DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S HEART-WRENCHING NEW SERIES:
Every episode has sequences that take my breath away
ON A beach in Iceland, Sir David Attenborough introduces his epic new TV series by saying we’ve made a “tragic, desperate mess” of our planet.
Producers have put conservation issues at the heart of Seven Worlds, One Planet after seeing how enthusiastically the public responded to calls for single-use plastic to be rejected in his previous series, Blue Planet II.
The result is the most campaigning – and heartwrenching – natural history series the BBC and Sir David have ever produced. Four years in the making, the landmark show examines each of the seven continents individually.
Standing on the freezing sand, the 93-year-old TV veteran tells viewers: “This might be the most critical moment for life on Earth since the continents formed.”
Sir David explains that while he has plenty of hope for the future, there is no doubt that humans have a lot to answer for. “On the planet as a whole, we are now universal, our influence is everywhere and we have it in our hands. We’ve made a tragic, desperate mess of it so far but at last nations are coming together and recognising that we all live on the same planet.
“So all these seven worlds are actually one world, and we are dependent on it for every mouthful of food we eat and every breath of air we take.” The BBC’s most ambitious natural history series to date, it took a team of 1500 a total of 1800 days on location in 80 expeditions across more than 40 countries to amass 200 hours of footage.
It kicks off with a breathtaking look at
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH ON HIS NEW SERIES
Antarctica – the least populated place on Earth, which humanity only saw for the first time 200 years ago.
Viewers will see gentoo penguins unable to walk or swim in the slushy water being picked off by hungry leopard seals.
Other stories show gargantuan elephant seals locked in battle on land and sea.
There is also an uplifting report of how some species of whale are finally making a comeback in the region after the long era of slaughter ended.
They include the southern right whale, which at one point had dwindled to just 35 breeding females. Now there are more than 1000.
Producer Fredi Devas said: “Antarctica is an awe-inspiring continent. What we really wanted to encapsulate is that, even though it’s very remote, the wildlife there is not safe from humanity.
“It was really important to put conservation stories right at the heart of it so you feel what’s going on for them even though they’re so far away.”
The later episodes reveal more extra-ordinary stories in Asia, North and South America, Africa, Europe and Australasia.
Sir David said: “Every one of them has one or two sequences in them that quite take my breath away and have never been seen before.”
Highlights include wild hamsters in a Viennese graveyard and swifts in South America that live behind one of the world’s most powerful waterfalls and have to fledge through the deluge.
Sir David’s favourite moment is in the Asia film.
He said: “There’s a wonderful creature called a golden-haired, bluefaced, snub-nosed snow monkey. I’d never seen film of it before – actually I once read a scientific paper and I thought, ‘We must go and film them’, and that was back in the 1960s.
“I tried and we couldn’t get to China and so on, so I dropped it. But I always had them in the back of my mind.
“Then blow me if this lot don’t pop up and say, ‘We’ve got it’. And do you know why they have such snub noses? To stop them getting frost-bitten.”
He hopes the series will show “how astonishing and wonderful and beautiful these things are and also how interdependent they are and how we are dependent on them”.
Sir David said he does not know why the conservation message he has been preaching for decades has finally caught public attention, but he is very thankful that it has.
He added: “I daresay people thought we were cranks – but suddenly you hit the right note. With Blue Planet II the world was electrified about the crime of chucking plastic into the ocean.”
At the series premiere, a five-yearold boy asked Sir David how he could help to save the planet.
He told him: “The best way is to not waste things – electricity, paper, food.
“Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste.
“Look after your country and the animals in it and the plants in it. This is their planet as well as ours. So don’t waste anything.”
Seven Worlds, One Planet starts on BBC1 at 6.15pm on October 27.