael Jackson’s "Ben"), Joy Adamson’s closeness to Elsa won’t seem particularly unusual. So when Desmond Morris describes it as an “almost erotic” rather than a maternal bond, it felt like a conclusion he’d arrived at simply to live up to his reputation for putting a different spin on all things man and beast. However, there was much brow-furrowing going on from several quarters in regard to the dangers of anthropomorphising animals. This felt somewhat disingenuous given that, even in these enlightened times, many wildlife documentaries still impose on animals all kinds of sentimental human motives and qualities.

But the tough, mercurial Joy did seem to be the archetypal individual who, through total immersion in the world of animals, had ended up having little patience, time, or social skills for mere humans. And so when it was later revealed that she had her life tragically curtailed by a worker she was in dispute with over money, you can unfortunately imagine (based on all the reports of those who knew her) how she might have driven this individual to such drastic lengths.

So let's move on to the more uplifting aspects of this curious story: there is no doubt that Joy, George and Elsa completely changed our perception of wild animals. Pre-Born Free, Africa was the Dark Continent and blowing away Big Game was as gentlemanly a pastime as golf or cricket. But post-Born Free, wild animals had names just like our own household pets. In fact, zoologists got very uppity about Joy and George - and then later Dian Fossey and others - replacing numbers with names during their studies.

We also learnt that animals could form bonds with us disagreeable humans, have individual characters, and be generally handsome, noble and strange - rather than just fast-moving targets crossing the savannah. And in a somehow entirely appropriate twist of the tale, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers - the husband and wife who played the Adamsons - ended up animal activists themselves, ultimately becoming involved in the Born Free Foundation which is still active today. One of the final scenes of the film follows McKenna back to Kenya to visit George Adamson’s grave, where she tearfully speaks of what a remarkable man he was.

Alex Parkinson’s documentary was very shrewd in the way it held back from revealing exactly how Joy and George died right up until the end. For much of its duration I couldn’t help but suspect some kind of Grizzly Man scenario: in Werner Herzog’s sublime documentary, eccentric bear lover Timothy Treadwell is torn apart by the animals he’d spent 13 years trying to hang out with. But no, it was brutish, venal humans that cold-bloodedly ended both the Adamsons' lives, not lovely cuddly lions with their cute furry paws as big as dinner plates.

• Find Born Free on Amazon
• Watch The Born Free Legacy on BBC iPlayer