“We must now look at the world through a new lens,” Attenborough says, at the beginning, seeding the idea that while a sea angel with a neon orange belly is beautiful to look at, we cannot then look away from the devastating effects of the climate crisis. ![]() Attenborough and the team reel you in with the softer stuff, as they build towards the more brutal stories. This is a whispered alarm, then, rather than a scream of despair, but there is a familiar structure lurking in the background, employed to similarly crushing effect on Wild Isles earlier this year. Yet while it is welcoming to appear so hopeful, this glass-half-full approach is in danger of leaving the impression that life on Earth will be absolutely fine, even as the environment becomes ever more extreme, more apocalyptic and more inhospitable to organic life, as a direct result of human activity. Desert lions have returned to the Namibian coast for the first time in 40 years, owing to their now-protected status. Great white sharks are known to be solitary hunters, so the sight of them working together is as strange as the seals chasing them off. There is much talk of species “adapting” to the new world. The survival of the right whale is a picture of optimism: the species was hunted to near extinction 40 years ago, but a ban on commercial whaling has restored numbers to about 12,000. The seals form a collective – you could call it an eco-mob – and chase away the sharks. The animals here largely triumph over the adversity that is thrown in their path. The in-built cosiness and gentle approach is characteristic of almost all nature shows, particularly the ones that appear on BBC One on a Sunday evening. To watch this and enjoy it simply for the majesty of its footage is still possible. Photograph: Barrie Britton/BBC Studiosīut this is not another world, and it is certainly not a fairytale. In the melting glacier water of the Arctic, there are sea angels and sea butterflies – otherworldly, fairytale-like creatures which glow and dance, wowing with their alienness.Ĭaribbean flamingos on Mexico’s Yucatán coast. Archerfish blow water at insects up to 2 metres above them, in order to knock them off leaves and turn them into meals. A right whale gives birth and cares for her calf in a nursery just off the coast of Argentina, where the calf has playmates. There are desert lion sisters in Namibia, learning to hunt seabirds at night, though, as it is pointed out, cats rarely enjoy getting wet. There is a god’s eye view, painterly and stunning, of seal pups frolicking near a South African peninsula, until great white sharks start to feast on what must appear to them as a buffet. The scale and scope of this project are spectacular. The first episode alone, dedicated to coasts, travels from Kent to Australia, through South Africa, Canada, Indonesia and more. The footage, gathered over five years across 43 countries, is astonishing and awe-inspiring. As always, these documentaries narrated by Sir David Attenborough are a testament to the wonders of the natural world. It should be alarming that, in the six years since Planet Earth last appeared on our screens, this third series finds itself in a darker mood.
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