The following is the second half of a TV review that appeared in the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-t....

It only took 20 minutes of "Echo: an Unforgettable Elephant", the first in a new series of Natural World, for me to begin blubbering into my phone. "She's. Just. So. Wonderful," I snivellingly explained to a bemused friend (this was Tuesday evening, and I was watching my very special Reviewers' DVD, so she couldn't even tune in to sympathise). "She saved all the elephants from famine and she even... adopted... her... grandson... when... her... daughter... died."

It is possible that Echo caught me feeling particularly anthropomorphic, or particularly misanthropic, or, possibly, a bit of both. Still, the fact remains: "Echo: an Unforgettable Elephant" was one of the most moving pieces of natural world documentary-making I have ever witnessed.

Introduced by a suitably sombre David Attenborough, the film followed conservationists at Kenya's Amboseli game reserve as they chronicled the life of Echo and her vast family. Born around the time of the Second World War, Echo had survived poaching attacks, drought and famine to become matriarch of her herd. Along the way, she had engaged in little acts of heroism that speak of a sense of compassion far deeper than standard accounts of animal sentience can explain.

There was the time that Echo's son, Ely, was born unable to walk. Instead of – as might be expected – abandoning him to fend for himself, Echo slowly coaxed the screaming calf off his knees and on to his feet. Within days, Ely had stopped crying out in agony and shuffling around on the floor and was starting to toddle around properly. And there was the time that Echo's daughter, Erin, died after being speared for her tusks. In her absence, Echo tracked down the spot where she died to be confronted with her carcass. Massaging the bones mournfully, she appeared fully aware of their owner. She adopted Erin's son and led him and the rest of the herd to Tanzania in search of vegetation not devastated by the drought.

When Echo died in May last year, it wasn't just her human keepers who mourned. Her herd lingered round her bones in the same way she had lingered around Erin's. Shortly after her death, the calf that she taught to walk returned a strong, trunk-swaying bull. It was incredibly poignant, watching him touch tusks with his relatives but being unable to find his mother and, without doubt, as stirring as any human drama.