WORLD IN UNION
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH EXPLORES THE PLANET’S WILDLIFE, CONTINENT BY CONTINENT…
Hundreds of millions of years ago, Earth’s land mass was one, single super-continent that has since been named Pangaea. Then, around
175 million years ago, it began to break apart and gradually formed the seven continents that we recognise today. The distinctive atmospheres of each have played a vital role in influencing the animal life that thrived there, and in this new seven-part series, Sir David Attenborough explores them individually to celebrate the diversity of life that can be found all over the planet.
“It was a challenge,” admits Sir David. “You can’t say that any one [continent] has been neglected by the Wildlife Unit, so the thing was, how do you make this different? One of the reasons that we chose this was that each continent has a different geological history – in how life arrived there and developed in isolation. Plus, every one of these programmes has one or two sequences which take my breath away.”
You’d think that, in more than 60 years of broadcasting, David must have seen every species the planet has to offer. But, thanks to this series, he’s finally had a look at one that’s eluded him for half a century.
“There’s a wonderful creature called the golden snub-nosed monkey, and I’ve never seen film of it,” he shares. “I read about it in a scientific paper in the 60s and thought, ‘We must film that!’ But we couldn’t get to China so, in the end, I dropped it. Still, I always had it in the back of my mind, then blow me if this lot didn’t pop up and say, ‘We’ve got it!’ It’s in the Asia programme, and I think it’s one of the stars.” You’ll have to wait to see them, though, as the first episode is set on
Antarctica
– where human interference is threatening its creatures’ habitat.
“Our influence is everywhere,” muses David. “We have it in our hands, and we’ve made a desperate mess of it so far. But at least nations are coming together and recognising that we all live on the same planet, so these seven worlds are actually one, and we depend on it for every mouthful of food we eat and breath of air we take.”
Indeed, while David has urged viewers to respect the environment for decades, he’s noticed a real shift in public perception of late.
“I don’t think I’ve made a series in the past 40 years where I haven’t made an appeal about caring for the natural world,” he reflects. “I dare say people thought we were cranks, but we’ve repeated it on and on, then suddenly – for no reason that I can understand because the message has always been the same – we hit the right note. With Blue Planet II, the world was suddenly electrified about the crime of chucking plastic into our oceans. What makes those messages ring a bell is very difficult to say. If we knew exactly how to do it, we’d be doing it more frequently.”
NATIONS ARE NOW RECOGNISING THAT WE ALL LIVE ON THE SAME PLANET”