David Attenborough's new show Dynasties profiles celebrated animals fighting to hold the line

Painted wolves on the run.

The thousands of emperor penguins gather on the frozen wastes of Antarctica to face the coldest and cruellest winter on Earth.

The powerful lioness, abandoned by her male protectors, leads her family against the gravest dangers of the African savannah and the tigress in the jungle of India attempts to raise her family under ever-growing pressure from her rivals and humanity.

Matriarch lioness Charm and her daughter Yaya.

These are some of the animal tales told in British natural historian David Attenborough's new series, Dynasties, screening from tomorrow at 7pm on TVNZ 1.

Each of the five episodes takes you to a new animal habitat and profiles one of our most celebrated and endangered animals, each fighting against the odds for its survival and the future of its family.

Emperor penguin fathers nurse their chick.

"The leaders are trying to survive and ensure that their dynasty can continue through their offspring," series producer Rupert Barrington says.

"For most animals, success in life is about producing a few offspring and leaving them to take their chances but a lion or a painted wolf family can completely control their landscape and their bloodline will rule that landscape for generations."

For each episode, crews spent hundreds of days in a single location.

Tiger Biba takes time out.

They were in the Sahara for the chimpanzee leader battling for its position and its life.

"There's an extraordinary moment where the king's underlings gang up against him," executive producer Michael Gunton says.

David the chimpanzee.

"They attack the king - he is known as David - and effectively overthrow him. In the morning, a crew came back and found David dead. Or so we thought. I can't tell you what happens next but what I can tell you is that it is one of the most extraordinary passages of drama I have ever seen in a wildlife documentary." The crew also travelled to Zimbabwe, where a feud between a mother and daughter painted wolf, also know as the African wild dog, threatens the future of one of the last families of their kind.

The Southern Lights - Aurora Australis - over the Emperor penguin colony in Atka Bay.

• Dynasties screens from tomorrow at 7pm on TVNZ 1.

Sir David Attenborough. Photo / AP