Talk To The Animals (BBC1, 8pm)

THE latest recruit to the world of TV wildlife, Lucy Cooke, has unexpectedly found herself cast in the role of being a new breed of presenter with 88-year-old Sir David Attenborough’s style deemed to have fallen out of favour at the BBC.

Wendy Darke, head of the corporation’s Natural History unit, has said that when Sir David retires the BBC will not look to “fill his shoes” because he is a one-off. Diverse, populist presenters on the same wavelength as the audience will be recruited instead with Cooke, an Oxford zoology graduate, saying she aims to bring entertainment and humour to her role.

Cooke feels that a joke or two won’t go amiss to “sugar coat the bitter pill” of her conservation message. While she feels her task is “all about being popular”, Cooke pays tribute to Sir David and says: “He blew my mind and changed my life

Perhaps it might have been better if she hadn’t worked for Jonathan Ross’s production company before moving into documentary making, but Cooke is now on a mission to answer one of life’s mysteries, about how animals speak. The BBC is touting Cooke as a real-life Dr Dolittle. I'm not entirely sure that she's going to grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals... although there is a Twitter-like exchange involving mongooses.

Sir David has previously acknowledged the change in broadcasting style.: “I suspect that the age of the presenter is coming to an end. The important element is just the film and only the film,” he said, priasing the cameramen who make the programmes as more deserving of his legacy.

Operation Cloud Lab (BBC2, 8pm)

I WAS considering this as the lead item, but the Beeb seemed to get its head in the clouds regarding images and there was nothing available under Operation Cloud Lab concerning a team of scientists who take to the skies in one of world’s largest airships for a unique exploration of Earth’s most precious and mysterious environment – the atmosphere.

Flying coast to coast across the US, the team undertake a series of experiments shedding light on the causes of wild weather, how life exploits the atmosphere, and the human impact upon the weather.

The team begin their expedition by exploring clouds, which play a vital role in the planet’s ecology by transporting water from the oceans to the Earth’s land surfaces and generating 1.4 trillion tonnes of rainfall each day.

The Mimic (Channel 4, 10pm)

THE first series, in which Terry Mynott stars as Martin Hurdle, a maintenance man who's got an uncanny ability to mimic voices, went down well. Now, Martin is struggling to ditch his job to become a professional mimic. Mynott previously cropped up in 2012's Very Important People alongside Morgana Robinson. But while he's keen to bring his own characters to the small screen, Mynott does admit there were a few differences between filming the first and second series.

He explains: "The more time you spend on set, the more confident you get, because you're just being exposed to it. I remember on the first day of the first series, my head nearly fell off, as we turned up and I saw all the trucks and the logistics and everybody involved. By the second series, we kind of knew what we were doing, and yes, you do know the characters better. This time, we knew what we wanted to do a little bit more. But in other ways it was a little bit tougher this year.”